Novelist Wendy Wax will publish what appears to be the first novel featuring fans of the hit British television show, Downton Abbey.

As the show winds down its third season, While We Were Watching Downton Abbey follows the lives of a few friends in Atlanta who are devoted to the show. You can read a free excerpt of the novel online. Berkley Books will publish the book as a $15 trade paperback original on April 2nd. Here’s more about the book:

In her novel, Wax introduces three women who live in a historic Atlanta apartment building and the residence’s concierge who decides to build camaraderie by hosting weekly screenings of Downton Abbey leading up to the start of the third season.  Each of the four is at a crossroads, and what happens to them is familiar to many Downton fans.  They find themselves connecting with the addictive drama, and-even more unexpectedly, with each other.  For them, it is a season of surprises as they forge bonds that will sustain them through life’s hardest moments–all reflected in the unfolding plot, humor and convergent lives of Downton Abbey.

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Humorous writer David Rakoff has passed away. He was 47 years old.

He wrote three books: Don’t Get Too Comfortable, Fraud and the Thurber Prize-winning essay collection, Half Empty. He was also a frequent contributor on This American Life, and you can listen to all his past episodes at this link.

Here’s an excerpt from an essay he wrote about his first glimpse of Times Square in college, a perfect mix of writing and humor: “The colossus towering over this particular moment shuddering between decadence and recovery was not Bartholdi’s Lady Liberty but the first of Calvin Klein’s bronzed gods, high above Times Square. Leaning back, eyes closed, in his blinding white underpants against a sinuous form in similarly white Aegean plaster, his gargantuan, sleeping, groinful beauty was simultaneously Olympian and intimate, awesome and comforting. Here was the city in briefs: uncaring, cruelly beautiful, and out of reach.” (Photo via Don Denton)

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Journalist and author Jonah Lehrer has come under media scrutiny this week after he was caught recycling his own writing from The Wall Street Journal for NewYorker.com, where he recently joined as a staff writer.

Media critic Jim Romenesko discovered that Leher had repurposed copy about how and why people respond incorrectly to a simple arithmetic question about the cost of a bat and a ball. Literary blogger Edward Champion found recycled material in Leher’s recent book as well.

Since Romenesko’s discovery, The New Yorker has updated the post with an Editors’ Note, which reads, “Portions of this post appeared in similar form in an April, 2011, post by Jonah Lehrer for Wired.com. We regret the duplication of material.” (It is also is an October WSJ story, as Romenesko points out). Read more

The classic kid’s book The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein inspired intricate invitations for an upcoming wedding, making headlines in the wedding blog world.

Offbeat Bride has the scoop: “I have to confess, I got a little teary-eyed over Andrew and Jackie’s Giving Tree wedding invitations, made by Kim from NMI Creations. (Did you pick up on the special wording of “share” and “give” like for The Giving Tree? Subtle, eh?) If you think the invitations are cute, wait until you see their matching Save the Dates AND the completed invitation suite with the hidden tear-inducing surprise!”

This could very easily produce a wave of children’s book inspired wedding materials. What classic book would you use for your wedding invitations? (Via Reddit)

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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

Starting in 2014, novelist Mark Z. Danielewski will serialize a 27-volume novel project. Once the experiment begins, installments of The Familiar will come out every three months.

According to the New York Times, Danielewski (pictured, via) signed a $1 million book deal with Knopf Doubleday’s Pantheon Books for the first ten parts of his serialized novel. His editor Edward Kastenmeier told the newspaper: “You await the next one; you want to talk about it … Everybody will be engaging in the book in roughly the same cycle.”

Last night, Publishers Marketplace news editor Sarah Weinman reminded us that Danielewski serialized his debut novel (House of Leaves) on iUniverse back in 1999. Follow this link to see the vintage web page for the serialization. At the time, Pantheon called it “the first complete on-line serialization of a literary work of such magnitude by a major trade publisher prior to publication.”

Q.R. Markham‘s debut spy novel Assassin of Secrets has been cut by Little, Brown’s Mulholland Books.

Publisher Michael Pietsch had this comment: “[I]t is with deep regret that we have published a book that we can no longer stand behind … Our goal is to never have this happen, but when it does, it is important to us to communicate with and compensate readers and retailers as quickly as possible.”

Edward Champion has collected examples of lifted passages. The author’s bio and book have been removed at Mulholland Books, but you can read his biography at his UK publisher’s site: “Markham has been a parks department employee, laundry-truck driver, door-to-door knife salesman, telemarketer, rock ‘n’ roll bassist, literary scout, book-reviewer, small business owner, and consultant. His writing has appeared in the Paris Review, Bomb Magazine, Witness, The New York Post, and more.”

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George R.R. Martin has sold one million Kindle books. He joins the growing “Kindle Million Club” list with Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Charlaine Harris, Lee Child, Suzanne Collins, Michael Connelly, John Locke, Janet Evanovich and Kathryn Stockett.

Kindle Content VP Russ Grandinetti pointed to the author’s most appealing eBook feature: “Martin’s series is simply epic … And an elaborate series like this is great on Kindle because you can turn the last page of book three at 10:30 at night, then buy book four and be on its first page at 10:31.”

Is selling a million Kindle books still a dramatic feat? On Twitter, journalist Sarah Weinman wondered: “at some point it will no longer be news that an author has made it to the Kindle Million Club. That time might even be now.”

Borders’ $215 million bid from investor Jahm Najafi unraveled yesterday, and a liquidation company now has the lead bid for the company.  Sarah Weinman has been filing live dispatches from the bankruptcy hearing this morning for Publishers Lunch. She tweeted more news: “Liquidators bid for Borders is approved by Judge as stalking horse bid. Objections are postponed (and can be filed) until Monday afternoon.”

The Wall Street Journal was blunt about the implication of the news: “The development raises the prospect that Borders will soon close all its remaining 399 stores and go out of business.”

Previously, Najafi had struck a deal as a “stalking horse” bidder for the bankrupt company, basically setting up himself up as the lead in the auction of the bookseller. His company would have assumed $220 million of liabilities along with the sale. According to the WSJ, Borders’ creditors feared that they would lose money in this potential scenario and thought they could collect more money from a liquidation deal for the bookstore chain.

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Happy National Poetry Month? In the video embedded above, Charlie Sheen reads his original poem, “Big White Phone.” Sheen self-published a poetry compilation back in the 90′s.

In February, he began pursuing a book deal. Esquire magazine created a Dr. Seuss-stylized-parody cartoon along with a “Charlie Sheen quote generator.”

Speaking of quotes, The Associated Press reports that Sheen has “applied to trademark 22 of his catchphrases including ‘Duh, Winning,’ ‘Vatican Assassin,’ ‘Tiger Blood’ and ‘Rock Star From Mars.’” (via Sarah Weinman)