Writer Unboxed

Kathleen and Therese step in for a second to officially welcome Juliet Marillier to the forum. This is her first post.
The hummingbird is constantly in motion, a high energy creature, nervously darting from flower to flower, desperate to maintain enough nutrition to keep herself going at top speed. This flower, now this one, no, maybe […]

I finally joined the twenty-first century and got an I-Pod. Now I usually like to write in total silence, just my imagination and the clicking of the keypad, but a cool gadget like the I-Pod interfered with this habit.
I realize I risk dating myself here, but I’m an old California punk-rocker who cut her […]

Wanted:
A Few Good Authors.
Kath and I are always looking for new talent to interview for WU. If you’ve read an unboxed book lately and would like to see the author interviewed, let us know about it. You can comment here or email us at writerunboxed. Thanks in advance for your help!
Last week I tackled the […]

A powerful wizard endures a terrible rape; a catburgler robs the wrong person and is set on a dark path; both are fated to be bound by violence and blood ties.  And this was just the first 100 pages of Sarah Monette’s stunning fantasy debut novel MELUSINE.  I lost a weekend to Monette’s intricately plotted […]

Before I bring you your regularly scheduled blog post, I have some news. One of the most talented and original storytellers I’ve read, Juliet Marillier, will be joining Writer Unboxed as a monthly contributor. WUWUWU! Look for Juliet’s first post to appear on or about the first of March. (I’ll get her bio up at […]

Consumers are demanding folks, aren’t they? It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about books or movies or screenplays or television shows, either–they want and want and want.
Thank God.
This week I couldn’t resist pointing to the latest February sweeps effort by the writers of the hit TV series Grey’s Anatomy. If you watch the […]

Goodbye, Year of the Dog, and welcome to the Year of the Pig. Those born in Pig years will enjoy the best year of their lives. The rest of us, however . . . . At least that’s according to feng shui-ologists when they talk about the Year of the Pig. Good for Pigs, […]

Marsha’s recent post made me think some more about my reputation for unhappy endings. Am I like her, realistically and maturely aware that life is untidy and doesn’t have chapter endings the way stories do? Or do I have a cynicism about life that means everything leads at best in circles, and more often nowhere? […]

Vampires who crave the latest in fashion more than they do blood?  Dragons suffering from teen angst?  NYT bestselling author Mary Janice Davidson has made a career out of taking the most feared creatures of mythology and the underworld, and putting them smack in the middle of a hilarious yarn that has the reader laughing out loud.
Her fearless […]

Hi guys, thanks so much for having me here! This is my first post, so I thought I’d talk a bit about how I came up with the idea for The Department of Lost and Found because, I think, stumbling on and developing the right idea is half the battle when it comes to […]

I’m probably just one of hundreds of bloggers this week sounding off on the topic of the Dixie Chicks’ sweep of Sunday night’s Grammy Awards, winning all five categories in which they were nominated, including Song, Record, and Album of the Year. A subdued but visibly triumphant Natalie Maines remarked that people had voted with […]

As Therese posted yesterday, we have joined with our writer buds in one of our semi-regular Writing Challenges.  It goes like this: we challenge each other to meet a predetermined individual goal, for one week.  We e-mail our day’s results to the group, wherein we give each other boosts of motivation, pats on the back, or […]