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I owe the idea for this book to the confluence of two events: I joined Facebook in April last year, and my son was born in May. New moms are perfect prey for Facebook's seductive vortex of time drainage. We're up at all hours, we're often tethered to our couches holding a baby and/or laptop, and Facebook doesn't require us to do much short of writing status updates, which in the first months of motherhood are mostly things like "Sarah ate in a RESTAURANT."

I'd had grand plans for my maternity leave to work on--yes, I was that naïve--a novel. But two months in, all I could muster was Nick at Nite and looking at Facebook a lot, trying not to do anything noticeable that would time-stamp me at 3:21 A.M. I became fascinated with the Facebook news feed-that bastion, at least then, of new friendships, group-joinings and newly--announced fandom--but mostly in what people decided to write in their status updates. I noticed some people would overshare, saying things you wouldn't think they'd want 250 of their closest "friends" to know. Combine that with English-major baggage and the creative juices that flow when one can recall seeing every sunrise in recent memory, and one night I began to wonder: what's the strangest thing you could reveal in a status update? I thought about what Ophelia would write when she began to lose her mind. Something nonsensical about flowers? And soon, in the dark, I had notes for "Hamlet's" news feed: "The king poked the queen," "The queen poked the king," "Hamlet became a fan of Daggers."

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Describing my new book to people who don't use social media or aren't into classic literature can be hard. To most people who are Facebook-friendly and love books, it usually goes a bit smoother. But my default, best expression to explain what's in this book is "Facebook Lit."

I know. The term sounds like a make-your-own-course title for a sixth-year undergrad at a progressive college. But Facebook Lit has been my creative challenge-and my job-since the night a year ago when, with a newborn and few functioning brain cells, I began to wonder what Ophelia would have posted on Facebook as she strayed to the fun side of sanity.

The piece I wrote, "Hamlet (Facebook News Feed Edition," for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, inspired Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don't Float. And since then, others have written news feed versions of everything from the Book of Genesis to The Aeneid, not to mention Slate's ongoing Obama news feed and a Facebook group of world leaders in The Atlantic. There are also, of course, Twitter novels-classics and those solely in tweet form.

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This week, I'm very excited to introduce my book, Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don't Float: Classic Lit Signs on to Facebook. It's just as it sounds-a giant mash-up of classic literature and social networking. Everyone is here: Jane Austen and Kurt Vonnegut, Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Dante and the Brontës and George Orwell and Edgar Allan Poe, all representing their finest work: from Beowulf to Lolita, The Odyssey to Ulysses. And just as we all do in social media, they update their statuses, post awkward photos, make strange comments, play time-sucking games and take an inordinate amount of quizzes. (Though, being "classic," what they do is a whole lot more interesting.)

But why let me do all of the explaining? Here's an abridged version of the book's introduction, where Shakespeare himself lays out the rules of this "network," while inviting these classics into his "Admirable, Righteous, Singular and Incomparable Booke Club Group."

TO MY MOST NOBLE, HONORABLE, PRAISEWORTHY AND ATTRACTIVE PURCHASERS. I MEAN BRETHEREN. HERIN SHALL WE RESIDE A SPELL AMONG THE COMPANY OF SUCH GREAT MINDS AS TO

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Sarah Schmelling is our guest blogger during the week of August 24th. If you have any questions for Sarah Schmelling , add a comment to any of her posts. Here is some more information about Ophelia Joined The Group Maidens Who Don't Float: Classic Lit Signs On To Facebook:

When humorist Sarah Schmelling transformed Hamlet into a Facebook news feed on McSweeney's, it launched the next big humor trend-Facebook lit. In this world, the king "pokes" the queen, Hamlet becomes a fan of daggers, and Ophelia renounces her interest in moody princes. Now, what began as an internet phenomenon is a book. Ophelia Joined The Group Maidens Who Don't Float: Classic Lit Signs on to Facebook is a clever spoof of the most-trafficked social networking website and a playful game of literary who's who. The book brings more than fifty authors and stories from classic literature back to life and online, and it is sure to have book lovers and Facebook addicts alike twittering with joy.