David Abrams's Blog, page 192

Friday Freebie: Triburbia by Karl Taro Greenfeld and The Bird Saviors by William J. Cobb

Congratulations to Michele Cofield, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter.

This week's book giveaway is another excellent two-fer deal with novels generously provided by publishers HarperCollins and Unbridled Books .  Up for grabs: Triburbia  by Karl Taro Greenfeld and The Bird Saviors by William J. Cobb.

“Striking chords that range from haunting and heartbreaking to darkly funny and deeply poignant,” Greenfeld's novel is about a neighborhood in transition...

The Great Fobbit World Domination Tour 2012

Okay, maybe not the world World, as in the blue globe sitting on your high school geography teacher's desk, but "world" in the sense of  your world, your sphere, your neighborhood, your city.

The Grade-A, Numero-Uno publicity team at Grove/Atlantic has been hard at work on my behalf (Thank you, Deb! Thank you, Jodie!) lining up book store readings of Fobbit and festival appearances for me.  As a debut novelist, I know how rare this is, how blessed I am to have this kind of support...

A Complex Cocktail of Characters: Broken Harbor by Tana French

Broken Harbor
by Tana French
Viking
Reviewed by Andi Diehn

Rule number one: Expect the unexpected when reading a Tana French novel.

I read French's previous novel, Faithful Place , over a day or two of lounging in a lawn chair, a glass of chilled chardonnay close at hand, on a sunny porch on Martha's Vineyard.  A week on an island with only your best friend for company is a rare thing when you have three small children, a house, a husband, several jobs, and many, many animals back in black fl...

Trailer Park Tuesday: The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman

Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday , a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies. Unless their last name is Grisham or King, authors will probably never see their trailers on the big screen at the local cineplex. And that's a shame because a lot of hard work goes into producing these short marriages between book and video. So, if you like what you see, please spread the word and help these videos go viral.





The trailer for M. L. Stedman's debut novel, The Li...

My First Time: Melanie Thorne

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands.  Today’s guest is Melanie Thorne, author of Hand Me Down , a novel that BookPage said was “impossible to put down,” comparing it to Janet Finch’s 1999 bestseller White Oleander .  Melanie earned her MA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Davis,...

Friday Freebie: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Congratulations to Cynthia Baskin, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: Hand Me Down by Melanie Thorne.

This week's book giveaway is Beautiful Ruins  by Jess Walter (author of The Financial Lives of the Poets and Citizen Vince ). I'm very excited to offer a new hardback copy of Beautiful Ruins to one lucky reader.  You can expect to see this novel popping up on end-of-year Best Books of 2012 lists.  I guaran-damn-tee it.  But hey, you just want to know what all the fuss is a...

Kirkus is Kind: Fobbit is "Funny and Bitter"

In the publishing industry, Kirkus Reviews has the reputation of sometimes being--how shall I put this?--hard as a headmaster's paddle.  Whether or not that rep for negativity is justified, I was biting my nails as I waited for their verdict on Fobbit.  To my relief, they were gentle with my newborn baby.  Here's the review:

IEDs, VBIEDs, EODs, G-3 and even CNN contrive a constant Catch-22 as Fobbit Chance Gooding Jr. fights the acronym war in Abrams’ debut novel.

FOB is an acron...

Front Porch Books: August 2012 edition

Front Porch Books is a monthly tally of books--mainly advance review copies (aka "uncorrected proofs" and "galleys")--I've received from publishers, but also sprinkled with packages from Book Mooch, Amazon and other sources.  Because my dear friends, Mr. FedEx and Mrs. UPS, leave them with a doorbell-and-dash method of delivery, I call them my Front Porch Books.  In this digital age, ARCs are also beamed to the doorstep of my Kindle via NetGalley and Edelweiss.  Note: most of t...

A Fobbit Gets Mortared

Yesterday, while scrolling back through the journal I kept while I was in Baghdad, I came across an interesting entry of an event that has all but faded with time.  On that day seven years ago I found myself in the middle of a mortar rainstorm....

August 7, 2005:  Because the work continued to pile up on my desk in task force headquarters all day long, I wasn’t able to excuse myself to go back to my room until around 6:30 p.m.  I hadn’t eaten anything all day long, so I stopped...

Trailer Park Tuesday: The After Wife by Gigi Levangie Grazer

Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday , a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.  Unless their last name is Grisham or King, authors will probably never see their trailers on the big screen at the local cineplex.  And that's a shame because a lot of hard work goes into producing these short marriages between book and video.  So, if you like what you see, please spread the word and help these videos go viral.




I've never read any of Gigi Leva...