Writer Unboxed

For those readers who have been following the story of Emmy Cherry, the 10-year old girl killed when a tornado ripped through her Arkansas home, Lynn Wiman, owner of Vintage Books, the bookstore where Emmy spent much of her time, sent us the link to the fund established in her name:
BRIGHTSPIRIT RELIEF FUND
Emmy, a fan […]

 
I’m blogging from an undisclosed location to let y’all know that Therese and I are at our annual writer’s retreat.  Monday is my day to post, but I’ll be late because I’ll be deep in re-entry mode from our three-day marathon writing session.  I’ll tell you all about it when I get a chance.
I  know.  […]

Today’s guest blogger is our friend Eric, who blogs at one of our fave sites, Quantum Storytelling. Enjoy!
I give myself one hour to write a scene. Sometimes I can write two, maybe even three scenes in an hour if I’m really on fire. But I only ever expect myself to be able to write one. […]

This deserves to be posted immediately. Sooner than immediately, actually, which is why I posted it now but earlier than now so as not to bump poor Billy Mernit off the top spot. Confused? No matter. Watch the video and get a laugh.
Wildly Popular ‘Iron Man’ Trailer To Be Adapted Into Full-Length Film
Happy weekend, everyone!

A while back, Teri asked if I would revisit my article on “Story as River” for Writer Unboxed. This is it as it will now appear in my forthcoming book, “Jump-start Your Novel with Kitty-cats in Action,” which is based on articles and edits from my blog, Flogging the Quill.
A tale of two stories:
Enticed by […]

We’ve been getting a spike in traffic and some e-mails of concern about me. Please let me assure everyone that I’m alive and kicking. I’d had a vague notion that there was another Kathleen Bolton out there somewhere (you run across odder things when you Google your own name, you know?). And […]

You know how you start Googling something and you end up in a completely different place on the Intertubes than where you originally wanted to go?
I don’t know how I landed HERE, but I’ve just spent a delightful afternoon reading What if the Lord of the Rings was written by Someone Else? (I gotta talk […]

Continuing our examination of how the world of publishing is awakening to the power of the Intertubes (sorry, couldn’t resist), big daddy publishers have now come to terms with the fact that cyberspace is here to stay. Not only that, they are experimenting with ways to market and sell books online to harness the […]

Today you’ll have the chance to read another great interview, this time with UK author Katie Fforde!
Why so many interviews this week? you might ask. Sometimes we slot interviews for a week and then–because of great responses that lead to a slew of follow-up questions–they turn into 2- or 3-weekers. This is exactly what’s […]

Those of us hoping New Line’s movie version of The Hobbit would proceed now that its dispute with filmmaker Peter Jackson is resolved have taken another blow.  New Line is now being sued by JRR Tolkien’s heirs (NYT, free subscription required):
Following in the footsteps of Peter Jackson, the director of the Oscar-winning “Lord of the Rings” […]

Pardon us while we take a moment to squee. But we’ve reached a milestone at Writer Unboxed. Today WU turns two!
I clearly remember the birth of Writer Unboxed. Therese and I are writers by trade, but aspiring novelists by vocation. We’d been kicking around the idea of unboxed fiction for a […]

My grammatical pet peeves are legion, and I’ve blogged about many of them here before (like my legendary hatred of adverbs or the Florid Verb), but none sets me off as much as the overuse of “quotation marks”.
Why? Why do people “do that” to their writing?
Even more annoying, why do people “wiggle” the first […]