Welcome to this week’s Free Book Friday, wherein we give you the best titles in indie publishing for the low low price of nothing. Congrats to last week’s winner Penny for getting a free copy of Black Boxes by Caroline Smailes.

This week, we are giving away a copy of They Is Us by Tama Janowitz. Oryx & Crake meets Douglas Coupland. An unforgettable vision of the future of America. Years from now America finds itself split between the rich and the poor. The haves live in luxury within the small regions that remain unpolluted while the have-nots inhabit a toxic suburbia full of terrorism, crime and genetic mutations. Perhaps not all that different from today then? They Is Us tells the story of one family from the poor side as they go about their daily lives. Julie has a job as a summer intern at an animal laboratory. She can’t resist taking home the discarded mutants and her house is filled with genetic cast offs. Her mother, Murielle, has kicked out her stepfather and now, seemingly from nowhere, finds herself subject to the attentions of multi-millionaire businessman A.J.M. Bishrop. Set against a backdrop of increasingly invasive technology, growing pollution and the President of the USA’s impending gay marriage (to be broadcast live across the nation) They Is Us features a cast of unforgettable characters that will stick in your mind long after you finish the book.

This week’s Free Book Friday is sponsored by The Friday Project. Read more »

I was inspired by Jacket Copy’s classic literature web movie and so put together one of my own using the simple (and free) online animated moviemaking tool xtranormal. Below is a video featuring part of a scene from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet–with the titular characters as robots. Xtranormal only has sterile, computer-generated voices to provide the dialogue, but in this context I’m thinking it kind of works.

After the jump, watch Jacket Copy’s Pride and Prejudice web video. Read more »

Vonnegut-inspired needlepoint.

Speaking of, here is an interesting interview with Kurt Vonnegut, which The Paris Review composited from four interviews done with the author over the past decade, so it’s more like an interview “conducted with himself, by himself.” Via The Rumpus.

Here is a question I would like an answer to: why is there no Jewish Narnia?

I hope you enjoyed all those great writing tips from The Guardian over the past few weeks. Now the parodies (sort of) have arrived:

From Probably just a story, via HTMLGIANT:

3. If your plot is too exciting or moving too fast, enhance realism by making your characters stop for a meal at an ethnic restaurant. Describe each course and allow your characters to re-cap the plot so far.

13. Write what you know, especially you white people out there.

From The Measure:

1. All of humanity’s power and complexity can be found in season two of Star Trek: Next Generation.

3. Write in your underpants.

From The Globe and Mail, via Bookninja:

1. Never snack while writing; consume only complete meals – a starch, two vegetables and one serving lean protein (remember that one serving is about the size of a pack of playing cards.)

2. Marry somebody who will cook this.

9. If an irate reader should break into your home, tie you to a chair and terrorize you with selections from the cutlery drawer, think back to your most recent novel. Was its point of view inconsistent? Did you at any time make use of the second person, or urban slang, even ironically? Did you attempt to underscore the significance of an action by describing it as having been performed “to the max”? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, accept what you have coming.

Aaaaand because I love you, here is a video of a reinterpretation of Hamlet, which demonstrates how the play would have ended much differently if Ophelia had a sassy gay friend: Read more »