The Promise of Failure is part memoir of the writing life, part advice book, and part craft book; sometimes funny, sometimes wrenching, but always honest. McNally uses his own life as a blueprint for the writer’s daily struggles as well as the existential ones, tackling subjects such as when to quit and when to keep going, how to deal with depression, what risking something of yourself means, and ways to reenergize your writing through reinvention. What McNally illuminates is how rejection, in its best light, is another element of craft, a necessary stage to move the writer from one project to the next, and that it’s best to see rejection and failure on a life-long continuum so that you can see the interconnectedness between failure and success, rather than focusing on failure as a measure of self-worth. As brutally candid as McNally can sometimes be, The Promise of Failure is ultimately an inspiring book—never in a Pollyannaish self-help way. McNally approaches the reader as a sympathetic companion with cautionary tales to tell. Written by an author who has as many unpublished books under his belt as published ones, The Promise of Failure is as much for the newcomer as it is for the established writer.
I write this blurb in distress because for years I've been stealing John McNally's sharp insights into writing and publishing and passing them off as my own. Now this generous so-and-so is sharing his vast experience as a writer and editor with everyone. Worse yet, this book, despite its instructional value, is irresistibly, un-put-downably readable."---Timothy Schaffert, author, Devils in the Sugar Shop --
Having written a scathing essay about her disgust with the government's standardized testing process, Jainey skips her final weeks of high school, while part-time test scorer Charlie reads Jainey's essay and recognizes her as a person needing help.
Life is hard for a literary wunderkind after a decade of writer’s block in this “ribald deconstruction . . . of an industry in love with its own absurdities” (Kirkus Reviews). You graduate from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop with a short story published in The New Yorker and subsequently Best American Short Stories. You stay in town and work on your novel. And work on your novel. Until, finally, twelve years have passed . . . and you are working as a media escort for author tours and your unfinished novel sits in a box under your bed. Now your girlfriend has left you. Your car is missing a muffler. Your neighbor is walking around naked because his hands are bandaged and he can’t unzip his pants. You are at the whims of a slew of increasingly unhinged writers, and when one of them disappears, an insane New York publicist begins stalking you. This is the life of Jack Hercules Sheahan, a character well understood by author John McNally. McNally is also a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop as well as a former media escort, and these misadventures are brought to life by his very own. Recalling the wry humor of novels by Nick Hornby and Michael Chabon, After the Workshop tells the satirical story of a writer who confronts the demons from his past while escorting those of his present.
All of us need a Ralph in our lives. Chicago, 1978. Hank Boyd, a solid B+ student, a good kid, wants eighth grade to be his special year. But when Ralph, an oddball troublemaker who ' s been held back twice, gets the idea that he and Hank are pals, Hank's year devolves into an odyssey as frightening as it is hilarious. John McNally, acclaimed author of Troublemakers, deftly portrays the astonishing, sometimes terrifying world of adolescence in 1970s America: The adult world becomes increasingly untrustworthy, the economy plummets, and families seem to be falling apart, yet the two boys manage to create their own small moments of transcendence. At once wary and full of wonder, Hank and Ralph will win your heart with their outrageous, poignant, and occasionally scary antics -- and they will teach you something about the ties that bind us together, hold us back, and redeem us.
Sam Heggarty returns home to hunt for the gunmen who robbed and executed his father. As he makes his way back, he witnesses another murder and stumbles across a clue to the people responsible for his father's death. Sam becomes caught up in the chase to track down an escaped prisoner as he partners up with ageing lawman, County Sheriff Lewis Leeming. He discovers that the one person who may hold the key to the identity of his father's murderers is someone that everyone else is intent on killing. Heggarty will have to save the life of a man involved in his father's death.
Taking off from The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide, John McNally’srelentlessly blunt, bracingly cheerful, and immensely helpful map to being a writer, Vivid and Continuousis an equally blunt, cheerful, and helpful map to learning to be a writer. While acknowledging that many fine books cover such essentials of fiction writing as point of view, characterization, and setting, McNally sets out in this new book—intended as a supplement to beginning fiction-writing classes or as the sole text for upper-level or graduate courses—to solve the tricky second-tier problems that those books cover only in footnotes. Vivid and Continuous takes its inspiration from John Gardner, whose essential truths in On Becoming a Novelist clarified McNally’s goal of communicating a “vivid and continuous dream” with his own writing. In fifteen concise, energizing chapters, he dispenses advice gained from almost thirty years of studying, writing, and teaching. How do you avoid the pitfalls inherent in the most common subjects for stories? How do you create memorable minor characters? What about managing references to pop culture without distracting your readers, revising a story to bring its subtext into focus, or exploring the twenty most common craft-related quirks that lessen immediacy for your readers? How do you keep from overdosing on similes and metaphors or relying on too many flashbacks to provide necessary backstory? How do you learn to listen when your story tries to talk to you? Finally, how can you resist “John McNally’s Sure-Fire Formula for Becoming Funnier in 30 Days”? McNally cites many novels and short stories as examples that best illustrate the lessons he wants to impart, the writer’s life, or the writer’s craft, as well as his own favorite authors’ novels and short story collections. Exercises at the end of each chapter reinforce its point and serve as practical catalysts for new writings and directions. Just blunt enough to get your attention but not blunt enough to crush you, challenging but not discouraging, personal but not ego-ridden, snarky but not mean, John McNally will prompt you to think more deeply about a variety of issues that will push you toward writing more meaningful, more accomplished work.
In the seventeen vividly rendered stories in Ghosts of Chicago, John McNally captures the poignancy of both the shared experiences of a city and the interior details of his everyday characters.
In his first memoir, John gives readers an honest and often mischievous look at his working-class childhood in Midwestern America. This intimate, biting look into John's transient family takes readers through two states, five grade schools, 210 pounds, and a lifetime of insecurity. Like Dickens's David Copperfield, he hopes to be the hero of his own story, but unlike David Copperfield, he is a fat boy who breaks kids' noses in karate and has fantasies of living in a nudist camp with his kindergarten teacher. He saves his family at age four but unwittingly commits a felony at age eight. From an explosive night living in an Illinois trailer park to tumultuous father-son bonding at the flea market, John gives the skinny on life being fat. Hilarious and poignant, John shows readers that, in the end, remembering one's bitter past can, in fact, be sweet.
Sailors Diggings an isolated mining settlement is left reeling when outlaws slaughter seventeen of the stunned population and clean out the assay office stealing $75,000 worth of freshly mined gold. A group of vigilantes led by Don Plunkett give chase determined to dispense some Old West justice. Eddie Carter is mistaken for a gang member and to escape a lynching he must go on the run handcuffed to outlaw leader Dave Mooney, the man responsible for the death of his partner. In the confrontation that follows, the stolen gold disappears with an outcome that nobody could have anticipated.
Characters: 15 male, 3 female Scenery: Interior Winner of multiple Tony Awards including Best Musical, Kiss of the Spider Woman revamps a harrowing tale of persecution into a dazzling spectacle that juxtaposes gritty realities with liberating fantasies. Cell mates in a Latin American prison, Valentin is a tough revolutionary undergoing torture and Molina is an unabashed homosexual serving eight years for deviant behavior. Molina shares his fantasies about an actress, Aurora (originated on Br
This first book-length study on the relationship of the plays by Terrence McNally, one of America's celebrated major dramatists and award-winning playwright about gay life in New York City, to the history of gay theatre during McNally's career, which has spanned more than half a century. The book written by theatre expert John Clum examines McNally's work from the political movements of the 1960s and the history of gay men in New York during the early years of gay liberation, the age of AIDS, and the new reality of gay marriage and families. "This is an original contribution to the field. No scholar has contextualized McNally quite this way. The book impresses with its analytical rigorous yet readable style." -Matthew Roudane, Regents Professor of American Drama, Georgia State University "This is a thorough study of Terrence McNally. The context of gay theatre, gay New York, and gay history is masterfully incorporated, making this book valuable at multiple levels-literary to biographical to historical." -William W. Demastes, Alumni Professor of English, Louisiana State University
High Infidelity brings together twenty-four irresistible stories on the subject of marital betrayal by such virtuosos as John Updike, Margaret Atwood, T. Coraghessan Boyle, and Russell Banks, as well as new voices like Abby Bardi and Gregg Palmer, and even a never-before-published story by Richard Russo, author of Nobody's Fool. This collection embraces poignance and passion, the utterly unexpected and the sadly inevitable -- in short, the whole complicated, contradictory world that unfolds when men and women break their vows.
The first three crime thrillers in an award-winning series starring a tough Florida PI—from the New York Times–bestselling author of Single White Female. New York Times– and USA Today–bestselling author John Lutz has been hailed as “a major talent” by John Lescroart and “one of the masters” by Ridley Pearson. “Lutz offers up a heart-pounding roller coaster” (Jeffery Deaver) in his thrillers and “knows how to make you shiver” (Harlan Coben). “The Carver series is the finest work yet by this prolific author” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch). After a criminal’s bullet shattered not only his knee but also his career as an Orlando cop and his marriage, Fred Carver starts over as a private detective. In this award-winning ten-book series, Lutz’s “dogged Carver is a believably heroic guy, tough, scarred and able to exhibit fear and courage at the same time” (Publishers Weekly). Tropical Heat: The police think Willis Davis committed suicide, but beautiful real-estate broker Edwina Talbot is convinced her missing lover is alive and hires Carver to find him. Following a twisted trail from luxurious beach resorts to the swamps of the Everglades, Carver runs afoul of violent Cubans, a DEA agent, and assorted criminals, all while falling hard for his lovely client. “Lutz has never written leaner prose, and the novel’s ending, especially the last sentence, is a delight.” —USA Today Scorcher: When Carver’s young son becomes the third victim of a serial killer with a homemade flamethrower, the tortured private eye won’t rest until he’s avenged the boy’s death. “The prose is lean, the action fast-paced, the suspense unrelenting . . . superior entertainment.” —The San Diego Union Kiss: After his elderly uncle’s suspicious death at Sunhaven Retirement Home, Lt. Alfonso Desoto hires Carver to find out what’s going on behind the closed doors of the facility. Soon he’s tangling with everyone from a rough head nurse to a brutally sadistic thug. Winner of the Shamus Award. “The grip on the reader is relentless until the final, entirely unforeseen shocker rings down the curtain on Lutz’s best novel so far.” —Publishers Weekly
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