Fernando French Publishing

w-nchesters: Look what came in today! I’m really excited to...

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:02:38 -0400

Look what came in today!
I’m really excited to (finally) read it and then put it on my staff picks and sell it to ALL the people!

Nick Miller on Novel Songs

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 15:16:02 -0500

Nick Miller on Novel Songs: novelsongs: A Listening Companion | audio available here for two...

Nick Miller on 91.5 WMFO

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 09:52:31 -0500

nickmiller: Is anyone awake right now? I’m about to do a radio show on 91.5 WMFO about writing and...

Catch Nick this Saturday morning on 91.5 WMFO. He’ll...

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 17:10:19 -0500

Catch Nick this Saturday morning on 91.5 WMFO. He’ll discuss books and music on the radio show Novel Songs with host Catherine Maldonado. The show begins Saturday at 10 a.m. Listen in live at WMFO.org.

Paperback and Vinyl Giveaway by Friday

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 15:50:48 -0500

Paperback and Vinyl Giveaway by Friday: We’re giving away some stuff, and you have until...

nickmiller: The Farmer’s Daughter Hotel—the lovely boutique in...

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 21:03:38 -0500

nickmiller:

The Farmer’s Daughter Hotel—the lovely boutique in Los Angeles that inspired me to write my novel, Isn’t It Pretty To Think So?—invited me to come stay with them. I brought my camera to capture the experience. See the rest of the photos here.

bendandbrew: Being laid up with a broken knee means you are...

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:24:20 -0500

bendandbrew:

Being laid up with a broken knee means you are afforded a lot more time to read all of those books you promised to read. You know the list: the “I’ll read this later” right before you save to Pocket, the dozens of pre-orders that are automatically shipped to your Kindle where it sits neglected as the charge runs low and you spend a month forgetting to plug the damn thing back in.

I found Nick Miller again after slowly rebuilding my Tumblr (never mind what happened to the last one, the cops will never find it) and was reminded of the novel that I never read over the summer.

Isn’t It Pretty To Think So? , derived from the concluding line of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, is an excellent comment on our reality-starved, emotionally-static, facebook-fixated times. The story follows Jake Reed through Southern California’s vistas, neighborhoods, lifestyles, succeses and massive failures.

Initially this comes off as the first novel written about characters who are struggling to be writers. Typically, this makes for a rather narcissistic story. In Miller’s case, it works as the main character talks more about writing than he actually writes (for most of the book, anyway).

My biggest takeaway? Life doesn’t matter much if you loose the appetite to learn.

Worth checking out.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, famous writer and inventor of the awkward...

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 13:19:28 -0500

F. Scott Fitzgerald, famous writer and inventor of the awkward family photo.

A Dark and Itchy Night

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 10:10:00 -0500

A Dark and Itchy Night: It turns out that tiny bedbugs and their eggs can hide in the spines of...

Here’s another mind fuck: On the show “New...

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 14:12:00 -0500

Here’s another mind fuck: On the show “New Girl,” Nick Miller has a roommate named Jess. In real life, Nick Miller had a roommate named Jesse. WHAT THE HELL, FOX??

nickmiller: Happy holidays, readers! As a thank you for all...

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 22:46:45 -0500

nickmiller:

Happy holidays, readers! As a thank you for all your support, I’d like to give away one signed copy of my novel, Isn’t It Pretty To Think So? Heart/reblog/reply at this post, and I’ll pick one of you at random and announce the winner next Wednesday (December 12th).

Also, the eBook version is on sale for 99 cents during the holidays. You can get it on Kindle and NOOK.

We’re currently at #32. Mark Twain, you better watch out...

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 13:15:38 -0500

We’re currently at #32. Mark Twain, you better watch out because WE’RE COMING FOR YOU!

Get “Isn’t It Pretty To Think So?” for 99 cents, yo.

A Pretty Holiday Sale -"Isn't It Pretty" now 99¢

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 14:57:00 -0500

The holidays are approaching, and we’d like to extend our holiday cheer with a Wes...

slaughterhouse90210: BOOKS I LOVED IN 2012 I hate ranking the...

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 13:36:18 -0500

slaughterhouse90210:

BOOKS I LOVED IN 2012

I hate ranking the things I love. So this year, I decided to go high school yearbook-style and give all of my 2012 book crushes some fancy superlatives. All have provided great source material, and all are highly recommended.

BEST BOOK TO TALK ABOUT IN THERAPY: The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg

Jami made me feel so many feeeeeeeeeeeelings about food and family and self-destruction and bar mitzvahs. Her masterful novel about the various members of the titular flawed family is mid-sized in length, epic in scope. Catharsis guaranteed.

BEST STORY COLLECTION: Birds of a Lesser Paradise by Megan Mayhew Bergman

We are all savage animals. All of us. Megan’s stories celebrate wildlife even as they capture the moments in human nature when biology takes over, when instinct and emotion trump rationality or common sense.

I also loved: Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins

BEST COMING OF AGE: Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

Shut up. That totally wasn’t me crying on the subway while reading Tell the Wolves I’m Home. I wasn’t brought to tears by the achingly vivid portrayal of adolescent suburban anguish in the 1980s, as the American AIDS crisis stoked paranoia and intolerance throughout the nation. It wasn’t me! Side note: my favorite Goodreads review of this novel consists solely of the lyrics to the angry countdown part of the Violent Femmes’ “Kiss Off”—if that’s not teen angst, what is?

I also loved: The Round House by Louise Erdrich

BEST BREAKUP MIXTAPE: This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz

At this point you already know if you like Junot Díaz’s writing style. You don’t need me to tell you about it. You love it, right? It makes you wish you’d paid more attention in Spanish class, right? This collection slayed me because it circles around the lead up to and fall out from a monumental breakup, even though it’s about 8 zillion other things as well—disease, death, obsession, the immigrant experience, hyper-masculinity, New Jersey. You know, all the major topics.

BEST TAKEDOWN OF THE AMERICAN DREAM: Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

A pop culture-heavy novel about the disillusionment of an Iraq War vet set during a Dallas Cowboys game. Somehow it manages to be deadly serious even as it’s bitingly funny. If the politics are a little heavy-handed at times, at least the author is preaching to a Destiny’s Child-loving choir (yes, Beyonce does make a halftime appearance).

I also loved: The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers

BEST VINTAGE READ THAT STILL FEELS VITAL: The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes

Originally published in 1963, with a sparkly new edition released in 2012, Hughes’s crime fiction masterpiece screwed with all of my preconceptions of what noir could be. Even as The Expendable Man details the plight of a protagonist with spectacularly bad wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time luck, it manipulates our expectations and reveals our prejudices. Knife-cuttable tension abounds.

MOST WELL-ROUNDED: The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson

If your most lasting impressions of North Korean culture came from 30 Rock or Team America, it’s probably time to read this novel. Yes, it’s a work of fiction, but the author’s research is evident on every nightmarish, devastating, surreally funny page. In telling the life story of a North Korean Everyman (his name is Jun Do AKA John Doe), Johnson creates a full multi-genre experience—part thriller, part romance, part farce, part serious exploration of life under a dictatorship. Basically, it’s like 1984, but with more karaoke.

SEXIEST: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

I’ve always found Greek mythology kinda boring, so many thanks to Madeline Miller for making me care. Her novel portrays Achilles as a charming yet fallible Greek god who is made vulnerable not by his famous heels, but by his pride and petulance and his wild love for his “companion” AKA soul mate, Patroclus. The book contains many hot sex scenes (you don’t stand a chance, E.L. James) and many tender moments even in the heat of war. It’s as much a love story as it is a tale of the battlefield (clearly the two are related, Pat Benatar-style).

BEST PERSONALITY: Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

You know when you just want to read a book that’s breezy and fun, but also really clever and sharp? Here you go. Dysfunctional family mania at its finest.

BEST READ FOR LITERARY TECHIES: Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Finally, there’s a mystery for those of us who live and breathe the Bookternet. For all of us nerds who love the smell and feel of a musty old book just as much as we love our shiny new technology. The push and pull of new vs. old creates much of the drama here, bringing us from a fascinating old bookshop to the sprawling campus of Google to the headquarters of an age-old secret society.

BEST BAD GUYS: The Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn

Three previously published novellas were repackaged this year into this exquisite volume, featuring characters so privileged, so terrible, so evil, they make Bret Easton Ellis’s characters look like little bitches. It’s divine, then, that in the depiction of so much ugliness, every single sentence is gorgeous. Every single last one.

BEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA: Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures by Emma Straub

We’ve all seen films about the ingenue who becomes a nightmare diva, the Behind the Music episodes of rock stars getting big and then imploding. Emma’s debut novel is a standout because she takes the familiar story of a small-town girl making good in Hollywood and makes it feel intimate, nuanced. Here’s a cinematic story that’s devoid of melodrama—it’s Laura’s humanity that ultimately makes her unforgettable.

MOST EMPOWERING: Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed

Wild was incredible. Oprah and your mom and I agree. But put down the hiking boots and delve into Cheryl Strayed’s Dear Sugar advice column, which specializes in the most beautiful-sounding real-talk I’ve ever heard. Most self-help makes my skin crawl, so what a revelation to find practical nonfiction that inspires and never cloys.

MOST CINEMATIC: Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

At the risk of sounding like SNL’s Stefon, I’ve gotta say this novel has it all: dramatic scenescapes, tales of desire and loss and poverty and moral ambiguity, sharp parody of modern day Hollywood, and fantastic cameos from everyone’s favorite Lifetime movie subjects—Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. I wanted to crawl inside this book and live there.

BEST NOT-SO-GUILTY PLEASURE BECAUSE I OWN THIS $HIT: My Crazy Beautiful Life by Ke$ha

She’s a genius. Not sorry.

When TV Imitates Real Life

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 23:43:00 -0500

As some of you may know, FOX airs a show called “New Girl,” starring actress Zooey...

The summary that Barnes & Noble wrote up for IIPTTS? is so...

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 15:15:52 -0400

The summary that Barnes & Noble wrote up for IIPTTS? is so much better than the one we came up with. Anyway, the novel has been chosen for their “NOOK First: Compelling Reads from Authors You Need to Know” program, which basically means the book is awesome and you should buy 100 copies.

Fact: Ernest Hemingway’s favorite sandwich was a peanut...

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 17:55:46 -0400

Fact: Ernest Hemingway’s favorite sandwich was a peanut butter and onion sandwich.

Postpartum Postmortem

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 15:33:03 -0400

Postpartum Postmortem: nickmiller: My novel, Isn’t It Pretty To Think So?, was published in June...

BBC News: Author Stephen King was mistaken for a vandal when he...

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 22:18:22 -0400

BBC News:

Author Stephen King was mistaken for a vandal when he started signing books during an unannounced visit to a shop in Australia.

The article is from 2007 but funny nonetheless.

Aw yiss! 100 ratings for “Isn’t It Pretty To Think...

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 15:09:00 -0400

Aw yiss! 100 ratings for “Isn’t It Pretty To Think So?” on Goodreads. Which means at least 100 people have read the novel. Which means they felt strongly enough to write a review. Which means they thought it was the best novel ever written. Our logic is infallible.