Storytellersunplugged

Get the podcast - or Subscrbe in iTunes When I started writing in 1999 after a long hiatus, I didn’t plunge straight into a novel. That probably sounds logical, but some writers skip the short story and cut their teeth on books. John Grisham hasn’t written many short stories, for example. Some successful novelists claim they have trouble with the short form. For me, it was a no-brainer. I had written short stories in college, and I felt the need to exercise my ... Read More

When it rains, it pours. We've all heard that a million times, and though it's a generalization with no real basis in fact – it's also true that when things get overwhelming, they only seem to get crazier. This year has been that way for me, so I figured I'd take a day here, write a post and see if I could put it in perspective. For several years I had very little published…those were recent years. It happened ... Read More

The View from the XX Set by Justine Musk 1 Writing is seduction, when you think about it. Seduction is to get inside someone else’s view of things and reshape it to your own, to lead them in your chosen direction, to compel them until they are exactly where you want them, whether it’s in your story or in your bed. What writers and seducers have in common is a mindset that is empathetic enough to get into the skin, the head, of another ... Read More

I'm working on a piece for a publisher who has a particular liking for something I wrote in the past.  He asked me specifically to try and recapture what I did in that first piece...not the story itself, or the characters, but the style - and it set me on a short quest. The older piece was my novella, written for Cemetery Dance years ago, titled "Roll Them Bones."  In that work I was asked to emulate the styles of several authors popular ... Read More

Wayne Allen Sallee I had thought about calling this month’s entry “Butcher’s Raindance.” Sounds like a good story title, right? Even though I have no idea what it might be about...yet. Is it a ritual done by a serial killer, the dance being the way he sanitizes his crime scenes? Is it a song by an emo band (or whatever kind of music genre my oldest niece listens to these days), which, now that I’ve typed that, I realize ... Read More

First, I’d like to thank James Moore for covering my ass on the 23rd of last month. As always, his contribution was excellent. It’s pretty much a given that anything with Mr. Moore’s name on the byline will be good. If you haven’ had the opportunity to read one of his novels you’re denying yourself a treat. Of course I happen to think all of the essays you’ll find here are good. Storytellers Unplugged is a cornucopia of advice ... Read More

--Justine Musk So here’s the thing. I sat down yesterday to write my essay for this site. I had a topic. I had a sense of where the piece would start, where it would end up, and how it might go in-between. But when it came game-time, I realized: I got nuthin’. Could be I’m a bit burned-out – and maybe I could have essayed about that, except Elizabeth Bear already said everything I would want to say about that point in your ... Read More

Lord Byron wrote: But I hate things all fiction...there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric - and pure invention is but the talent of a liar. Most persons would agree that adding facts to a fictional novel, especially one that includes technical matters, can improve it on several levels. Obviously, facts can make stories more realistic. To readers who enjoy learning things, facts are manna. Readers who especially cherish them are those who can directly relate to ... Read More

I had a lot of ideas this month that I thought would make fabulous essays, but in the end, I settled on one that came to me while reading someone else's writing. It's important to be able to shift through the many hats of our craft, I think, author, editor and reader, and to grasp what is important to each. As a reader, I've come to classify genre fiction most judgmentally on one particular criterion. How real is it? I've mentioned ... Read More

-- A memory - first published in a very limited circulation book titled "Personal Demons" I found this doing some file cleanup, read it, and got lost in the memory all over again. Hope my buddy Randy forgives me...hope you find it of interest. ... Read More