David Abrams's Blog, page 71

Front Porch Books: February 2016 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, independent bookstores, 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....

My First Time: Travis Mulhauser

photo by Viki Redding 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 Travis Mulhauser, author of Sweetgirl , a novel that has been praised by Nickolas Butler (author of Shotgun Lovesongs) as an “upper-Midwestern homage to great American quest novels like True Grit and Winter’s Bone. It is a truly memor...

Sunday Sentence: Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.


      Of the love-making of Carol and Will Kennicott there is nothing to be told which may not be heard on every summer evening, on every shadowy block.
      They were biology and mystery.

Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

Friday Freebie: Tightrope by Simon Mawer, Broken Sleep by Bruce Bauman, Lay Down Your Weary Tune by W. B. Belcher, and The Butcher’s Trail by Julian Borger

Congratulations to Jane Rainey and James Brundage, winners of last week’s Friday Freebie contest: Casualties by Elizabeth Marro.

This week, I’m giving away a quartet of recent releases published by Other Press: Tightrope by Simon Mawer, Broken Sleep by Bruce Bauman, Lay Down Your Weary Tune by W. B. Belcher, and The Butcher’s Trail: How the Search for Balkan War Criminals Became the World’s Most Successful Manhunt by Julian Borger. The Butcher’s Trail is a hardcover, the other three are trade...

Ditch-Digging and Bricklaying: Sinclair Lewis on Main Street

Last night, as part of my five-year plan to read the Essentials , I started Main Street , Sinclair Lewis’ 1920 satire of small-town life in the Midwest. I didn’t get too far before I bonded with the author’s irascibility.

In 1937, his publisher asked him to write a new introduction to the book and Lewis reluctantly complied:

I must, says the publisher of this edition of Main Street, write an introduction; and what, he suggests, with the blandness characteristic of all publishers urging slothful...

Trailer Park Tuesday: The Wonder Garden by Lauren Acampora

Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday, a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.


In the trailer for her short story collection, The Wonder Garden , Lauren Acampora calls herself “an anthropologist of the suburbs.” Her linked stories, which coalesce into a pseudo-novel, pull back the curtains on the pristine homes that line quiet, happy streets and reveal what really goes on inside those houses. The video is a terrific introduction to Acampora and her work a...

My First Time: Richard Fifield

Photo by Noel Lindquist 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 Richard Fifield, whose debut novel The Flood Girls was just released by Simon & Schuster. Here’s what Sharma Shields (The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac) had to say about it: “Reading this novel is like unwrapping the wackiest birt...

Sunday Sentence: This is What I Want by Craig Lancaster

Simply put, the best sentence(s) I’ve read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.


Their first child, delivered on the coldest day of winter, 1959, had come into the world sour.

This Is What I Want by Craig Lancaster

Friday Freebie: Casualties by Elizabeth Marro

Congratulations to Elizabeth Vollbach, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie contest: Winter by Christopher Nicholson.

This week’s book giveaway is Casualties by Elizabeth Marro. I have two signed copies of the novel up for grabs. I was lucky to have read an advance copy of this engaging book and I offered up these words of praise: “There’s an emotional jolt early in the pages of Elizabeth Marro’s debut novel Casualties that reminds us not all battle scars start on the battlefield. The bell-li...

The Online Luddite

Katey Schultz, an award-winning author, knows how to flash. Fiction, that is—flash fiction, as we saw in her brilliant collection Flashes of War published in 2013. Katey will teach a course for the 49 Writers Center in Anchorage, Alaska and she asked if she could share some of her pre-course thoughts with Quivering Pen readers. I, of course, said yes...in a flash.


I’ve been giddy all month, but as someone who is labeled “a Luddite” by family and friends, I’m hesitant to talk about why. In a fe...