The Weird Week in Writing: New line of Hemingway shoes, Sarah Palin’s tween bio, Faulkner speaking up after all these years

Freaky Friday—the latest from the weird and wonderful world of
writing this week (followed by a prompt):

I write like HP Lovecraft: Or at least that’s what popular robots tell me. This week writers everywhere copied and pasted words into Memoires’ “I Write Like” Web analyzer to see which famous scribe they take after. (Margaret Atwood got Stephen King.) So. HP Lovecraft? Not so bad. And, I proudly note on this Freaky Friday, he was also apparently branded the father of “weird fiction.” (Who did you get?)

Papa gets his kicks: Ernest Hemingway’s (82-year-old) son has a new venture—a line of shoes named after his father.

Drunk Hulk: Unmasked! GalleyCat interviewed the man behind the awesomely all-caps, inebriated superhero Twitter critic. (The Hulk’s take on the previous headline: “MOVEABLE FEETS! HEMINGWAY SON APPROVE HEMINGWAY BRAND SHOE! FOR WHOM THE GEL SOLES! SON ALSO DEVISES!”)

Twilight; Harry Potter; Sarah Palin’s bio: Might a new tween-targeted bio of the former presidential candidate be the next kid-lit hit? (And might it even inspire a mashup like Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter? Except, you know, with wild game/Russia/Democrats.)

And speaking of our most lauded vampire-hunting president: The author behind that book and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Seth Grahame-Smith, is the chosen scribe to draft a script for Tim Burton’s cinematic take on the ‘60s TV show "Dark Shadows."

Taking one for the team: EW’s Breia Brissey on Kendra Wilkinson’s memoir—“I read it so you don’t have to.” The verdict? …

Faulkner breaks his silence: Via some newly digitized archives at the University of Virginia.

And finally, on a serious, sad, unweird note: Rest in peace, Harvey Pekar.

* * *

WRITING PROMPT: Tripping Mr Two
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
captcha code sticking, e-mail your piece and the prompt to me at
writersdigest@fwmedia.com, with “Promptly” in the subject line, and I’ll
make sure it gets up.

It made no sense to him—until he realized it was an anagram. Then, suddenly everything came into focus.

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A
feature package on how to write and sell your
memoir. Interviews with Life of Pi author Yann Martel, and
the scribe behind “True Blood,” Charlaine Harris. The results of our
Pop Fiction competition. New markets for your work. For more, click

here to check the July/August 2010 issue of WD out.

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