Storytellersunplugged

My mother liked to get things done and hated to impose on anyone. This may be why she never made it to the maternity ward and birthed me in the lobby of a hospital. It was the first of many surprise entrances through the wrong door at the wrong time of life that have dogged me ever since. Now you might think that bad timing would be fatal to a writer or to anyone reaching for high stakes against long odds, and ... Read More

Most writers who have been in the biz for a while and have scored some decent sales to decent publishers that resulted in decent books will be asked by those who want to join the game, “How do you get published?” It’s inevitable. It’s also a fair question, because those who don’t know want to know, and who better to ask than those who supposedly DO know? And sharing information does not lessen another’s success. But herein lies a myth. Those of ... 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

Stop me before I kill again. I’m going to do it, yes, I am, I’m really going to do it. Going to write about another obscure topic so ephemeral that I don’t know if I can pull it off. You may have noticed that I shy away from the easy stuff – practical stuff with practical answers. Not that those things aren’t invaluable – they are – but all the sane and successful writers in this blog do an admirable ... Read More

My first word was “Boo!” and I’ve loved surprises ever since.  I want to discover things.  Refine that, I want to discover hidden things, things that have meaning.  I want there to be more than five senses can take in.  Five senses are standard issue.  Most critters with fin, skin, fur or feathers have them, often with a superior specialty.  Jack rabbits out-hear me.  Eagles out-see me.  I’m tied with the koala bear.  But word has it that heart, mind and soul ... 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

Have you ever noticed that the outcomes to life’s most successful quests can’t really be foreseen in detail?  If it’s an initiative that your heart is truly into, then whatever concept you have of success ahead of time, the outcome ends up exceeding it.  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”  But starting out all you can see are the complexities and the problems up front.  The solutions build stroke by stroke like a painting taking on shape and color.  In the ... Read More

There are people who can’t help but be different, and people who choose to be different, and people who live in fear of being different. If you’re a writer, that third category is a killer. In fact, it’s a killer for just about anything that isn’t sedentary, unimaginative or uninspiring. I’m writing about ways of thinking, of course, and let me just call that fear category S3S for Stage 3 Suffocation. Excitement and discovery don’t happen much by ... Read More

Here at Storytellers Unplugged we started a semi-traditional practice last year of posting fiction during October to celebrate Halloween. When we started out, there was a predominance of horror writers in the group - we are much more diverse now. Some of us will still be posting fiction this month, and for my own entry I've chosen a very old story of mine. It was written for and published in a fanzine titled "Norfolk by Night," and it's a ... Read More