Writer Unboxed

Sweat coated Athena’s upper lip.  She licked it, shuddered at the sensation, and knew the night would be a memorable one.  The blue Missoni dress clung to her body, the fabric matted on her curves like tissue paper.  The dress had been air-mailed by Ottavio Missoni himself, specifically for Athena to wear tonight…..
Athena stepped onto […]

Recently, on a writers’ board I frequent, someone posed the question, “Just how important is it to have other writer friends?” The question, in this day and age when so many of us are trapped behind our computers with little to no personal interaction with others, was a good one. And I was […]

WU contributor Sophie Masson’s latest release, the delightful Thomas Trew fantasy series for early readers, hits the bookstores March 13.   We asked Sophie to do a Take 5 interview to tell us about this latest project, and she agreed.  Enjoy!
Q:  What is the premise of your new book?
The books which are being released, simultaneously, are the last […]

I wish Donald Maass had revealed his exercise for making a bad guy spine-tinglingly good in our interview with him. Here’s what I do know: Bad guys with depth, who display relatable tendencies and characteristics, are more likely to affect us than will black-hatted, gun-toting baddies.
Why?
It’s a little like this picture. We recognize […]

This is how my backyard looked Sunday morning.
An ice storm rocked my area. Oh, it’s fun to live in the Northeast in winter. I didn’t realize the storm was happening until the power went out, which really messed up Movie Nite in our house. Luckily, we have a woodstove, and […]

In the publishing world, Jason Pinter has sat on both sides of the desk.  As an editor, first with Warner and Crown’s Three Rivers Press, then at St. Martin’s, Pinter saw his share of the good, the bad, and the ugly as far as submissions were concerned.  Pinter, however, wanted to write fiction–gritty, fast-paced urban novels.  He […]

Anyone who’s been following my occasional references to the work in progress may recall that last year I had the challenging experience of needing to change horses mid-race. The situation was complicated, but in a nutshell I had a two book contract with my Australian and UK publishers, and I had written four chapters of […]

On the 14th of February, I began a five-day drive from Minot, North Dakota to Austin, Texas.  I drove a 14-foot U Haul, loaded down with the sum total of my worldly life.  Apart from a couple of stops specifically designed for visiting people I love, my days were a chain of monotonously similar events, […]

A great blip from Wordsmith’s Word-A-Day:
William Strunk and E.B. White, in their highly-regarded book, The Elements of Style, say:
“Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.”
They have a point. Nouns and verbs work […]

This is a strange time for me, writing-wise, because I’m not plotting fresh text or even editing old stuff. I’m thick in the marketing stage of this game. Add to that, my Odyssey of the Mind team competes in FOUR days, so my time is limited. Yes, I’m courting some new story ideas, but it […]

It’s been awhile since I’ve read a book about the craft of writing (avoidance, or maybe something darker at work. Like laziness), but a writer friend allowed me to borrow a book she said she’d been chuckling over since she bought it: Pat Walsh’s 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published, […]

I read this in today’s Writer’s Almanac and had to share. Did you ever wonder how some of the big publishing houses began? Here’s the story of one of them:
It’s the birthday of the publisher Max Schuster, born in Kalusz, Austria (1897). He was working as the editor of a trade magazine when he met […]