The Story Engine Blog

Staying inspired to write is hard enough at the best of times, and I find it only gets harder around the holidays. The time and energy you spend wi...

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people they need NaNoWriMo. Okay, that’s not quite fair. NaNoWriMo can be a transformative ...

I'm a writer, and I'm notoriously hard to buy gifts for. That goes double for holiday gifts. I'm pretty sure it comes with the writer lifestyle. Ev...

Okay, so around the time NaNoWriMo kicked off, I posed a bold question to the Internet on my Facebook page, and was greeted with equally bold answe...

The month of NaNoWriMo is upon us, and we’ve just reached the halfway point. In my experience, it’s also the point where a lot of writers get stuck...

I’m a big fan of NaNoWriMo. For the uninitiated, that's "National Novel Writing Month," when writers gear up to pound out 50,000 words of a novel t...

Horror often gets short shrift as a pop genre low on literary merit. That never fails to get my hackles up. Telling a good horror story requires an...

Horror is a genre that presses the buttons of human fear psychology to produce a profound response in the reader or audience. An important part of ...

In my last blog from the “How to Have Halloween at Home” series, I recommended hosting an online scary story circle as an alternative to going out ...

I’ve been on a mission to give people fun, spooky alternatives to going out on Halloween during COVID-19. So far, I’ve given my suggestions for hos...

Maybe you, like me, are bummed out that Halloween isn't going to be the same with COVID-19. But, just because you're staying home and avoiding the ...

I’m a big horror fan, and I'm bummed that Halloween isn't going to be the same this year with COVID-19. So I put my horror-loving brain to the task...