Storytellersunplugged

Quick note - there is no regular "columnist" for the 31st of a month, and since no one was "on deck" for today, I'm posting a day early to cover today and the 1st, my normal day. HAPPY HALLOWEEN! I'd like to write something this time out about trends, trend-setting, and originality. This is an issue that rears its ugly head in so many ways that when we get swept up in the currents it creates, we are often unaware that ... Read More

I'm not exactly writing about writing this time because, recently, it seems that every time I turn around a writer or editor of my acquaintance is suffering from severe computer and/or Internet frustration. That frustration tends to be a part of life these days, especially for those of us who use one or more of the confounded machines for the better share of our waking hours. While the Internet can be one of the most valuable tools there is, using it can ... Read More

I'm currently awash in writers. Game writers, that is – published game writers, new game writers, people who want to be game writers, you name it. It's the first Game Writers' Conference (the location of the apostrophe is still apparently a matter of some debate), an adjunct conference to the Austin Games Conference and I'm smack-dab in the middle of this. Big deal, I hear you saying. A bunch of writers getting together is no surprise; the only question ... Read More

by Janet BerlinerDuring one of many hungry periods of my writing life, I descended reluctantly into the relatively well-paid abyss of Porn. Not erotica. I write that with few reservations. I'm talking down and dirty. Did I enjoy writing it? No. Did I enjoy cashing the checks and buying food? Absolutely.Did I use a pseudonym? You betcha.As soon as I could, I stopped writing those things, not because I Have a moral objection, but because it's boring. ... Read More

While I’m waiting for my first novel, THE UNWELCOME CHILD, to be published this December, I have begun writing a second novel that has a somewhat autobiographical plot line. It’s about an ex-professional dancer who teaches Pilates in New York, and returns to the Midwest to take care of her critically-ill mother. Stranded in her childhood home, she makes a discovery that compels her to find out whatever happened to an older sister who, ostracized from the family at nineteen, was never ... Read More

-- Jeffrey ThomasThe first signs of Halloween manifest themselves long before the last day of October, even before autumn has actually begun. Candy and costumes, decorations and other paraphernalia prematurely line the shelves of stores, more out of anticipation of money to be made than of the holiday’s mystical pleasures. But as the days shuffle on and the nights grow progressively cooler, the atmosphere thickens like a gathering fog. It’s a fog still imbued with magic, these many years since I was ... Read More

For the first time since Storytellers Unplugged went live, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to get my essay (23rd of every month) finished in time. After last month’s lament on trollish online behavior, I promised to write something about writing, but in a month’s time, I haven’t been able to find anything I feel confident writing about. Lately I’ve been feeling a lot less confident about wearing the title Writer. I know I have it pretty ... Read More

By Michael LaimoOkay, I write horror, some pretty nasty, sick, vile, stuff too. I like my horror that way. The wetter, the better. But it’s all MAKE BELIEVE folks, I’m not really like that. I don’t go around with pickaxes gouging out the eyes of puppy dogs. I don’t have a demon throne in my cellar. I don’t eat entrails for dinner.I don’t do anything I write about in my books…except argue with my wife, perhaps. But that’s something else altogether.So, why ... Read More

by Jeff MariotteWe sit at home, or on airplanes, at work, God forbid at Starbuck’s—if we’re Ernest Hemingway, we stand naked at a podium, but how many of us, really, are Hemingway, and if you are then lock up the damn shotgun. We clack away at keyboards or we scribble in wirebound notebooks or we pierce our veins with penpoints and scrawl on scraps of human flesh. However we go about the process, we write.And the purpose of writing is ... Read More

by Brian Keene(Note: This month, by popular request from you, the readers, I'd intended to write an essay about how to write full-time. However, since I write full-time, deadlines got in the way. So look for that next month. Meanwhile, the following reprint was originally published earlier this year at Hail Saten and also appears in Running With The Devil. If you haven't read it before, I hope that you enjoy it.)The publisher is the pimp.The bookstore is the corner.The reader is ... Read More