The Weird Week in Writing: Crashing Stephen King’s place, Star Trek zombies, and dictionary drama

Freaky Friday—the latest from the weird and wonderful world of writing this week (followed, as always, by a prompt). Happy weekend!

Crashing King: Sure, you feel bad enough when you have a minor fender bender or when you accidentally reverse into your neighbor’s mailbox. But what if you swerved to avoid an oncoming car and caused $100,000 in damage to Stephen King’s custom fence—the one adorned with gargoyles and spiders? (Insert Christine joke here.)

RIP, OED: Although it still needs about 10 years of work, the hulking third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary—the one that a team of 80 lexicographers has been working on for more than two decades—isn’t likely to ever see print. Other nerds and I can now sneak off to consult how “heartbroken” is properly formatted and phonetically annotated in our 1989 editions.

Sarah Palin—One-Shot Wonder? A new single-issue comic book features the former Alaska governor saving the world from oil spills and nuclear meltdowns using … steam. That’s right: It’s Steampunk Palin time.

The Final (Mashup) Frontier: A new book features a Star Trek convention overrun by zombies who, apropos, happen to be undead Klingons and other Trek villains (and not wily antagonizing Star Wars fans). Hero Complex has the scoop on Night of the Living Trekkies.

HULK SPAWN! The last time I wrote about Drunk Hunk, the awesome inebriated superhero literary critic on Twitter, he had been unmasked. Curiously, a handful of other publishing-minded tweeting Hulks have sprung up, from Editor Hulk to Grammar Hulk to Franzen Hulk. And Bookstore Hulk: “BSHULK BELIEVE BOOKS MAKE EXCELLENT GIFTS. DESPITE LARGE GREEN FINGERS, HULK DEFT GIFTWRAPPER.”

Terribly Awkward Texting: Courtesy of Textees, a new finger-cap thing ($13) that helps you text better, and provides valuable lessons on the dark side of text errors with the following rap-infused commercial.

(Image of King's house: Via)

* * *

WRITING PROMPT: You can't handle the truth.
Feel free to take the following prompt home or post a
response (500 words or fewer, funny, sad or stirring) in the Comments section below.
By posting, you’ll be automatically entered in our
occasional around-the-office swag drawings.
If
you’re having trouble with the
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writersdigest@fwmedia.com, with “Promptly” in the subject line, and I’ll
make sure it gets up.

It was a longshot, but your agent sold your memoir.
Now, meeting with your new publisher, you’re beginning to think the whole thing might have been a mistake.
“It’s incredible,” the publisher says. “And, I assume it’s all 100 percent true?”
You pause.

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