The Borio Singaldi Writing Anthology

Foreward (and forewarning) + Requisite Information

Let me tell you how Borio Singaldi and his anthology came to be.

Borio Singaldi is a character I randomly made up one day in school when the name popped into my head out of nowhere. I was just minding my own business when the name "Borio Singaldi and the Death of a Prospect" came out of the blue. I was so intrigued by this ridiculous thought that I had to write it down. Once I did, I shared this idea with my fellow writers on a Brandon Sanderson fansite and decided to do something about it. So we started a mini writing group about the character of Borio Singaldi, our stories about him often based on a variation of the title "Death of a Prospect" (such as Death of a Perspective, Death of a Prospector, Prospect of Death, Perspective of Death, Prospector of Death, etc). But they don't need to be limited to that. Oh no, the story can be about anything, so long as one sticks to the character. So I guess you should all get a full description of the guy from which to base your thoughts on him.

He is a large and portly man, overweight but not quite obese. He is often fashionably dressed in a sort of foppish way, as he is a very rich man. He has brown eyes, black hair, and light tan skin. I'd almost say he's entirely white, but he has a bit of Greco-Italian blood in him. His strongest defining characteristics are his mustache and his cane collection. He has a long, elegent, twirling mustache that often seems to move on its own. It is very important to him that he maintain its appearance. His various canes are made of various fancy and valuable types of wood and often have jeweled tips. They are extremely valuable to him and he never goes anywhere without them.

As for his personality... well, he's not exactly the brightest bulb in the box, but he's sometimes prone to bouts of cleverness and spontaneity due to the authors having fun with him. His juxtaposition of idiotic and brilliant is just one of his little idiosyncrasies that helps to make him all the more unpredictable. He's never intentionally mean and has good but misguided heart to him, but he's just not good at understanding other people and their feelings. He can be insensitive and rude, but more out of ignorance than cruelty. Some people find him very annoying while others simply find him charming and amusing.

What does he do with his life? Well, that's entirely up to the people who write him! He's been on all sorts of misadventures, far too many to attempt to describe. Because all of those crazy journeys are written but us, the authors! We create his crazy life story!

Normally, when I write or outline stories, I come up with the plot first and then create characters to fit it. But in this case, I created a character first and then needed to create plotlines to fit him! So the possibilities really are endless, so long as you stay true to the character!

But he is not the only prevalent character to write about. You see, he lives in a large and fancy manor (canonically established by one of our existing writers as being located in Des Moines, Iowa), accompanied across his daily life by his unwillingly loyal butler Earnestwise Tomatopatch and his unloyally willing maid Clemendine Tomatopatch. You may wonder as to what their relation might be, and so do the rest of us. The greatest mystery of Borio's life (and the long running gag of the writers) is that he can never know how the two Tomatopatch servants are related. Are they siblings? Spouses? Cousins? Are they unrelated and just so happen to have the same last name? No one seems to know.

Earnestwise hates his job and obeys Borio very grudgingly, often in an irritable or depressed mood. He constantly worries about his life because of the dangerous circumstances he gets into and only continues working for Borio because it's a chore that pays well. He is also a driver and a blogger. Clemendine is a rather timid, easily frazzled, and overworked woman with a very large skill set that is wasted on the mere position of being a manor maid, though she can still put them to use. She's also a helicopter pilot, for example. Those two can just be full of surprises. They have to be to keep up with the madness of Borio's life.

Borio Singaldi has also had many run-ins with Death. As in, the conscious-entity-grim-reaper Death himself. For reasons not yet clear to any of the writers and readers, Death covets the soul of Singaldi and will use any underhanded, overhanded, or spitballed method to cheat Borio's soul away from him. Many of Borio's adventures involve encounters with Death. More recurring characters may yet be added to the mix, but Borio, Earnestwise, Clemendine, and Death are the four constants. Be prepared to meet them.

These Borio Storios -- yes, that is what they are called; it's a play on "stories", just go with it -- ahem, these Borio Storios are an exercise in imagination, a way of stretching yourself to just write... something. There is no prompt for the story but the people in it; Borio is the prompt. The story does not even necessarily have to be comedic, though pretty much all the existing ones so far are comedies. The possibilities are endless.

Enjoy reading the madness that is the life of our one and only... Borio Singaldi!