David Abrams's Blog, page 83

New story in F(r)iction: “Thank You”

I have a short story in the new issue of F(r)iction , published by Tethered by Letters . I’m really proud of “Thank You” (not something I say about all of my work) and think it might be one of the strongest things I’ve written since Fobbit . It’s a very short story, but it expresses a lot of my conflicted feelings about the Iraq War and the ways Americans have reacted to it. It can also be challenging to read, style-wise, as you can see by this punctuation-less excerpt:

Thank you Thank you for yo...

Sunday Sentence: City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg

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



Indeed, a store detective with a rodential little moustache had trailed him from outerwear to menswear to formalwear. But perhaps this was providence; otherwise Mercer might not have discovered the chesterfield coat. It was gorgeous, tawny, as though spun from the fine fur of kittens.

City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg

Friday Freebie: Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekback, Past Crimes by Glen Erik Hamilton, The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman, Everyone Has Their Reasons by Joseph Matthews, and The 3rd Woman by Jonathan Freedland

Congratulations to Ginger Heatwole, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie contest: Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott.

This week’s giveaway is another big box o’ books which will be delivered into the hands of one lucky reader. Up for grabs are five novels designed to provide hours of reading pleasure: Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekback, Past Crimes by Glen Erik Hamilton, The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman, Everyone Has Their Reasons by...

Bird by Bird: Shaping a Story at High Desert Journal

RiddleQ:  When is a hawk a vulture?
A:  When it’s a character gone under the knife of revision in my short story.


I’m happy to announce the current issue of High Desert Journal features a short story of mine, along with work by David Allan Cates , Pam Houston , and many others . Now called “Vulture,” my story once started out in life as “Hawk.” Thanks to the astute suggestions of editor Charles Finn, I rewrote the earlier short-short story about an injured woman having a stare-down cont...

Kris Dinnison’s Library: The Married Shelves of Bibliophiles

Reader:  Kris Dinnison
Location:  Mid-Century Modern house in Spokane, Washington
Collection size:  No idea. Oodles.
The one book I'd run back into a burning building to rescue:  An oversized edition of The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe, illustrated by Gustave Dore.
Favorite book from childhood:  Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson.
Guilty pleasure book:  Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I know it’s a classic, but the guilty pleasure part is how many times I’ve r...

Sunday Sentence: The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac by Sharma Shields

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

Note: This was a sentence I heard, not read, this week. Author Sharma Shields read aloud from her debut novel, The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac, at the Montana Book Festival , and her inclusion of this chapter-opening line reminded me of the joy I felt when I first read it a year ago.


On the way to one of her three weekly therapy appointments, Ginger hit a unicorn with her car.

The Sasquatch...

Friday Freebie: Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy by Karen Abbott

Congratulations to Michael Cooper, winner of last week's Friday Freebie contest: Hotel Living by Ioannis Pappos.

This week's book giveaway is a new paperback copy of Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott. Read on for more information about the book...

Karen Abbott, the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City and “pioneer of sizzle history” (USA Today), tells the spellbinding true story of four women who risked everything to b...

Front Porch Books: September 2015 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 Edelweis...

Trailer Park Tuesday: The Oregon Trail by Rinker Buck

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



Look at us. With our cars, our jet planes, and our bullet trains, we’ve turned landscape into a blur. The land is just a thing to get across, as quickly and as obliviously as possible. So few of us stop to look, to really look, at our surroundings anymore. Even I, living here in postcard-beautiful Montana, am often guilty of moving from Point A to Destination B at 80 mph. Some...

Labor Day: Writer at Work

Full carafe of coffee and fresh ice in water glass. Check.

Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in C Minor in full trumpet on Pandora . Check.

Braver Deeds prepped and ready on Scrivener . Check.

An empty day. Check.

Enthusiasm, motivation, determination. Check, check, and check.

On this Labor Day, I have time off from the Day Job and a reasonable stretch of hours in front of me. I also have the closing chapters of my work-in-progress (the aforementioned novel Braver Deeds ) waiting to be written. And that’s exa...