Twitter

Novelist Jennifer Egan will publish a complete science fiction story on The New Yorker Fiction Twitter feed over the next few nights.

The New York Observer reported that the experiment will begin tonight at 8 p.m. ET. Egan (pictured)  has experimented in her fiction before, writing a short story disguised as a list and publishing PowerPoint fiction for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad. Back in 2009, Electric Literature performed a similar experiment with novelist Rick Moody.

Here’s more from the author: “This is not a new idea, of course, but it’s a rich one—because of the intimacy of reaching people through their phones, and because of the odd poetry that can happen in a hundred and forty characters. I found myself imagining a series of terse mental dispatches from a female spy of the future, working undercover by the Mediterranean Sea. I wrote these bulletins by hand in a Japanese notebook that had eight rectangles on each page. The story was originally nearly twice its present length; it took me a year, on and off, to control and calibrate the material into what is now ‘Black Box.’” (Link via MB Newsfeed; image via Marion Ettlinger)

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Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

There was no Pulitzer Prize for fiction awarded this year, despite the fact that Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, Swamplandia! by Karen Russell and The Pale King by David Foster Wallace were all picked as finalists.

The news came as a blow to independent booksellers around the country, frustrated to lose sales bump that generally comes from the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Using our Best Indie Bookstores on Twitter list, we collected responses from booksellers around the country.

We recommend our readers follow Kimberly Burns’ advice: “No Pulitzer for fiction means go to an independent bookstore & ask a bookseller for a recommendation.” This GalleyCat editor also joined a Marketplace segment about how the fiction snub will hurt bookstore sales.

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R.L. Stine, the author of the popular Goosebumps horror series for kids, gave his nearly 49,000+ Twitter followers another free story this afternoon.

To celebrate Friday the 13th, the novelist tweeted a mini-horror story called “The Brave One.” We’ve collected the posts below for your reading pleasure.

His newest book, The 13th Warning, was published on Friday the 13th from Amazon Publishing. Earlier this year, Stine published another popular Twitter short story.

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Once again, Jonathan Franzen has generated online headlines by making dismissive comments about our online activities. Author Jami Attenberg saw Franzen speak at a Tulane event last night, copying down a few quotes about social networking.

Here is a Franzen quote from the post: “Twitter is unspeakably irritating. Twitter stands for everything I oppose…it’s hard to cite facts or create an argument in 140 characters…it’s like if Kafka had decided to make a video semaphoring The Metamorphosis. Or it’s like writing a novel without the letter ‘P’…It’s the ultimate irresponsible medium … People I care about are readers…particularly serious readers and writers, these are my people. And we do not like to yak about ourselves.”

The quotes have spawned a new Twitter hashtag this morning: #JonathanFranzenHates. How would you argue against his comments?

Harry Potter inspired an entire generation. But apparently that isn’t good enough for the #Oscars.

— Professor Snape (@_Snape_) February 27, 2012

The Professor Snape Twitter feed (a parody account dedicated to the famous Harry Potter character) published the most popular tweet of the Academy Awards, according to our sibling blog Social Times.

We’ve embedded the most popular tweet above–do you agree? His tweet stood out of more than two million Twitter posts about the awards show.

Check it out: “While Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2 failed to win any of the three awards for which it was nominated, Professor Snape’s remark … triggered an impressive 6,346 retweets. Overall, the Professor Snape parody account received 10,544 retweets from the posts he made during the night, good enough for second place behind @theacademy, the official Academy Awards Twitter profile.”

R.L. Stine, the author of the popular Goosebumps horror series for kids, gave his nearly 45,000 followers a free story this afternoon on Twitter.

The novelist tweeted a mini-horror story about a haunted kitchen. We’ve collected the posts below for your reading pleasure.

In January, Stine published Goosebumps Hall of Horrors #5: Don’t Scream.

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As readers around the world celebrate Valentine’s Day, we wanted to share some of our favorite literary pick-up lines–helping literary folks find love.

Last week Random House sparked a Twitter movement with the literary pickup lines hashtag. We’ve collected some great examples below–add your line to the Twitter hashtag.

This GalleyCat editor added a pick-up line inspired by the last lines of F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s The Great Gatsby: “You are the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock.”

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The Atlantic Wire has posted an interview with Michael Crossan, the aspiring writer from Scotland who briefly fooled the Twittersphere by pretending to be novelist Cormac McCarthy.

As we reported last week, the fake account convinced hundreds of Twitter users, even managing to fool a Twitter executive before the account was suspended. In both those links, we archived the fake tweets for posterity.

Here’s more: “I did a search for Cormac McCarthy. I realized the chance of Cormac having a Twitter feed were remote. Cormac is religiously private. Of course there was no Cormac on Twitter. The idea flashed to create a parody Cormac feed. I created the account and did a search of the Twitter literati. I came across Margaret Atwood’s tweets. I had read and admired her novel The Handmaid’s Tale. As Cormac I tweeted her as I imagined he would do. I think Cormac is noble and sincere and blunt. I tweeted Margaret — ‘Please excuse my intrusion’ — and it escalated from there.” (Via HuffPost Books)

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Join me in welcoming @CormacCMcCarthy to Twitter! We have the best authors in the world right here.

— Jack Dorsey (@jack) January 24, 2012

The strange saga of the fake Cormac McCarthy Twitter feed has ended. The Twitter feed that once excited writers around the Internet now reads: “Account suspended. The profile you are trying to view has been suspended.”

Oddly enough, the fake feed managed to fool more readers this week–including Twitter executive chairman Jack Dorsey (his tweet, later retracted, is embedded above).

Explore more tweets below–you can also read the fake Cormac McCarthy tweets archived here. We contacted Twitter for comment earlier this week, but we haven’t received a response. Read more

Not to worry, @sarahw, he doesn’t own a computer; we’ve verified the @CormacCMcCarthy handle is not the real deal.

— Vintage & Anchor (@VintageAnchor) January 23, 2012

This morning a Twitter impersonator made waves online, pretending to be novelist Cormac McCarthy.

While the laconic writer would be a perfect fit for Twitter, the Vintage Anchor Twitter feed told publishing reporter Sarah Weinman that it was not the real McCarthy. Above, we’ve embedded the publisher’s tweet.

If you want to see the series of fake tweets, we’ve collected his or her work in a Storify collection. Did you fall for the Twitter hoax? Read more