Storytellersunplugged

2008: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
2007: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
2006: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
2005: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

October 2008

Under a Cabbage Leaf (where stories come from)
A BALLAD OF STRANGE MEAT
The Lost Mothers
What to Expect if You're Expecting
Steve & Melanie Tem: SHOCKING READS

September 2008

When You Are Engulfed in Flames - Some Thoughts...
Yes, you CAN...
Choose Your Own Adventure
Young Industry My Sweet Patootie, You Goldurn Whippersnappers
Writing on the Edge - The Fiction Valence Coefficient
A Pause For Art
So how DO I get an agent?
Professional Discourtesy
Defying Gravity
The Season of the Pitch
A Room of Her Own Should Not Be Near The Mall
FORENSICS 113: OUCHES, LARGE AND SMALL (Part 2)
Goliath
A story's intent
Thomas Sullivan: THE MYSTIQUE & THE MISTAKE AT CROSSLAKE or GLENN FREY & SULLY ON CREATIVITY Part 2
The Writer's Toolbox - Dropbox
Romance Rules!
Tempus Fugit
Glass Houses (and a helping of crow)
KNOWING YOUR MARKET
My Heroes
I Don’t Care If He Is 6’9,” I Think I Can Take Him
THE FORMULA
Your genius (sung or otherwise)
An Ambivalent Defense of the Dark
Beating Hearts and Electric Bills
Melanie & Steve Tem: INVITING THE READER IN

August 2008

Vote for Storytellersunplugged as your Favorite Writing Blog!
It's magic
Things I know about writing on August 29, 2008
Into My Own Hands
How to Write a Bad Book Review In Twelve Easy Steps
A Burning Forehead, And A Parching Tongue
Screenwriting 101
Vacation, All I Ever Wanted
Hold Out for Your Cup of Stars, Thank You Shirley Jackson
FORENSICS 112: OUCHES, LARGE AND SMALL (Part 1)
Soooey—Oink!
Publishing . . . and publishing well
THOMAS SULLIVAN: FLAMINGO FRANK
The Figure in the Carpet
Shy writers and crunchy numbers
Pet Peeves and a brief sermon from the soap box
The Big Con
The Hack With 2 Backs
Exactly Like Us, Only Completely Different
YOU'VE GOT TO READ THIS! Mort Castle
I'm here to sell you something.
HIGHBROW, LOWBROW, GENRE, SHMENRE
Intimacy
God and the Art of Skull-Skipping
Steve & Melanie Tem: THE GENRE THING

July 2008

Art vs. art - A Glance into The Alchemy of Butterflies
The King of Bad Days
“Write what you know” – Lesson 2: Say It With Flowers
The Ghosts Below 32nd Street
What The Nuns Didn't Teach Me
Inspiring
What's your premise?
First Readers
Rick's Place: Life Extant
Rugs Yanked by Phone
Some Thoughts on Talent (and Such)
FORENSICS 111: EYEWITNESS UNRELIABILITY
Story-Tell-‘er!
Roots
Thomas Sullivan: CROSS LAKE, GLENN FREY & BREATHING THE SKY
Characters - The Heart of Any Story
Promotion, PROmotion, PROMOTION
More on Getting Your Books into Libraries
Getting to the Finish Line
Out Of Sight...
Love's Secret Domain
Desperado Is As Desperado Does
Mort's 62nd--Happy Birthday to Me
Think about what you're doing, not about how you're doing it.
DID YOU *REALLY* THINK THAT YOU’D STICK TO YOUR SYNOPSIS?
JOY FOR JOY’S SAKE
Advice. Huh! What it Good For?
Writing as a Get-Rich-Quick Scheme
MELANIE & STEVE TEM: SELLING YOURSELF

June 2008

When It's One of Those Days, Take Notes
Our little, big world
On the Vile Habit of Thinking Too Much
MY EMPIRE OF DIRT
L.A. Writing Stories – A Traveler’s Tales
Go To Come Back
The Genre Dilemma
A Picture is Worth 80,000 Words
Writing (Programs) for Comics
How To Sell A Book That Doesn’t Exist
FORENSICS 110: LEGALITY MATTERS
Superstitions
The Suspense is Killing Me
THOMAS SULLIVAN: FROG SEX OR JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS
Free Fiction - "Roadside Memorials"
The 'Old In and Out': How to Review Short Fiction
Book Promotion: Part 2
Friends, Peers and Professionalism
Warning: Smoking May Be Hazardous
Genius Loci (Part 1?)
Eating My Words, One Bookful At A Time
THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF DOUGHBOY
In it up to your elbows.
The Key-Lime Pie Effect
I TRIED TO ESCAPE, BUT IT DIDN’T WORK, AND NOW I’M DYING 101
Frames
Unlikely Enemies

May 2008

Introductions, Sides, and the Most Important Words You Write
Brain Lightning
Call of the wild
Evil Happy Smiley Face Man
Upon Further Reviews
Book Promotion: Part 1
Maybe Some Day I’ll Write A Nice Western - Redux
"Step Right Up, Ladies and Germs, and Witness for Yourself the Wonder of the Self-Promoting Writer!"
Necessary Distance
Forensics 109: Questioned Document Examination
GETTING DOWN TO THE NUB
Let Me Be Brief -- by Bev Vincent
THOMAS SULLIVAN: STRIVING FOR IMPERFECTION
My Left Foot
Charity, hope and faith
Magic For Beginners
My Mom, Your Mom & The Horror Of Horror
Seasons Of Fire, Seasons Of Ice
GONE WITH THE WIND AND OTHER WORDS OF WISDOM --- Mort Castle
Can I get there by Candlelight?
Ravenous
Filters
I Got Me an Award!
Scenes

April 2008

Solving the Perfect Crime, Backward, to My Opening Line
I've looked at clouds from both sides now
In which I explain the inner workings of my mind with the cunning use of puppets
WHO STALKS THE STALKERS?
Y'all Comes Back Now, You Hear?
EARLY MOTHER'S DAY FICTION
And now for something completely different (Romantic Times)
Nesting
GREAT WRITER MYTHS # 1: If the Editor Says Your Story Sucks, He’s Really Impressed
Conventions and You
Something to Twitter About
FORENSICS 108: COMPARISONS
Seeing Red!
Why write short stories?
THOMAS SULLIVAN: PRIME BLOOPERS, THE GREATEST ROMANCE OF ALL TIME, AND THE SEEDS OF SLEEPING RAINBOWS
The Writer's Toolbox - Evernote
Rick’s Place: Writing On Empty
THIS MONTH AT THE GONGUIN TABLE: A TASTE, A TOAST, AND A TEST
I don't think it ever gets finished
There's Gold In Them Thar Bookshelves
Scare Me... Exactly Like This
“He Slapped The Bitch To Orgasm,” And Other Ingratiation Faux Pas
To: JERRY WILLIAMSON IN SPRINGTIME
When the other shoe bonks you on the head
From Zero to Hero
DANGER! NOW ENTERING DEADLINE ZONE!
Folklore and Legends, Urban and Otherwise
Eat Your Heart Out
Sweet Surrender

March 2008

When It Rains, It Pours: How David Got His Groove Back
The Storytellers Unplugged Guide To Sex (Or Gender): Part Two
The Skeleton Eater
Singin' the midlist blues
How to Hack the System
ICEBERG MEMORIES
In Memory Yet Black and Twisted
Go To Come Back: Journal of a Caribbean Eaveswatcher
Reckoning up the Luck
Crossing Genres, Part One (Left Coast Crime)
The Little Green Monster
THE STORYTELLERS UNPLUGGED GUIDE TO SEX (or gender)
Writing of All Sorts
FORENSICS 107: NAME YOUR POISON
Booster Bust
The sketch artist
THOMAS SULLIVAN: SWALLOWING CHOCOLATE-CHIP FRISBEES, CHARLIE BROWN, & THE ONLY BUS OUT OF TOWN
Beginnings - Part Two
Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror: What Are They?
The Gonquin Table: Beware the ides of March
Small Virtues
Sales Figuring
Naming All Your Babies
A Crockwork Green. No, Black. No, Wait—
You realize, of course, that this means war.
THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE WRITER
“EXCUSE ME, BUT I THINK THAT YOUR ‘MAGIC IDEA BOX’ IS LEAKING!”
The Business of Writing
The Lonely Web We Weave
A Short Field Trip
Hickory Nuts and Bones - the Past Comes to Life

February 2008

T-minus . . .
I NAME THEE SIR BRYLCREEM
Our Writing Is Not Of Your World
Remembering Radio
What is best in life?
What Dreams May Come
On Failing
Where There Are No Rules . . .
Mutating Novelizations
HELLO DEMONIC STRANGER
FACTS IN FICTION
I Know You!
The Days Passed, the Nights Passed
THOMAS SULLIVAN: XANADU AND WALLS OF MIST
Beginnings Part One
Never Kill Your Child -- or Bury Your Past
The Gonquin Table: All You Need Is Love
Pickled Flies
This Is Your Brain On.
A Scenic Harvest From The Kingdom Of Pain
Defiant Gestures From The Top Of The Ice Floe
I don't know, is what I say
Teacher, my brain is empty.
TO THINE OWN NAKED ASS BE TRUE
On the Slushiness of Slush
The Bed and the Bathroom (revisited)
Pre-Fab Paper Footballs and the Impending Death of Childhood Creativity

January 2008

Ground Your Lightning Rod When Inspiration Strikes
"Write what you know" - lesson 1
Fictional Lives – Up and down like the Assyrian Empire
The Liar's Diary Blog Day..
If this ferments long enough, it may become a story.
TAKING WHAT THEY'RE GIVING
It Never Stops
Giving Testimony
The Stuff of Power
So you want to know about screenwriting?
I've heard it all before
But I Don’t Know Any Koalas?!
Geeks of All Stripes
After The Contract: A Manuscript Grows up
THE CREATURE
The Secret Is In The Spit
You won’t believe what happened next
THOMAS SULLIVAN: FIVE SENSES PLUS OR “WHAT WAS THAT YOU SAID, GOD?”
Middles
Help – My Setting is Vanishing!
The Gonquin Table: Resolutions
Looking back over the last year
Burying Hatchets
Show & Tell
The Right And The Wrong Of It (So Far) – Part 2 Of 2
Blocks and Blockbusting
It’s January In The World
MAKING NEW FRIENDS FOR YOUR IMAGINARY FRIENDS
Rejections, Reviews and Other Dubious Reactions
Get It In Writing
Layering Fiction - A Genre Fiction Burden

December 2007

New Year's Wresolutions
Wanting, Becoming, Being
... revisions which a minute will reverse.
ALTERED FATES
The Forecast Calls for Firefly Rain
Gifts
A Very Merry Solstice
Random Humbugs To Round Off The Year
The Dark Night Of The Soul
Negotiations
LASTING IMPRESSIONS
My First Fan Whoop--and Haunt Pics
The Company We Keep: Guilt By Association
THOMAS SULLIVAN: DREAMING DREAMS YOU NEVER DARED TO DREAM BEFORE, THE X FACTOR, AND KEEPING THE FAITH
Publishing = Blood Sport
The Right And The Wrong Of It (So Far) – Part 1 Of 2
The Gonquin Table: Recycled Gifts
RSS Feeds Fixed!
Complications
Opening Pandora's Box
The Heartbreak of Battered Writer Syndrome
How To Get Published Online
LANGUAGE -- By Lingoist Mort Castle
on writing... groups.
KILLING PEOPLE 101
Secrets
Honey Kitties RIP Redux

November 2007

The Embarass - Do You Remember?
Let me introduce myself - briefly...
The Wicked Witch: On Writing
Of Scullery Boys and Kings
ALTER EGOS
Tonight, I Am Frankenstein
Perchance to Scream
Why We Strike
Writer Beware
For These, My Thanks
The Working Writer's Dilemma
Chasing Scott
Creepy Crawlies
For Love or Money
THOMAS SULLIVAN: STAGE 3 SUFFOCATION & THE GODS OF CHROME AND NEON
Essential Organization
Help, Chaucer is Screaming in His Grave!
The Gonquin: Between The Lines
The Anatomy of a Scene
WHC Is Bleeding
In Praise of the Deplorable
STORYTELLERS UNPLUGGED -- MORT THE EDITOR
clinging
Collaborating: Gatsby in the Time of Hitler
THE HORROR WRITER AS MUSHROOM HUNTER: A LITERARY PISS-TRIP
Some More Thoughts on Revision
Repeat After Me: “I (You) Don’t (Don’t) Write (Write) Mysteries (Mysteries)”

October 2007

Planning is Not My Forte & Other Obvious Facts
Phase
Requiem for Prey
The Long, The Short, and The Ugly
For The Autumn Queen, Where She Rests Among The Fallen
Aftermath
Russian Sojourn (triteness personified, eh?)
The Ghost Who Loved Books
On Being Not Too Bright
Six Six Six
THAT’S HARDLY POSSIBLE
Autopsy of the Mind
Harming Obsession
THOMAS SULLIVAN: COMPETITION AND OTHER WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
Storytellersunplugged Version 2.0
Trick or Treat
The Gonquin Table: October Surprise …
Curse them, bless them
Swimming with sharks
Extract
Metaphors
STORYTELLERS UNPLUGGED
From Goal to Story
EASY COME, EASY GO
On The Importance of Revising - A Horror Story
The Blank Look
Glimpses of Horror

September 2007

Miracles in the Night
What Not To Do With Writer's Block
The Greater Good
Your Manuscript Was A Hamster, And Your Editor Smelled of Elderberries
Caveat Author
Zeus's Nod
ROLE MODELS
Mind vs. Movies – A Clockwork Orange
The Conclusions Of Passion
The Sharpening of Deadlines
ANNOUNCING THE KARL EDWARD WAGNER REDISCOVERY AWARD
In a Word
It's hard to tell the truth
THOMAS SULLIVAN: CONFESSIONS FROM THE BULLY PULPIT OR HOW TO GET NAKED IN FRONT OF AN AUDIENCE AND NOT BE NOTICED
Thoughts from the Audience
An Ending is Just a Beginning
The Gonquin Table: Dime A Dozen
Never tell me the odds, or The Doom Criers, Nay Sayers and a little faith.
The Three Letter "Four Letter Word"
The Other Final Frontier
A PERFECT STORY
I would make more money if I wrote something different.
QUEENS AND ODDBALL BISHOPS
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!!!
Perspectives
Scare the Hell Outta Me, Why Don't Ya?
Switching Horses to Prevent a Sore Butt

August 2007

The First Church of Words and Starry Wisdom is In Session
MORE FORENSIC DETAILS
Five Things I Know About World-Building
Night Of The Two Moons
Your Story Is Ugly, And Your Mother Dresses Your Manuscript Funny
What Is A Memoir?
On Waiting
Layers, Cells, & Constellations
The Big Con
This Is Not The Essay: further thoughts on matters of perspective
Age of Aquari-Funk….
Are critique groups worthwhile?
THOMAS SULLIVAN: 24-HOUR INSECTS, DUSTY DREAMS & ETERNAL ISLANDS
Numbers, numbers, and more numbers
John and Jane Buy Themselves a New Car
The Gonquin Table: By the light of the silvery moon …
On “Hating your readers” and other foolish notions.
The Rest of the Signing
Untangling The Webs
The Two Whammies
Passion and the single blogger
MACRO-LENS AND MICRO-GNOSIS
What It Feels Like
When Things Get Dark
Resurrecting the Dead

July 2007

The Myth Pool and a Draught of Perspective
Details
HE'S A (BLANK) WRITER
(Thinking about) Thinking about Writing
TAKE THIS JOB AND...
Where Part of a Story Might Come From
Defining Moments
Two Books To Read . . . and Re-read
Garden of Unearthly Delights
Explain Yourself - or Bikini Waxing Your Way to Fame and Fortune
THE HYPOCRITE’S OATH?
Write Here, Write Now
A Matter of Perspective
Cursed?
Why go to conventions?
THOMAS SULLIVAN: 3-LEGGED STALLIONS HOPPING TOWARD HOPE BETWEEN THE GARDEN AND THE VACUUM
Characters: The Heart of Your Story
A Fresh Eye and a New Nose
The Gonquin Table: As time goes by…
Teach you something?
Touching the Puppet Head
In Praise of Concrete and Rebar
WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOW?
The Syllogistic vs. the Situational
HEY, LOOK! YER BOOK IS ON YOUTUBE!
Endings
Tight Squeeze, Cool Breeze

June 2007

Channeling John Hancock
THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL
Deadline on the horizon
OLD HAUNTS
The Blogging of the Proofs
Down Library Lane
Two Nuggets
Marching Grimly Forward, Looking Straight AheadOrThe Lost Art of Cloud-Gazing
God's Megaphone
Bursting to Write
The Rules of Chaos: Leaving Your Outline in Order To Find It
Marching Grimly Forward, Looking Straight AheadOrThe Lost Art of Cloud-Gazing
So Long
When Stereotypes Are in Stereo
Pushing the Rope
THOMAS SULLIVAN: KILLING FLEAS & THE FACE ON THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR
Editorial Input
Happy Endings or Sad: When, if Ever, is Poor Writing Good?
The Gonquin Table: The stuff that themes are made of …
Saying Goodbye to Shocklines
Selling Your Children
Killing Your Parents, One Way Or Another