Storytellersunplugged

Photo by Hryckowian I’m in the midst of teaching an online workshop called Jump Start Your Novel, which focuses on the methods I use to organize a project so that I can write the most powerful novel possible in a reasonable time frame. In the workshop we’ve been talking a bit about characters, so I thought I’d share some thoughts on that subject today. Characters are the heart of any story. A reader wants to be transported out of their daily existence to another ... Read More

by Matteo Curtoni Yeah, I really thought I would. Dammit, I was *sure* I would. I fell in love with the story from day one and there was no reason in Heaven or Hell why I shouldn’t stick to it, write the whole bloody thing and deliver to my publisher precisely what I had planned to deliver. But that’s not gonna happen. Sure, I’ll deliver my novel sometime before the end of July but it won’t be pre-cisely the novel I had planned ... Read More

With my first Rogue Angel novel, THE LOST TOMB, due in just a few days, I haven't had time to put together a column for this month. Instead, I'm going to share one of the few short fiction pieces I've done during my career. (It takes my longer to write a short story than it does a novel, so I don't do all that many of them.) "Roadside Memorials" was written for the Roc anthology, LOST ON THE DARKSIDE, which came ... Read More

by John B. Rosenman Before we begin, here are two quotes from an article that presents the whole subject of book reviews from a somber perspective. Newspaper book reviews don’t make money.  Ever.  Anywhere.  And they are dying like polar bears in the Artic. . . . Publishers don’t appear to believe that newspaper ads can sell books.  Well, not ads in book review sections, which studies have found to be the least-read section of the Sunday newspaper.        – Steve Carper, “Writer’s Bloc – The ... Read More

On any given day I’m writing for pay. Gotta do it. Got bills. ‘Tis me job, and I do love it. I might be working on a novel, a short story, a poem or two, a radio play, a comic book, an article, a chapter for a history textbook, you name it. Most of my work falls in the horror/fantastic realm, though some does not. (History can be classified horror, though, if you really look at some of the shit that went ... Read More

John B. Rosenman By the way, check out my interview which will be posted early this morning at the following site: http://www.apenandfire.com/?p=466 [This is a paper that I read at a conference on Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror several years ago at Norfolk State University.] Science fiction, fantasy, and horror are like love and good sex. Most of us assume we know what these terms mean, but when we try to formulate mutually acceptable definitions and reach a shared understanding, we are likely to find ourselves hopelessly divided. Many ... Read More

Bev Vincent  Get the podcast - or Subscrbe in iTunes When I was a kid, the National Film Board of Canada ran short documentary vignettes between TV shows. One that I remember vividly was about Christopher Columbus’s expedition to the New World. The film was stop-motion with ships rocking up and down on conspicuously fake waves. The line that stands out in my mind explained how long the journey lasted and how some people were getting impatient. “The days passed. The nights passed. ... Read More