A little introduction to the Here Be Monsters process

It was a dark and stormy night.  In the dank basement, the harried writers huddled around a frugal meal of chips and pizza dough.  Ginger ale flowed to still their restless souls.  Somewhere, ghosts of dead pulp authors lay watching, silently biding their time.  A sweaty hand dipped into the cracked bowl and drew the first prompt.  The writer read it with a troubled heart, "Write a story involving an anthropomorphic muffin."  A scream rent the night.  It had begun.