We're back with a new season of A Murakami Minute! This go around we're reading and discussing Haruki Murakami's short story collection, The Elephant Vanishes.

In today's episode, we talk about the first two stories in the collection, The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday's Women, and The Second Bakery Attack. We discuss how the first story is a part of Murakami's most famous novel, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. We also go over our feelings on the translations (which are done by different translators) and how they change the writing styles of the stories. 

Caleb opens things off with his one-second Fellowship of the Ring review and an update on how his novel is coming along. After that, we get into a discussion about the importance of character motivation in storytelling. We talk about how important character motivations, character goals, and overcoming obstacles are to telling a good story.

There are some examples of well-known characters and their motivations discussed throughout the episode. We end things by talking a little about future social media plans for DPW. 

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We start things off by discussing some of the recent backlash (and praise) we got for our Blood Meridian Book of the Month episode. After that, we get into the topic at hand, which is something we love talking about.

For a long time, we have traveled similar roads on our individual reading journeys. But recently we have finally split. Caleb has gone down a hard fantasy road, and Spencer has decided to check out some classic science fiction. We go over our reasons for taking the reading directions we have, and more importantly, how it has impacted our writing. 

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WARNING: This episode deals with discussions of violence and sexual assault.

It's been some time since we last did a Book of the Month episode. So for the month of October, we felt it would be fitting to cover the ultra-violent novel, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. We do our best to give our honest opinion of this highly regarded piece of literature. Though, we might be a bit too honest!

We discuss violence and what it means in this book. We also have a conversation about masculine fiction and how we categorize what is considered masculine fiction. There's a lot going on in this episode so if the topics we discuss interest you, make sure to listen to the whole episode because even after it seems like we're done, we find more ground to cover.

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Caleb kicks things off by reading a poem suggested by a listener of the show. After that, we cover a list of awesome (and one that's not so awesome!) books that are perfect for people who enjoyed the new Netflix show Squid Game.

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We start things off with some brief Lord of the Rings talk. Then we get into the thick of it with a list of awesome Celtic mythological creatures put together by our friends over at The Irish Road Trip. There are 31 creatures in total and some are really messed up!

Check out all the Halloween submissions going on at www.drunkenpenwriting.com for some good reads.

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We're talking about monsters! More specifically, what makes a good monster, what our favorite monsters are, and what is truly scary about fictional monsters. 

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Caleb starts the podcast off with some good news! Then everything goes terribly downhill from there. We were supposed to cover the ten scariest short horror stories, but Caleb seems to have forgotten how to read and botches the entire thing.

Not all is lost though. There are plenty of laughs and near rage quits throughout the show. Plus, a critical breakdown of the article we read.

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In this episode, we take a look back at our humble beginnings and reminisce about the simpler times when we first started writing. We discuss how far we've come, the things we've learned, and some of our future plans.

We also talk about the good ol' days of Drunken Pen Writing and the DPW Podcast: how we started, the troubles we've had, and how much we've improved upon things.

Check out our fiction at www.drunkenpenwriting.com

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We're talking about themes! That's right, we're taking a deep dive and discussing how to write themes for your story. We go over ways to come up with themes, the most common themes used, and the types of themes that show up in our work.

Speaking of our work, you can check out our stories at www.drunkenpenwriting.com

You can also follow us on Twitter @drunkpenwriting

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