…and now, to conclude Reviews Of Novels By Other Youngish White American Men Week, I give you this piece on Ben Marcus’s “The Flame Alphabet,” from the Times Book Review.

My review of Chad Harbach’s The Art Of Fielding, temporarily flaunting itself openly on this side of the LRB paywall. Click while it’s hot!

Happy New Year. A few new things are coming out, and I’ll be doing a couple of university appearances in the coming months. First, I’ve written a book review for the January 22 issue of the New York Times Book Review; I’ve also got another long review coming soon in the London Review of Books. Both are of celebrated/anticipated novels, please look out for them!

I’m going to be in Sarasota, Florida January 17-20 to work with film students at the Ringling College of Art and Design; not sure yet if this will involve a public reading, but check their events calendar if you live in the area. And I will be giving a reading at Kingston University in London, at 7:30pm on March 1st. I’ll post more details as I get them.

Finally, here’s a new Inverse Room song, “Her Lifestyle Tools,” which will likely appear on some eventual new album. It may interest you to know that most of the lyrics came from this online random paragraph generator. (Please note the delightfully retro Firefox 3 and “Powered by Microsoft.net” logos.) Enjoy.

Her Lifestyle Tools by inverseroom

Oh yeah...those of you who have been using the Random Poem Idea Generator--it's in the links folder above, in the navigation bar. I'll be adding other stuff there, too--links to interviews, articles, and stories published online, among other things.

If you’ve been here before, you might notice that the website is undergoing an overhaul. There’s a new layout, new pages for video and my classes at Cornell, a clearer list of books with links to buy them, and a twitter feed in the sidebar. The “read online” page is gone, but most of that content is available in Video Game Hints, which you can download in the sidebar. The rest I hope to post on a new page before too long. Thanks for visiting; please let me know if anything is not working right or is unclear.

I’ve got a new story, “Total Humiliation in 1987,” out now in the new Epoch, and two short-shorts coming out soon in the Los Angeles Review. My review of Chris Adrian’s The Great Night has just been published in the London Review of Books, and the 2011 Best American Nonrequired Reading is now available; it includes my story “Weber’s Head.” Finally, I’ve got a new story, “Cottage On The Hill,” in the new experimental fiction annual Unstuck.

Books: my next novel, Familiar, will be published by Graywolf in October 2012, and I am told that the Happyland ebook release is imminent. Fingers crossed on that. It contains a lot of never-before-published content, 30,000 words’ worth in fact.

Salon has asked a bunch of writers to imagine the final days of Mummar Ghaddafi, so here's my take. It's called "Blood In The Corners" and features Carl Sagan's "Cosmos," Tina Turner, "The Breakfast Club," and a Rubik's Cube.

I'm happy to announce the publication of a new e-book of 21 short shorts, accompanied by illustrations from the great and peculiar Lou Beach. The book is called The Great Zombini and can be purchased anywhere that e-books are sold, including Amazon.com. In other e-book news, Dzanc Books will soon be bringing out electronic editions of my first three out-of-print novels...and we are hard at work on a complete and unabridged e-book edition of Happyland! This will be its first time in print as a full book; I will keep you posted.

CBS's UNFORGETTABLE premieres September 20! Unforgettable, the new CBS police procedural based on a short story of mine, premieres September 20. It will air Tuesday nights at 10 eastern, and stars Poppy Montgomery as an NYPD detective who is blessed (and cursed) with the ability to remember everything. Dylan Walsh co-stars.

My talk from the 2011 Colgate Writers' Conference, "The Shape Of The Novel," is now available to watch on YouTube; my reading (of the short story "Weber's Head," soon to be anthologized in the new Best American Nonrequired Reading) with the amazing Dana Spiotta is also up and ready to watch. Both can be seen on the video page.

Finally, I am doing a little low-grade public microblogging on Google+. Permalink at right. Feel free to stop by and comment.

Hi. It's spring. I've got a couple of events coming up. First, for Ithacans: on Saturday, April 2, 5pm, I will be joining Amy Dickinson and Jaime Warburton at the State Of The Art Gallery (120 W. State) for Three April Fools!, a comedy reading, featuring music by Elsa and the awesomeAWESOMES. Please come! We will pass the hat to benefit Buffalo Street Books, Ithaca's community-owned independent bookstore.

I will also be reading at The University Of Vermont, in Burlington, Thursday, April 7 at 7:30pm. Details here.

There's new stuff of mine to read. Here on this website, check out my Random Poem Idea Generator, an ongoing javascript project to provide students with poetry inspiration, and the rest of you with amusing nonsequiturs. My short story "Portal" is now out in Weird Tales, and my next novel, Familiar, should be published next year.

Finally, don't forget, you can still sign up for the Colgate Writers' Conference! Hope to see you there this June.

At the moment, I am tweeting a lot. Follow my 140-character ravings here, or read the most recent tweets in the column on the right.

Issue No. 5 of Elecrtic Literature is out now! Read my story "Hibachi" in it. I had a great time reading for the magazine in New York last week, along with co-contributors Lynne Tillman and Ben Greenman; here's a video from NBC New York.

To my surprise, my reading from the 2007 Colgate Writers' Conference has been posted on YouTube. (Thanks, Cody.) Watch it here. Also, I'll be teaching the short story workshop there this June, click here to sign up. Finally, Open Letters interviewed me about, of all things, my photography. Please check it out!

Two new things, one cheap, one free.  The first: an audiobook of Castle is now available from Iambik.com, a new indie audiobook retailer.  The price is an amazing $4.99, and the audio files are DRM-free. The book is ably read by Mark Douglas Nelson, and it's complete and unabridged.

The free thing is a new greatest non-hits collection from Inverse Room, Oversharer: Songs 2000-2010.  Visit the music page to download.  The album contains 22 tracks, ripped at 256kbps, from my decade of musical self-indulgence, including one brand new track, a cover of "Girls Just Want To Have Fun."  Just extract the files from the zip folder and drag into iTunes.