David Abrams's Blog, page 80

Trailer Park Tuesday: The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King

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




Stephen King watches over us as we sleep. And sometimes he shrinks himself to Fantastic Voyage size and enters our head through our ear canals, our nostrils, or, if he’s especially daring, our open mouths. He travels light: just a notebook and a pen he uses to write down our dreams. Then, when he’s satisfied he has enough for another story about our dark inner lives, he exits...

My First Time: Lincoln Michel

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 Lincoln Michel, author of Upright Beasts , a collection of stories Vanity Fair said is “full of monstrous surprises and eerie silences.” Lincoln is the editor-in-chief of electricliterature.com and a founding editor of Gigantic . His work has appeared in G...

Sunday Sentence: The Girl Who Slept With God by Val Brelinski

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


She could hear, but no longer see, his footsteps, so she had to trust that he knew the way, and that any of the ground’s rough spots or upheavals had already been worn away by years and years of her father tracing his careful, deliberate orbit through the darkness.

Final line of The Girl Who Slept With God by Val Brelinski

Friday Freebie: The Heart You Carry Home by Jennifer Miller

Congratulations to Thea Miller Ryan, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie contest, Wait for Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories by Craig Johnson.

This week, I’m giving away five copies of The Heart You Carry Home , the new novel by Jennifer Miller, author of The Year of the Gadfly . I was lucky enough to read an early advance copy of the book and called it “a powerhouse of a novel” that “captures the emotional minefield of veterans returning home from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan with vi...

Vintage Chills: The Big Halloween Read

Every now and then I like my books to put some ice in my veins. What better time than October to turn to something weird, scary and uncanny? This year’s Halloween-themed reading centers around three books: American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940’s to Now , the Library of America anthology edited by Peter Straub; Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories by Charles Beaumont; and The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I’ve finished Hill House and am still working on the...

Trailer Park Tuesday: The Muralist by B. A. Shapiro

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




The trailer for B. A. Shapiro’s novel, The Muralist , is a straightforward one: nothing too fancy or flashy, just a succinct narration by the author detailing how she came to write this new book (her previous book, The Art Forger , came out in 2012). But in cases like this, when there’s a fascinating story to be told, we don’t need an artsy-fartsy trailer to engage us. Shapiro’s...

My First Time: Norma Gail

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 Norma Gail. Her debut contemporary Christian romance, Land of My Dreams , was released in April 2014. Her devotionals and poetry have appeared at the Stitches Thru Time blog, ChristianDevotions.us, and in “The Secret Place.” She is a member of American Ch...

Sunday Sentence: “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison

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


My mind was a roiling tinkling chittering softness of brain parts that expanded and contracted in quivering frenzy.

“I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison
from American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940’s to Now , edited by Peter Straub

Friday Freebie: Wait for Signs by Craig Johnson

Congratulations to Carole Mertz, Carol Obrochta, and Carl Scott, winners of last week's Friday Freebie contest: Dreams of the Red Phoenix by Virginia Pye.

This week's book giveaway is sure to appeal to fans of mysteries, Wyoming literature, short stories, and those who binge-watch Longmire on Netflix--or, all of the above. I have a new paperback copy of Wait for Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories by Craig Johnson to give away to one lucky reader. The collection comes with an introduction by Lou D...

Ben Nadler’s Library: “Do you sleep on top of your books?”

Reader:  Ben Nadler
Location:  Brooklyn, NY
Collection size:  Five or six hundred books at any given time, plus about a hundred zines.
The one book I'd run back into a burning building to rescue:  My father’s Yiddish-English dictionary. It’s been in the family for a century, so I’d feel guilty if I was the one who lost it.
Favorite book from childhood:   Allen Ginsburg’s Collected Poems, 1947-1980 . My mother kept it out on the table like it was the Bible. I dove deeper a...