Daily Creativity Prompt: The Last Devil to Die

Every December, I take a deep dive into National Public Radio’s Books We Love list. Books are endlessly fascinating to me and NPR’s recommendations guide my holiday shopping as well as my To Be Read/ Listened To list for the upcoming year. I hope that these prompts inspire you creatively and encourage you to add at least one of these titles to your reading list for the upcoming year.

There is only one rule to this prompt challenge: the daily prompt should serve as the title of your piece OR all the words in the daily prompt should be integrated into your piece somehow.   

It is my honor and pleasure to publish your prompt responses on Brave & Reckless. I welcome poetry, prose, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and high-res original art inspired by the prompt.

How to Submit

Email your submission to her.red.pen.wordsmithing@gmail.comWriting can be submitted in the body of the email or as a separate Word document or PDFIf you are submitting writing, please include a suggested image to accompany your work. Unsplash and Pixabay are two of my favorite sites for royalty-free images.Your email should include your name EXACTLY as you want it to appear on Brave & Reckless, a short biography (if you haven’t sent me one in the last few months), and any links you want shared.

I will start accepting responses to the NPR’s Books We Love Creativity Prompt Challenge immediately, but I will not start publishing them until the day that particular daily prompt is published. For instance, writing and art inspired by the book title A Study in Drowning will be published starting January 4, 2024.

“Richard Osman’s books are a slyly sophisticated bunch, boasting emotional development equal to the memorable mysteries. Every Thursday, members of a wealthy retirement community apply their considerable talents to unsolved local crime. They begin with cold cases, then move on to active investigations, to the frustration of the local authorities. The core four – diarist and social butterfly Joyce, retired psychiatrist Ibrahim, Ron, the bombastic political activist, and Elizabeth, a former spy and natural leader – grow tighter with each installment, making The Last Devil to Die especially poignant. While ex-spy Elizabeth reaches an unmistakable turning point with her husband, whose dementia has grown acutely painful, danger lurks close to home as the crew tries to solve the recent murder of a friend. Thursday Murder Club mystery stands up well on its own, but given the richness of character and relationships, as a set, they’re bloody brilliant.”

— Carole V. Bell, culture critic and media and politics researcher