Scholar Leslie S. Klinger has filed a civil suit in federal court against the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate, hoping to prove that “Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson are no longer protected by federal copyright laws.”

The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Along with Laurie R. King, Klinger edited A Study in Sherlock: Stories Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon. He was working on a new collection called In the Company of Sherlock Holmes with stories by Sara Paretsky, Michael Connelly, Lev Grossman and more. He made his case, in the release:

The Conan Doyle Estate contacted our publisher … and implied that if the Estate wasn’t paid a license fee, they’d convince the major distributors not to sell the book. Our publisher was, understandably, concerned, and told us that the book couldn’t come out unless this was resolved … It is true that some of Conan Doyle’s stories about Holmes are still protected by the U.S. copyright laws. However, the vast majority of the stories that Conan Doyle wrote are not. The characters of Holmes, Watson, and others are fully established in those fifty ‘public-domain’ stories. Under U.S. law, this should mean that anyone is free to create new stories about Holmes and Watson.

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The Center for Fiction has named Ben Fountain as the winner of the 2012 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. He won the $10,000 prize for Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.

The judging panel included American writers Francisco Goldman, Lev Grossman, Heidi Julavits, Paul La Farge and Bonnie Nadzam. Prior to establishing his career as a writer, Fountain worked as an attorney.

Here’s more from the release: “Fountain has received the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction, a Whiting Writers Award, an O.Henry Prize, and two Pushcart Prizes, among other honors and awards. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk was shortlisted for the National Book Award this year”

Kyle Simons, a Korean education student, has raised more than $14,000 for his fantasy RPG game called Magicians.  Inspired by Lev Grossman‘s The Magicians, this smartphone game was designed to help users learn the Korean language.

Grossman himself has endorsed the project via Twitter. In addition to the game itself, there will be a 120-page softcover Magicians book. We’ve embedded a video about the project above–what do you think?

Here’s more about the project: “Magicians is about having unlimited creativity without complexity. The only thing that restrains you and your character is your own knowledge of the language because the magic system in the game is a language. Doing away with the necessity of a teacher or even dice, all you need is your smartphone and a few hours a week to game with friends to have fun telling a great story and to learn a language along the way.”

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On November 7, a special reading at WORD in Brooklyn will celebrate the blurbs that novelist Gary Shteyngart has bestowed upon other books.

Jacob Silverman created a Tumblr site dedicated to archiving The Collected Blurbs of Gary Shteyngart, collecting the author’s praise for books by authors ranging from Molly Ringwald to Adam Wilson to Lev Grossman. You can also follow Shteyngart on Twitter.

Check it out:  ”The Shteyngart blurb has become almost a seal of approval that, while comical in the sheer amount of books he’s actually blurbed, are actually really good ways to tell if you’re going to like a book or not … The Collected Blurbs of Gary Shteyngart, Live brings together John Wray, Rachel Shukert, Adam Wilson, Gideon Lewis-Kraus and Karolina Waclawiak (as well as a few words from Silverman), all authors blurbed by Mr. Shteyngart, for a night of readings and tribute to the Russian-born oligarch of back cover quotes..” (Photo via Mark Coggins; link via Sarah Weinman)

Here are some literary events to jump-start your week. To get your event posted on our calendar, visit our Facebook Your Literary Event page. Please post your event at least one week prior to its date.

Writers G. Willow Wilson and Lev Grossman will be appearing at the powerHouse arena. See them on Tuesday, July 17th from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. (Brooklyn, NY)

The powerHouse Arena will be hosting “A Night with Brooklyn Indie Lit Mags.” Join in on Wednesday, July 19th from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. (Brooklyn, NY)

The “How I Learned…” reading series is sponsoring a storytelling event called “STORYTIMES.” Check it out on Thursday, July 19th at the Happy Ending Lounge starting 7 p.m. (New York, NY)

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Yesterday author and book critic Lev Grossman revealed that Fox decided to pass on the television pilot script based on his novel, The Magicians.

The pilot script was written by Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz, the writers who worked on X-Men: First Class and Thor. Nevertheless, hope is not lost for a show.

Here’s more from the post: “From here the way forward for the show gets rockier, obviously. We’re going to take the script to cable networks. We’re also going to renew talks on the feature-film side. I can’t say I’m bitter about it. I wouldn’t have played my cards differently — we got exactly the right people and exactly the right script. It would have been incredible. It still will be, if we can get it to go somewhere else. But no question, it’s a big disappointment. We had a really good shot this time, and it didn’t work out.” (Via Shelf Awareness)

Figment, the writing community for young adult readers, has launched a digital muse called “Figment Daily Themes.” This free email service provides “carefully crafted writing prompts” five times a week to encourage users to write everyday.

Here’s more from the announcement: “Whether you’re getting back into the practice of writing or already a dedicated daily scribe, these prompts will push you to work on the range of your craft, focusing on character, setting, dialogue, personal essay, verse, and more. (And we’ll feature occasional prompts from some of our favorite professional authors like Lev Grossman, Curtis Sittenfeld, and Dana Goodyear!)”

Figment Daily Themes will run from January 2nd until March 30th. To sign up, enter your contact information in the box at the bottom of the blog announcement.

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Novelist and critic Lev Grossman has unveiled the working title for his third book in his popular Magicians series: “The Magician’s Land.” Below, we’ve linked to all the books on Grossman’s reading list while he works on the new book.

Tor.com spotted the title in Grossman’s annual holiday newsletter, buried in news about this year’s release of the second book in the series, The Magicians. The author also added this note in the newsletter: “We may never come back here again,” hinting that the series could end with the third book.

Here’s more from the newsletter: “Mostly I’m just outlining it now, and taking a lot of notes. Inspiration is coming from a lot of different places, some new, some old. The Magician’s Nephew is a big part of it, as is The Last Battle. (It’s not a coincidence that those books tell the story, respectively, of the beginning of Narnia and the end of Narnia.) I’m rereading The Tempest and The Phantom Tollbooth and P.G. Wodehouse and the great Bond novel Casino Royale. I’m also rereading The Lord of the Rings, which oddly enough I’ve never really thought of as an influence before.”

Over at Largehearted Boy, novelist Lev Grossman revealed the music he listened to while writing his new novel, The Magician King. Listen to some of the songs at this free Spotify playlist.

In the essay, Grossman described one of our favorite pieces of writing music, “Bolero,” by Maurice Ravel: “It’s one of those melodies that’s so obviously perfect you can’t understand how one human being could have come up with it — it’s sounds like the product of a 1000-year-old folk tradition (I imagine Ravel doing what Paul McCartney did after he wrote “Yesterday” – he went around asking everybody if they’d heard the melody before, because he could swear he’d stolen it from somewhere). It’s great to write to because it doesn’t have any words, which are always distracting, and it whips you up into an intensely excited state in which you feel like a genius even when you aren’t one.”

Follow this link to get a Spotify invite for the free service. Once you have an account, check out our Thomas Pynchon Spotify playlist, our Ann Patchett Spotify playlist and the new Lev Grossman Spotify playlist.

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The Amazon books editors unveiled their top ten picks of the biggest releases coming out this fall.

Senior editor Chris Schluep had this statement: “This is one of the best seasons for literary novels to come along in several years … We’ve highlighted Murakami and Eugenides in our Amazon Editors’ Top 10, as well as three of the finest debuts–by Amy Waldman, Erin Morgenstern, and Chad Harbach–to come across our desks in a long time.”

We’ve listed all the books below–what books are you looking forward to this fall?

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