Jennifer Weiner's Advice

Jennifer Weiner is an author of chick-lit or book club books or something. I'm not sure. I've never read any of her novels but she does have a page with some good advice for those wanting to write and get published. Here's a sample:

I sold my first story to Seventeen magazine - one of the shrinking number of mass-market magazines that still publishes fiction. No agent. I just printed up my story, wrote a cover letter saying who I was and what I'd done, and mailed it off, and was thrilled and delighted a few months later when I got a phone call….and, eventually, a check.

Now, granted, I went to Fancypants U., and I was able to do some name-dropping on my cover letter. Did that help? Sure, probably it did. Is it necessary? I don't think so. I think if I'd submitted the same short story (it was called "Tour of Duty," and published in the spring of 1992), with a letter that left out all the stuff about Princeton, and just said I was a recent college graduate working as a reporter, the story would have met with the same happy response. No matter where, or whether, you went to college, good writing finds a home.

Not all of it applies to everyone but it's worth a read.

Detective Sheep Novels

Her novel, just released in the United States, is a detective story with a twist. Shepherd George Glenn is discovered murdered in a sheep pasture, with a spade in his chest, but the humans are helpless so some talking sheep come into play to solve the crime.

Not only is the idea not what you expected but the author is already working on a sequel and a film is already in the works. Full story here.

The amazon link is here.

What's interesting to me is that the novel is largely told from the sheep's perspective. It's not hard to be reminded of Animal Farm or myriad other stories about animals like Charlotte's Web but that humans are observed by the animals is something I'd like to see more of.

Here's the description of Three Bags Full:

In this refreshingly original detective story from debut German author Swann, a flock of sheep investigates the murder of their beloved shepherd, George Glenn. Leading the effort is Miss Maple, considered the cleverest sheep in the Irish seaside village of Glennkill. She slyly "pretends" to graze while eavesdropping on suspects who come to search George's caravan for something he may have died for. When a long-lost ram recounts an incident that occurred upon his departure years earlier, Miss Maple uncovers the catalyst for George's death. The wooly troupe reveals the crime's solution in a near-Shakespearean mime at the annual "Smartest Sheep in Glennkill" contest. The author's sheep's-eye view and the animals' literal translation of the strange words and deeds of the human species not only create laugh-out-loud humor but also allow the animals occasional flashes of accidental brilliance.

I'm also reminded of Jean George's Frightful's Mountain wish is told from the perspective of a falcon.

Non-Existent Books

Some books should never have been written, and some, never were.

I like the old phrase, "Some books were never meant to be written" myself.

Here are two links to lists of non-existent books:

Best Non-Existent Books

Answers.com list of non-existent books.

And here's another good list.

The Book of the Book

Idries Shah's The Book of the Book is a fairly well known, well, book.

From this wiki page:

Author Idries Shah, distrusting critics' reviews of his books, wrote The Book of the Book (1969, ISBN 0-900860-12-X), which consists of sixteen written pages of reviews of itself. The rest of the book is intentionally filled with about 140 blank pages to give the appearance of a normal book. Initial reactions were generally negative, but over time critics have come to praise it.

I've flipped through this book online, and may even order it just to A, have a copy and B, see what it's all about but aside from that this has reminded me of another, similar book:

It is an anthology of imaginary reviews of nonexistent books. some of the reviews remind the reader of drafts of his science-fiction novels, some read like philosophical pieces across scientific topics, from cosmology to the pervasiveness of computers, finally others satirise and parody everything from the nouveau roman to pornography, Ulysses, authorless writing, and Dostoevsky.

This is A Perfect Vacuum by Stanislaw Lem, circa 1971.

There is also mention of a book entitled Investigations of the Writings of Herbert Quaine by Jorge Luis Borges but I can't find mention of it at his wiki page and very little else other than this page.

Either way this has started me thinking, not so much about the "antinovel" but really what's possible with experimental novels. Nothing experimental and/or different just for the sake of being different, mind you, but more along the lines of Experimental and False Histories.

I have some notes on it and I think it would run the gamut from alarmingly simple to nearly impossibly difficult to write. I may give it a go though. I have a title for it, translated into Latin to sound even more mysterious, but I'll hang onto that for now. It's not terribly original meaning that there are some books around like this, but not many and there hasn't been one with a cohesiveness to it as far as I've seen similar to my idea.