David Abrams's Blog, page 93

Watchlist Countdown, Day 19: “Our New Neighborhood” by Lincoln Michel

      When the incidents start, my husband decides that what our neighborhood needs is a Neighborhood Watch. "We need to watch our streets as closely as we're gonna watch the twins," he says, tapping the baby monitor screen. The screen is dark and blue. It shows two pale teddy bears in an otherwise empty crib.
      The next morning, I come downstairs and see Donald slinking in the corner with a black trench coat and fedora.

          from&...

Front Porch Books: May 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...

Watchlist Countdown, Day 18: “Drone” by Miles Klee

     The president’s coma had taken a turn for the worse: she was dead.

          from “Drone” by Miles Klee

And with that, we're off and running through the delirious tongue-tingle of Miles Klee’s story in the  Watchlist anthology. It’s hard for me to say much about “Drone” without spoiling the ironwork structure of the story...so, let me just leave it at this: if you like A Clockwork Orange, Blade Runner, Alice in Wonderland or the fiction of R...

Watchlist Countdown, Day 17: “Prof.” by Chika Unigwe

     When the cell phone tower suddenly materialized opposite our street, I told anyone who would listen that it was an interceptor, set up to connect to phones by mimicking cell phone towers and sucking up data but nobody would believe me.

       from “Prof.” by Chika Unigwe

“Prof.,” Chika Unigwe’s short story in the Watchlist anthology, is a good example of how, in the right hands, the unreliability of a narrator can creep up on us in a way that’s subtl...

Watchlist Countdown, Day 16: “Safety Tips for Living Alone” by Jim Shepard

     And something was already wrong with Tower No. 4. Unlike the others it moved so much in heavy weather or even in a good strong wind that everyone who worked on it called it Old Shaky or the Tiltin' Hilton.

       from “Safety Tips for Living Alone” by Jim Shepard

This entry in the Watchlist anthology should be required reading for anyone studying the art of the short story. Grandmaster Jim Shepard ( The Book of Aron , Like You’d Understand, Anyway , and...

My First Time: Chris Cander

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 Chris Cander, author of Whisper Hollow , a novel released by Other Press earlier this year. Cander is a novelist, children’s book author, freelance writer, and teacher for Houston-based Writers in the Schools. Her novel 11 Stories , published by a sm...

Watchlist Countdown, Day 15: “The Entire Predicament” by Lucy Corin

     My head hovers over the floor, and my hair dangles, and my foot teeters near my ear, and my backside is exposed. I’m separated. I’m gagged, and behind my gag I can’t feel my voice. Homebound, on my very own threshold, I am of two minds or more about most things.

       from “The Entire Predicament” by Lucy Corin

The housewife who narrates Lucy Corin’s short story in the Watchlist anthology is literally homebound, and she is indeed in a predicament. T...

Sunday Sentence: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

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


She had once met an old man up near Kincardine who'd sworn that the murdered follow their killers to the grave, and she was thinking of this as they walked, the idea of dragging souls across the landscape like cans on a string.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Watchlist Countdown, Day 14: “The Gift” by Mark Irwin

     He was about the size of a wooden match and floated--arms spread out--like a skydiver in a small jar his wife had given him, perhaps because they were childless and he was always traveling.

       from “The Gift” by Mark Irwin

Odd, funny, entrancing.  I can’t say much more than that about Mark Irwin’s contribution to the Watchlist anthology, a story about a dude named Mark whose wife gives him a tiny man floating in a jar of water for their 25th...

Watchlist Countdown, Day 13: “Coyote” by Charles Yu

     You try to figure out what it is you know, and this is what you come up with: what you know is the fact that Carol knows things that Henry does not know, and also that Carol does not know that she knows things that Henry does not know.

       from “Coyote” by Charles Yu

Shh! Listen. Can you hear them whispering in the cubicle next to yours? Are they talking about you and Dorinda down in HR (even though, technically, it wasn’t a “date” date and she ne...