BOOKSHELF
Windy City Sinners: A Magic Realism Crime Novel
“Windy City Sinners is a freewheeling, wry and whimsical novel about the deepest human feelings and questions.” Patrick T. Reardon (patricktreardon.com)
Tales of the Sacred Heart: A Novel
“In Tales of the Sacred Heart, the characters and their loopy humanity took me back to Confederacy of Dunces. A joy to read.” —Jon Anderson, Chicago Tribune
Anna & Otto: A Novel for Children
Anna & Otto is a 188-page novel for children — written as homage to two favorite books: ALICE IN WONDERLAND and THE WIZARD OF OZ.
LATEST NEWS
GOAL SETTING & WRITING TIPS
GOALS: Each January, I set writing goals for the year. In 2024, I set a goal to write one script per month. I finished the year with six screenplays and six TV pilots (while holding down a full-time job). As I wrote the scripts, I entered them in contests, mostly via Filmfreeway.com. I ended up […]
TRUE CRIME CREDITS — 30 PROJECTS TO DATE
Since 2014, I’ve worked on 30 True Crime projects for A+E, Discovery ID, NBC Universal, Oxygen, Peacock, Sundance, TV One, Vice, and The Weather Channel. Here’s a list, starting with the most recent projects. New True Crime Series, Season 1 (Development Producer), Oxygen Buried in the Backyard, Season 6 (Research Producer), Oxygen Face-to-Face with Scott […]
2026 WRITINGNEWS
01.10.26: My short story, “Maggie’s Beat,” is named a quarterfinalist in the 2026 Roadmap Writers/Everard Entertainment Competition. The semi-finalists will be announced on March 15, 2026. LOGLINE: After arresting a global pop sensation for DUI, a small-town cop must stand alone against a ruthless PR machine that destroys her career and weaponizes a rabid fanbase […]
RELATED PUBLICATIONS
My work has been featured or referenced in these books.
A 2,000-word excerpt from my novel Windy City Sinners appears in a slightly different form in the Chicago Quarterly Review (Vol. 17/2014).
Salt Sugar Fat by Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Moss — a work of investigative journalism about the food industry released by Random House — cites The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Cheese by Anne Bucher and Melanie Villines as source material. In an email, Moss says our book was “hugely helpful” in writing the #1 New York Times bestseller Salt Sugar Fat, which was named one of the best of 2014 by The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, Men’s Journal, MSN (U.K.), Kirkus Reviews, and Publishers Weekly, and received the James Beard Foundation Award for Writing and Literature.
Storytelling in Business by Janis Forman (Stanford Business Books) features excerpts from an interview where I discuss my experience writing The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Cheese for Kraft Foods.
Melanie Villines 