Suspend Your Disbelief

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The Book Trailer Goes Mainstream?

by Celeste Ng

You know a phenomenon has reached critical mass when it appears in the New York Times. And recently, the New York Times discussed the growing necessity—and, more often than not, awkwardness— of the book trailer: But in the streaming video era, with the publishing industry under relentless threat, the trailer is fast becoming an essential component of online marketing. Asked to draw on often nonexistent acting skills, authors are holding forth for anything from 30 seconds to 6 minutes, frequently to the tune of stock guitar strumming, soulful violin or klezmer music. And now, those who once worried about no […]


Library Love

by Celeste Ng

Lots of love for libraries recently. First, The Old Spice Guy (yeah, that Old Spice Guy) hilariously celebrates libraries in his typical stream-of-consciousness, non-sequitur fashion: (Confused? It’s part of a social media campaign in which the Old Spice Guy answers questions from fans, explains GalleyCat.) Next, a dead-on parody of the Old Spice commercial encourages students to study… in the library. The video was produced by the Harold B. Lee Library Multimedia Production Crew of Brigham Young University. Finally, NPR suggests that libraries might be the next big pop-culture wave (after cupcakes). After a Chicago Fox News segment suggested libraries […]


The Rise of the "Jumper Colon"

by Celeste Ng

As a former professional proofreader, self-proclaimed punctuation nerd, and admitted colon addict, I was delighted to stumble across Conor J. Dillon’s essay on the uses of colons in prose. The whole thing is worth quoting, but here’s a snippet: A new colon is on the march. For now let’s call it the “jumper colon”. For grammarians, it’s a dependent clause + colon + just about anything, incorporating any and all elements of the other four colons, yet differing crucially in that its pre-colon segment is always a dependent clause. (Yikes.) For everyone else: its usefulness lies in that it lifts […]


I hope this submission leaves you in a condition of uncontrolled and irreversible “wow.”

by Celeste Ng

Want to learn what not to put in your query letter? Or maybe you just can’t get enough #queryfail? A self-proclaimed “grumpy literary agent” has started SlushPile Hell, a Tumblr blog dedicated to terrible author queries he (or she) has received—plus snarky commentary. Here’s a quick sampling: Greetings agent. I have written the most important book on earth. Will someone, for the love of God, please kill me. Hello. I’ve queried more than 50 other agents with this and have gotten nowhere. Now I’m querying you. You had me at hello. I’M TYPING MY QUERY IN ALL CAPS SO YOU […]


Congratulations. (Except I hate you.)

by Celeste Ng

I have always thought that freudenschade should be a word. Definition: feeling bad when good things happen to other people. Apparently The Rejectionist agrees. A recent essay gives some advice on what to do when good things happen to bad people: No, today we wish to discuss the cretin of all cretins, the foulest of asshats: the person who is not only talentless but LOATHSOME. Maybe it is that jerkwad from your critique group who says useless, mean things about everyone else’s work while his own stories are thirty-page expository accounts of his erotic escapades! Maybe, for the agents among […]


The Challenges of Digital Typesetting

by Celeste Ng

Abu Dhabi’s The National offers this fascinating piece by Peter Robins about typesetting ebooks: “Designing a printed book is remarkably different from designing an ebook,” says Charles Nix, a partner in the New York publishing firm Scott & Nix and the president of the Type Directors’ Club. “Printed-book design is about fixed-size pages and spreads. Those are gone in ebooks. Book designers choose typefaces and point sizes to maximize legibility and comprehension. Those are gone in ebooks too. Some formats, he notes, do allow you to embed a font, but you can’t rely on reading devices picking it up. Book […]


Can Kickstarter fund a lit website?

by Celeste Ng

With print media slashing book sections, the future of book reviews may well be online. (Case in point: this site.) But like print media, websites cost money to run. So what’s a book review site to do? In the Stacks, a video book reviewing site, has one solution: use the community fundraising site Kickstarter to raise money. Author and site founder Michelle Zaffino writes: Last year I created the program In the Stacks video book review (www.inthestacks.tv), which features 60-second long reviews of recent books. The reviews are done by one of the most authoritative sources on the topic: Librarians. […]


Real-Life Characters in Fiction

by Celeste Ng

Erika at Practicing Writing pointed us to this great post at The Guardian on real-life characters in fiction. Writes blogger Meg Rosoff: Six hundred words were suggested to tackle the important question of whether it is “right and fair” to fictionalise real-life characters. I could answer it in 15. Do what you like, only do it well – and don’t expect the relatives to approve. The possibilities for intersecting “real life” and fiction are many. Some works, like E. L. Doctorow’s Ragtime sprinkle real-life personnages across their pages; others, like Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize–winning Wolf Hall, base the story upon […]


Recently on FWR…

by Anne Stameshkin

Hiding out from the heat wave this weekend? Here’s the perfect reading material while you seek out some A/C: FWR’s features from the past two weeks, including three reviews of debut novels and an interview with a veteran: Michael Rudin reviews Hesh Kestin’s The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats, observing: In the end, Iron Will isn’t about denial, it’s about confrontation. The confrontation of a Jewish people against the hardships they faced in World War II—“In melting-pot America [Jews] were heat-resistant, tempered by several thousand years of being close to, if not in, history’s fires”—just as it is about the […]


Trailer as Logical Argument

by Lee Thomas

The book trailer is a relatively new phenomenon, but innovation has quickly become the rule. Take the trailer for Gary Shteyngart’s new novel, Super Sad True Love Story, which features cameos by James Franco (a former MFA student of Shteyngart at Columbia), Jay McInerney, Edmund White, Mary Gaitskill, and Jeffrey Eugenides. It’s tongue-in-cheek, as to be expected from the author of The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, and contains some very funny non sequiturs – like how to blend in at a Paris Review party – and I knew virtually nothing about the book by the end. But conveying actual information is […]


All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my slushpile.

by Celeste Ng

With self-publishing on the rise, anyone can be an author. No more slush pile! No more snooty agents and editors as gatekeepers! The public will decide which books succeed through the glories of democracy! But what happens to the readers in this scenario? That’s what Laura Miller asks on Salon.com. As she puts it, is the public prepared to meet the slush pile? You’ve either experienced slush or you haven’t, and the difference is not trivial. People who have never had the job of reading through the heaps of unsolicited manuscripts sent to anyone even remotely connected with publishing typically […]


Trailer for Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go

by Celeste Ng

Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go is being adapted to the big screen, directed by Mark Romanke and with a screenplay by novelist Alex Garland. Stars include Keira Knightly as Ruth, Carey Mulligan as Kathy, and Andrew Garfield as Tommy. It’s hard to say much about the plot without giving away the secret (and oh boy, is there ever a big secret!), but below is the recently released trailer: The movie isn’t out until October 1, so you’ve got 3 months to read the novel. (Click the image at left to find it at an indie bookstore near you.) […]




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