The Strange Courtship of Abigail Bird by John Blumenthal

I'm introverted and admittedly somewhat lazy by nature, so I decided to become an author at the age of 9 when I realized I could do it at home. I've also written for television and am the co-author of the movies 'Blue Streak' (Sony Pictures) and 'Short Time' (Fox). My articles have appeared in TV Guide, Punch, The National Lampoon, Los Angeles Times, Today's Health, Mens Life, American Woman, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Chicago Sun Times, Oui,, Huff Post, Publishers Weekly and numerous other publications. These include the novels, 'The Case of the Hardboiled Dicks,' 'The Tinseltown Murders,' the award-winning 'What’s Wrong with Dorfman?' and 'Millard Fillmore, Mon Amour' as well as the recently-published 'Three and a Half Virgins'. Martin's Press, Simon & Schuster and Ballantine Books. I have written eight other books for publishers such as St. (It recently won the 2019 Next Generation Book Award for Fiction.) My sixth novel, THE STRANGE COURTSHIP OF ABIGAIL BIRD (Regal House) was published in October 2019. I have plied that trade for about 15 years. Then came four years of screenwriting (2 movies made: 'Short Time'- Fox and 'Blue Streak'-Sony) ), followed by my present line of work-novelist. The novel is peppered with a cast of eccentric characters-a college dean obsessed with orchids, a Greek landlord with an affinity for Hemingway, and a self-important writer who vies with Ishmael for Abigail’s affections.īack in the day, I was an editorial staffer at Esquire, and later an editor, writer and columnist at Playboy magazine. Will Ishmael’s strange new courtship of Abigail succeed? Will she change back to her original state? Will he find the nerve to risk rejection and declare his love? Did she love him prior to her accident? Although Abigail is inexplicably changed, Ishmael decides to resume his courtship but must find a way to connect with the Abigail Bird with whom he had originally fallen in love. This undefined relationship is cut abruptly short when Abigail suffers a head injury that causes fiction to become fact and vice versa.

Unfortunately, her past failures at love also equal his own so their romance proceeds undeclared as they both shyly dance around the subject.

The situation changes when Professor Archer teaches a summer creative writing class, where he encounters the luminescent Abigail Bird, a student whose passion for literature equals his own.

While he yearns for female companionship, a bitter divorce followed by a series of romantic disasters have left him emotionally fragile. Meet Ishmael Archer, a man beset by a profound lack of social skills, an obsession with classic literature, and the peculiar speaking style of a Dickens character. A quirky, heartwarming story about two eccentric bookworms who fall in love, described by some readers as a 'page-turner.'

The Strange Courtship of Abigail Bird by John Blumenthal