Suspend Your Disbelief

Shop Talk

New Skiff, likely to include the ads

by Lee Thomas

We’ve all known it’s coming, but it seems it is now just a matter of time before ads start showing up in e-readers of all stripes. The Hearst corporation’s “Skiff,” an e-reader they plan to debut at the Consumer Electronics Show (Jan 7 – 10, 2011). Website eReader Chat is skeptical about the viability of the Skiff taking off in an already crowded e-reader marketplace, but notes: Just about the only thing about the Skiff that really strikes me as intriguing is the partnership they’ve inked with Nielsen and comScore to handle advertising analytics for the device. Presumably, they’ll be […]


Book of the Week: Elegies for the Brokenhearted, by Christie Hodgen

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Each week we give away several free copies of a featured novel or story collection as part of our Book-of-the-Week program. Last week we featured Graham Moore’s The Sherlockian, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: John Horniblow, Maggie Hess, and David Littlejohn. Congratulations! Each will receive a copy of this new novel. This week we’re featuring Elegies for the Brokenhearted, by Christie Hodgen. Published this year by W.W. Norton, Elegies is Hodgen’s third book. She is also the author of the novel Hello, I Must be Going, and the story collection A Jeweler’s Eye for Flaw, which won the […]


Copyrights, contracts, and clarity – oh my!

by Lee Thomas

Ever wonder how to read a contract? What an agent can do for your manuscript? How to protect the copyright or trademark of your work? These aren’t necessarily things you learn in a fiction workshop. If you live in the Boston area, Grub Street has an evening seminar designed to answer just these sorts of questions. Here’s the skinny: SEMINAR: Monday, January 10th, 6:30-9:30pm, Everything a Writer Needs to Know about the Law This course will provide writers at all stages in their career with a basic understanding of what they need to know about the law. Attorneys Jenny Milana […]


Beautiful Bindings

by Lee Thomas

As usual, my holiday shopping consisted of lots of hours lost in bookstores, just browsing around, and finding at least as many books that I wanted, as I did books for friends and family. Yep, I’m a bit of a one-trick pony on the gift front – the equivalent of an aunt who always gives hankies. Usually I’m on the hunt for specific things, so my head isn’t all that turned by covers, but this year I couldn’t help but notice the attention to aesthetics that many of the houses are putting into their bindings. Here are some favorites. Europa […]


Thursday morning candy: Narrative

by Lee Thomas

Family driving you to bunker down in the spare room with your laptop? Never fear! Narrative magazine’s Winter 2011 Issue is up. You can read a six word story by Sherman Alexie that will probably make you feel like your own family isn’t so nuts. You can read three prize-winning tales from Narrative‘s Spring Contest. Fiction, cartoons, poetry, nonfiction – a rich collage of storytelling, right there for the enjoying. I’ll stop rattling on, and let you get to it. Maybe the stories you read will provide some fodder for dinner-table discussion? You never know.


No flack from Chuck

by Lee Thomas

Anyone with a television set (by no means a given anymore) and network reception (ditto), has probably not escaped the fact that this is Oprah’s last season. Her most recent Book Club selection – announced during her show featuring Jonathan Franzen, post-controversy – were not one, but two novels by Charles Dickens. The Oprah Book Club paperback version combining A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations, clocks in at a whopping 848 pages (oh, the serial novelist!). Oprah has picked classics in the past, East of Eden, As I Lay Dying, and Anna Karenina have made the list. At […]


Book of the Week Giveaway: The Sherlockian, by Graham Moore

by Jeremiah Chamberlin

Each week we give away several free copies of a featured novel or story collection as part of our Book-of-the-Week program. Last week we featured the Winter 2011 Issue of Glimmer Train Stories, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Rose White, Kristin Pedroja, and Lowell Mick White. Congratulations! Each will receive a copy of this new issue, signed by the editors. This week we’re featuring Graham Moore’s The Sherlockian. Out this month from Twelve, the novel is based, in part, on a true story: In 2004, it was announced that the missing journal of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had […]


Sad Scribblers?

by Lee Thomas

GalleyCat reported a few weeks back that a piece in Health magazine listed writers on a list of 10 careers with high rates of depression. The original Health list says, of artists, entertainers and writers: These jobs can bring irregular paychecks, uncertain hours, and isolation. Creative people may also have higher rates of mood disorders; about 9% reported an episode of major depression in the previous year. This is by no means new territory, there’s long been a body of study around the artistic teperment and depression, including Kay Redfield Jamison’s article “Manic Depressive Illness and Creativity” from Scientific American […]


Safely Scared

by Lee Thomas

Over lunch with a friend a few weeks back, we discussed the qualities of enduring children’s literature. Almost simultaneously, we both lit upon the fairly common idea that children really, truly love to be frightened – not so different from their more mature counterparts. “Safely scared,” was how he put it, and I couldn’t agree more. December always puts me in mind of reading as a child, the early-dark nights, the cold driving us inside, reading Roald Dahl or Madeleine L’Engle or the Grimm brothers by flashlight. Traditional fairy tales are often far darker than our novelists dare – the […]


Thursday morning candy: failbetter.com

by Lee Thomas

failbetter.com has their Winter 2011 issue up and available. You can read fiction from Caren Beilin, Jimmy Chen, and Alexandra Chasin. Also featured: a story called “The Snowstorm as Romantic Accumulation,” written by Ryan Call and Christy Call, a brother and sister. The piece is an excerpt from their ongoing field guide to North American weather. I’m always intrigued by collaborations – especially in something as personal and finicky as fiction. The Calls’ approach to the story has several elements that draw me in: elemental musing, family, a dash of mystery. Their story begins: A snowstorm consists of an almost […]


The Story Behind Storyville

by Michael Rudin

Don’t call Paul Vidich the Mayor of Storyville. He prefers Matchmaker. That’s because Storyville is less about Vidich, its creator, than his application’s ambitious plan to “bring together writers and readers.” As you might imagine, Storyville is focused solely on the short story. Exclusive to owners of iPhones and iPads, the application promises to deliver one story every week, for which subscribers must pay $4.99 for a six-month subscription. In the end, this means Storyville’s residents will end up paying less than a quarter per story. Vidich promises they won’t be just any stories. The Storyville editorial team is focused […]


Book of the Week Giveaway: Glimmer Train–Winter 2011

by Anne Stameshkin

Each week we give away several free copies of a featured novel or story collection as part of our Book-of-the-Week program. Last week we featured Matt Bell’s How They Were Found, and we’re pleased to announce the winners: Joan Dempsey, Amy Hanridge, and Jarrid Deaton. Congratulations! Each will receive a copy of the book, signed by the author. This week we’re featuring the Winter 2011 Issue of Glimmer Train Stories. Editors (and sisters) Linda B. Swanson-Davies and Susan Burmeister-Brown have been editing the iconic literary journal for more than two decades. From its distinctive cover art to the longstanding tradition […]




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