What is "Novel Advice" about, anyway?
Hello! You’re receiving this because at some point in the recent past you signed up for Fabulist Rabbit Holes. This newsletter is less than two weeks old, but in this dumpster fire of a year each day can feel like an eon, so I won’t be upset if you don’t remember.
Eventually, I expect this will be a monthly-ish affair, but in the near term the frequency will be higher as we approach the 11/17 release date for "NOVEL ADVICE: Practical Wisdom for Your Favorite Literary Characters.” If you haven’t preordered yet, here are some ways you can do that:
You should have already received an exclusive preview, but if by chance you haven’t, you can download it here.
The book is really real, and how do I know that? Because of box of them just arrived at my door.
I am knocked out by how good it looks. The layout, the interior design, the amazing cover design by Patrick Sullivan. Hats off to the amazing team at Tiller Press!
So what is this book about, anyway?
Novel Advice is a book of advice columns. Unlike the usual advice columns where people write in looking for help with their everyday problems, these questions all come from characters out of famous literary stories. The book is organized into different chapters according to the types of problems they characters have: dating woes, marriage troubles, financial worries, finding their place in society, etc. Becuase no matter when the stories were published or the genres they work in, some human problems are universal. Advice columns need an agony aunt to supply answers. These characters get theirs from “Aunt Antigone,” whose own experiences living (and dying) in Greek mythology gives her unique insight into their problems.
Traditionally, when writing into an agony aunt, correspondents use aliases -- e.g. “Sleepless In Seattle,” or “A Hopeless Romantic.” These characters do the same, so Aunt Antigone fields questions from “Green Girl,” “Cruelly Used,” or, “Call Me Sheepish.”
You can also read this book like a low-key guessing game, and see how quickly you can guess the identity of the letter-writer from the context clues in their questions and the aliases they use. It's not necessary –– none of them are meant to be very difficult, and the actual names of the characters are listed in the table of contents if you don't want to guess. One of the letters also contains a hidden message, but I’m not going to say which one.
It’s going to be mostly book stuff around here for a while, but I’ll make sure to include some non-book stuff too.
Newsletter Recommendations:
At the risk of sending you to newsletters that are far more interesting than mine, here are the ones that make me perk up whenever they hit my inbox:
Robin Sloan makes my platonic ideal of a newsletter, full of short windows into remarkable things that I perhaps would not have found, or at least seen in the same way, without his guidance. Robin’s newsletters are brimming with excitement, generosity, and kindness. He’s like the bubbliest magpie, who can’t wait to show you the offbeat treasures that he’s dragged back to his nest. His newsletter is charmingly named “The Society of the Double Dagger.” I keep bugging Robin to let me know when the rights to his amazing novel Sourdough become available, because adapting that for TV is at the top of my list of dream projects.
Dan Hon is one of the smartest and funniest people I know, a deep thinker and a huge heart who spends his days looking for answers to some of our thorniest problems. Plus he’s unafraid to chase a Star Trek joke across dozens of tweets. I’ll be honest, there are times when I read his newsletter and I can't keep up. That’s my fault — I can have the attention span of an inebriated gnat with a social media dependency. But I feel better knowing that he’s on the case. It’s deep water, but with Dan’s help, I will not drown. (That’s a reference to “The Beast,” aka The A.I. Game — which is how Dan and I first met. Stick around and you’re gonna hear a lot more about The Beast.)
Megan Westerby isn’t just my good friend — she’s also a genius, with a deep level of insight into The Way Media Works On Th’Internet. Megan has just launched her own newsletter, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Analytics” and you should all rush over there now and sign up for it. Megan is also one of the few people who would re-watch all five hours of the 2012 London Olympics Opening Ceremonies with me.
On My Screens
Some things I've recently had on my screens:
The Third Day: Autumn
The Third Day is a creepy, great, six-hour limited series that hits my favorite notes of weird but low-key and constrained folk horror. It’s split into two groups of three episodes, the first three being “Summer” and the last three are “Winter.” But in between was “Autumn,” a 12-hour, continuous, live-streamed event that was unlike anything I’ve seen on tv before. You can watch Jude Law dig a hole in the ground for an hour and it’s captivating. The full twelve hours is available for another week or so (part 1, part 2), or there’s a 100-minute cutdown version.
The Good Lord Bird
A career re-defining performance by Ethan Hawke, turned up to 11 playing John Brown. I’ve been thinking about John Brown quite a bit over the last couple of years, for no reasons whatsoever having to do with our current political situation.
The Queen’s Gambit
Essentially a sports movie, but a really really good one, about a female chess prodigy in the 50s and 60s. Exquisitely made, and Anya Taylor- Joy is a freaking star.
The Vow
A lot of people have problems with the pacing of this series, but I find it to be the show’s strength, allowing the viewer to get lost in the confusion along with its protagonists. For a more straightforward take on the same material, there’s Seduced, but I prefer the messiness of The Vow.
What’s Next?
If this was any other year, there’d be some kind of book launch, and maybe I’d do some signings or speaking engagements. But this year, who knows? I’m trying to put together alternatives, and if/when those are solidified I will post about them here.
In the meantime, write back to me and answer this question if you’d like:
If you could give advice to any fictional character, who would it be and what would you tell them?
Stay Safe,
-Jay