Storytellersunplugged

I’m sitting here at my desk in the study, a well-stoked fire roaring in the fireplace beside me. Outside, the wind is blowing steadily and the sun, while bright, doesn’t seem all that warm. It is 9:15 in the morning and the thermometer on the wall near the sliding glass doors to the deck says its 28 degrees outside.   Did I mention I live in Phoenix, Arizona?   As our brother Mort might say, “What the Fzck?”   But I digress.   I’m ... Read More

  "In the late 21st century, when something alien is discovered beyond the edge of the solar system, the spaceship Theseus sets out to make contact. Led by an enigmatic AI and a genetically engineered vampire, the crew includes a biologist who's more machine than human, a linguist with surgically induced multiple personality disorder, a professional soldier who's a pacifist, and Siri Keeton, a man with only half a brain."     My Christmas gift to all of you.   I discovered author Peter Watts a few ... Read More

(It is an odd fact of my writing career that it takes me longer to write a short story than it does to write a novel. Possibly even two novels. So in order for me to have written something original for our October story month, I probably would have needed to get started on it before the idea for this blog ever came to me. Sadly, I'm not that prescient. So instead I offer you something appropriately Halloweenish ... Read More

Last month I started telling you about my recent leap of faith off of a very large cliff. I was searching for my passion, trying to rekindle that desire to write that had launched my career four years earlier. I had discovered that my typical day was extremely lopsided, that the very thing I had been so passionate about was the thing that got the least of my time and attention during the day. And that let me know why my ... Read More

A few months ago, I awoke one morning and realized that my passion for writing had all but disappeared. Instead of sitting down at my desk full of enthusiasm for the work before me, I was dreading the time at the keyboard. I wanted to do anything but write. Mow the lawn. Repaint the house. Clean the carpet, individual strand by individual strand. Anything really, so long as I didn’t have to sit down at ... Read More

by Joe Nassise Last month I began telling you about how my novel HERETIC went from mass market paperback original to soon-to-be released comic book mini-series. When we left off, I had just created a pitch book containing a sample script and several pages of full color comic art and had flown to San Diego for a whirlwind day of meeting with several editors from different comic companies at the San Diego Comic Con. So what did my initiative get ... Read More

by Joe Nassise Last night the formal announcement was made via press release that Markosia Comics in the UK had acquired the rights to adapt my novel HERETIC into a six issue comic mini-series. As I’ve always been a big comic book lover, this was very exciting news for me (and something that I’ve just been dying to tell people about for the last few months as we worked through the contract details) and I’m psyched that it’s come to fruition. ... Read More

A few weeks ago Fortune Magazine ran this really cool series of articles under the heading “How I Work.” They interviewed major business moguls (like Bill Gates) and asked how they handled a variety of common business needs/activities. I found the series rather interesting and as the type of writer who always enjoys comparing notes with others, I thought it might be worthwhile to bring the idea over here and see how other writers approach some of the basic tasks ... Read More

    Six weeks ago, I started podcasting the entire text of my most recent novel, HERETIC: Book One of the Templar Chronicles. I’ve had quite a few of my beliefs regarding podcasting confirmed since then and I thought I’d share them with you today as the first update to my podcasting venture. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, podcasting is a blanket term used to describe a collection of technologies for automatically distributing audio and video programs over the internet ... Read More

    I’m closing in on the end of my latest novel and as always during this stage, I’ve begun to think about the editing process in earnest. When I first started out I would edit each piece of work as I went along. This was both time consuming and frustrating. My creative side was pushing to move ahead while the editor in me wanted to fix every single paragraph until it was just right. By the time that happened, ... Read More