Suspend Your Disbelief

Archive for 2009

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ERN/Rock Bottom best band name contest!

by Anne Stameshkin

FWR contributor (and original Long Winters drummer) Michael Shilling’s debut novel Rock Bottom, an account of a band’s final tour, is publishing on January 9, and the Emerging Writers Network is sponsoring a very fun contest in its honor: Come up with the best imaginary band name you can think of and post it by midnight on January 14 here; there’s a limit of three entires per person, and Michael’s the judge. The reward is a free copy of Rock Bottom. Coming soon…an interview with the author on FWR.


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the wovel

by Anne Stameshkin

Editor/publisher Victoria Blake (Underland Press), along with programmer Jesse Pollack, is the force behind a new literary form: the online serial novel, or wovel; NPR describes it as “Choose your Own Adventure meets Wikipedia.” A self-confessed blog addict who loves reading frequently-updated online content, Blake thought it would be great to have opportunities to read literature online in a serial form, a la Dickens (and more recently Chabon), and to have that experience be interactive. Here is Underland’s official description of the wovel (from their website): Every week, the author posts an installment. Installment length hits the sweet-spot of online […]


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How Fiction Works Discussion Review: Free Indirect Style

by Anne Stameshkin

I’ve been trying to read Muriel Barbery’s critically acclaimed novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and while I’m relishing many of the author’s ideas, they feel to me like just that–the author’s ideas, not ones that belong to the book’s characters; a wealthy pre-teen and middle-aged concierge spend at least the first section of Hedgehog (I’m on p. 114) hiding their gifted selves from everyone they know while sharing them, mostly in monologue/journaling style, with us. Their use of language is almost identical, as is their attitude toward (and analysis of) the world around them. So much of the book […]


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can you read like a girl?

by Anne Stameshkin

On Preeta’s recommendation, here’s a great article from a mother who wishes she could still “read like a girl.” Do others (boys, too…this shouldn’t be so gendered) feel this way, that you can no longer really lose yourself in a book? I’d agree that it’s harder now, and that it depends on what you’re reading and the number of distractions in your life and whether or not you are officially enrolled in an MFA program at the time…but me, I can still read like a girl. What I can’t do, what I often long to do, is to write like […]




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