John McNally

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.

The Memoir of a Fat Kid

The Boy Who Really, Really Wanted to Have Sex

Beginning with “The Writer’s Wonderland—Or: A Warning” and ending with “You’ve Published a Book—Now What?” The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide is a must-read for creative-writing students and teachers, conference participants, and aspiring writers of every stamp. Directed primarily at fiction writers but suitable for writers of all genres, John McNally’s guide is a comprehensive, take-no-prisoners blunt, highly idiosyncratic, and delightfully subjective take on the writing life. McNally has earned the right to dispense advice on this subject. He has published three novels, two collections of short fiction, and hundreds of individual stories and essays. He has edited six anthologies and worked with editors at university presses, commercial houses, and small presses. He has earned three degrees, including an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and taught writing to thousands of students at nine different universities. But he has received far more rejections than acceptances, has endured years of underpaid adjunct work, and is presently hard at work on a novel for which he has no guarantee of publication. In other words, he’s been at the writing game long enough to rack up plenty of the highs and lows that translate into an invaluable guide for anyone who wants to become a writer or anyone who is already a writer but doesn’t know how to take the next step toward the writing life. In the sections The Decision to Become a Writer, Education and the Writer, Getting Published, Publicity, Employment for Writers, and The Writer’s Life, McNally wrestles with writing degrees and graduate programs, the nuts and bolts of agents and query letters and critics, book signings and other ways to promote your book, alcohol and other home remedies, and jobs for writers from adjunct to tenure-track. Chapters such as “What Have You Ever Done That’s Worth Writing About?” “Can Writing Be Taught?” “Rejection: Putting It in Perspective,” “Writing as a Competitive Sport,” “Seven Types of MLA Interview Committees,” “Money and the Writer,” and the all-important “Talking about Writing vs. Writing” cover a vast range of writerly topics from learning your craft to making a living at it. McNally acts as the writer’s friendly drill sergeant, relentlessly honest but bracingly cheerful as he issues his curmudgeonly marching orders. Alternately cranky and philosophical, full of to-the-point anecdotes and honest advice instead of wonkish facts and figures, The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide is a snarky, truthful, and immensely helpful map to being a writer in today’s complex world.

Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist

The Creative Writer's Survival Guide

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.

Essays and Exercises for Writing Fiction

Vivid and Continuous

A magician shows up unexpectedly at a grade school. Retirees answer phone calls from lonely children. A sleep study assistant speaks to a patient about his own afterlife experiences. Twenty years ago, Richard Russo wrote of Troublemakers, "John McNally is an electrifying writer whose stories burrow under the skin. His world becomes our world, his way of seeing, ours. Resistance is futile." The same is true of these nine stories that are by turns fantastical, hilarious, and heartbreaking.

Stories

The Fear of Everything

A collecton of humorous works by writers of color includes the work of Sherman Alexie, Erika Lopez, Jim Northrup, Gish Jen, Charles Johnson, and Lucille Clifton, among others. Original.

An Anthology of Humor by Writers of Color

Humor Me

A new collection of short stories feature Chicago popular culture and such famous Chicagoans as Nelson Algren, Richard J. Daley, Walter Payton, and John Belushi.

Ghosts of Chicago

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.

A Memoir by Jack Hercules Sheahan : a Novel

After the Workshop

Get shrunk! Humour and high-stakes combine in the action-packed Infinity Drake series. A BIG adventure with a tiny hero!

The Forbidden City (Infinity Drake, Book 2)

George Moore

Joseph Grant

Hugh Fox

Libby Cudmore

Austin Hackney

Katia Noyes

Bill Hillmann

Murphy Edwards

R. G. Johnson

William Prystauk

Calvin Seen

Mike Sauve

Matthew Wilding

Michael Giorgio

Mark Fellin

Stephen De France

Jim Boring

Jessica Comola

David Weiden

D. G. Bracey

Flynn O'Brien

Ryan Mattern

Brett Spencer

Luke Crumley

Frankie Leone

Matthew C. Funk

Behnam Riahi

Devon Polderman

Kimberly Warner-Cohen

Kathryn Morrill

Sarah Van Den Bosch

Alanna Belak

Arron J. Marko

Criminal Class Review

Joe McNally

Richard Pitman

Hunted

Ein Actionthriller aus der Froschperspektive: Winzigkleine Helden kämpfen gegen riesige Gegner wie Insekten, Regentropfen und Hauskatzen. Ihre Waffen sind Witz, Scharfsinn und Coolness. Endlich eine Abenteuerreihe mit Humor. Großartig! "Witzig, aufregend, hi(r)nreißend gut!" Derek Landy Infinity Drake, genannt Finn, und sein verrückter Onkel Al sind gerade auf dem Weg in die Ferien, als Al zu einer internationalen Krisenkonferenz abberufen wird. Die Welt steht vor einer globalen Katastrophe: Im Süden Englands wurde ein sogenannter Scarlatti freigesetzt, ein Killerinsekt, das innerhalb weniger Tage die halbe Menschheit auslöschen könnte. Sofort wird ein Interventionsteam zusammengestellt, das den Scarlatti verfolgen und vernichten soll. Es gibt bereits eine heiße Spur, aber der Scarlatti ist so klein wie ein Daumen und schwirrt durch ein Gebiet so groß wie die ganze Grafschaft Surrey. Nur ein Team, das genauso winzig ist, hat eine reale Chance ihn zu finden. Eine durchgeknallte Idee? Nein, denn Onkel Al hat eine Maschine erfunden, mit der die gesamte Crew auf durchschnittlich 9 Millimeter geschrumpft werden kann. Ein hochriskanter Auftrag, für den nur speziell ausgebildete Agenten in Frage kommen. Kurz nachdem er das Team auf seine gefährliche Mission geschickt hat, vermisst Onkel Al plötzlich seinen Neffen Infinity ... "Scarlattis Söhne" ist der erste Band der Infinity Drake-Trilogie. Mehr Infos rund um Infinity Drake unter: infinitydrake.de

Infinity Drake (Band 1) - Scarlattis Söhne

Dave Eggers

Neil Gaiman

Margaret Atwood

Bonnie Jo Campbell

Kelly Link

Charles Yu

Joe Hill

Audrey Niffenegger

Ramsey Campbell

David Morrell

Robert McCammon

Alice Hoffman

Harlan Ellison

Dan Chaon

Sam Weller

Mort Castle

Joe Meno

Lee Martin

Julia Keller

Jay Bonansinga

Gary Braunbeck

Thomas F. Monteleone

John Maclay

Bayo Ojikutu

Jacqelyn Mitchard

Antológiánk ​lapjain korunk angolszász spekulatív irodalmának legnagyobb alakjai tisztelegnek a közelmúltban elhunyt Mester előtt történeteikkel, melyek hol felemelőek, hol borongósak, hol szentimentálisak, hol hátborzongatóak, de valamennyi új és új kaland a képzelet határtalan birodalmában. NEIL GAIMAN (Sandman; Amerikai istenek) • MARGARET ATWOOD (Guvat és Gazella; A szolgálólány meséje) • JAY BONANSINGA (Száguldás a halálba; Agyrém) • SAM WELLER • DAVID MORRELL (Rambo; Settenkedők) • THOMAS F. MONTELEONE • LEE MARTIN • JOE HILL (A szív alakú doboz; Szarvak) • DAN CHAON • JOHN MCNALLY • JOE MENO • ROBERT MCCAMMON (Csak az enyém) • RAMSEY CAMPBELL • MORT CASTLE • ALICE HOFFMAN (Hetedik mennyország; Átkozott boszorkák) • JOHN MACLAY • JACQUELYN MITCHARD (Az óceán mélye) • GARY BRAUNBECK • BONNIE JO CAMPBELL • AUDREY NIFFENEGGER (Az időutazó felesége) • CHARLES YU • JULIA KELLER • DAVE EGGERS (Ahol a vadak várnak; Az árvízi csónakos) • BAYO OJIKUTU • KELLY LINK (Különb dolgok is) • HARLAN ELLISON

Ray Bradbury emlékére

Árnyak ​és rémek

A collection of nineteen short stories about baseball include contributions from Jim Shepard, Stuart Dybek, Owen King, Patricia Highsmith, Andre Dubus, Ray Gonzalez, and Floyd Skloot, among others. (Story Collection)

Great Contemporary Baseball Short Stories

Bottom of the Ninth

Promising eighth-grade student Hank befriends troublemaker Ralph, who encourages Hank to engage in unscrupulous activities in their 1978 Chicago neighborhood that set the groundwork for more serious behaviors in their adult lives.

A Novel

The Book of Ralph

Humour and high adventure combine in the biggest action debut in years – even if its characters are very small.

The Sons of Scarlatti (Infinity Drake, Book 1)

Humour and high adventure combine in the biggest, new action adventure in years -- even if its characters are very small. Infinity Drake -- aka Finn -- is off on holiday with his mad scientist uncle when they are summoned to a crisis meeting. Scarlatti, a lethal bio-weapon -- an uber-wasp killing machine -- has been released by a pitiless villain with incalculable consequences for mankind. UNLESS Uncle Al can shrink a military team to track down and kill the beast. But then disaster strikes -- sabotage! Finn gets shrunk to 9mm and has to jump in a tiny Apache helicopter with three soldiers in a desperate race to destroy the beast that's out there, very angry and many times their size...

Infinity Drake: The Sons of Scarlatti

James Bond war gestern: Wie ein moderner Gulliver kämpft ein winzigkleiner Held gegen gigantische Widersacher. Seine Waffen sind Witz, Scharfsinn und Coolness sowie jede Menge wissenschaftliche Facts. Ein grandioser Actionthriller aus der Froschperspektive, und auch noch mit Humor. Großartig! Ein neuer Fall für das millimetergroße Nano-Einsatzteam, zu dem auch der 13-jährige Finn gehört: Ausgerechnet in die größte Hardwarefabrik der Welt ist eine Armee bösartiger Nanobots eingedrungen, winzig kleine Roboter, die eine Art "Schwarmintelligenz" besitzen und die hier hergestellten Spielekonsolen und Smartphones infizieren. Und damit in die ganze Welt verschickt werden könnten. Ein Zusammenbruch der globalen Computersysteme wäre die Folge. Totale Kontrolle und Manipulation, vielleicht sogar die Auslöschung der Menschheit. Noch während das Einsatzteam sich bereit macht, werden Finn und Oma plötzlich entführt ... "Jagd in der verbotenen Stadt" ist der zweite Band der Infinity Drake-Trilogie.

Infinity Drake 2 - Jagd in der verbotenen Stadt

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.

America's Report Card

Owen King

Twenty-two of today's most talented writers (and comics fans) unite in Who Can Save Us Now?, an anthology featuring brand-new superheroes equipped for the threats and challenges of the twenty-first century -- with a few supervillains thrown in for good measure. Edited and with contributions by Owen King (We're All in This Together) and John McNally (America's Report Card), Who Can Save Us Now? enriches the superhero canon immeasurably. With mutations stranger than the X-Men and with even more baggage than the Hulk, this next generation of superheroes is a far cry from your run-of-the-mill caped crusader. From the image-conscious and not-very-mysterious masked meathead who swoops in and sweeps the tough girl reporter off her feet; to the Meerkat, who overcomes his species' cute and cuddly image to become the resident hero in a small Midwestern city; to the Silverfish, "the creepy superhero," who fights crime while maintaining the slipperiest of identities; to Manna Man, who manipulates the minds of televangelists to serve his own righteous mission, these protectors (and in some cases antagonizers) of the innocent and the virtuous will delight literary enthusiasts and comic fans alike. With stunning illustrations by artist Chris Burnham, Who Can Save Us Now? offers a vibrant, funny, and truly unusual array of characters and their stories.

Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories

Who Can Save Us Now?

A varied anthology of short fiction explores the complex world of college life, capturing the triumphs, tragedies, intrigues, awakenings, and more of academia in stories by Stephen King, Marly Swick, Ron Carlson, Lucia Perillo, Dan Chaon, and others. Original.

Short Stories about College Students and Professors

The Student Body

John McNally

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