Terry McDonell – författare

A sons lessons from his single motheratwenty five year old widow who took control of her life, defied expectations and raised him into a manhood of his ownfrom the author of the acclaimedThe Accidental Life.As a child, Terry McDonell imagined epic stories about his father, a fighter pilot who died in World War II. But, as he discovers in this dazzling memoir, the real hero in his life was his mother, Irma, who moved with him to California hoping for a new life and raised him through difficult times.Like most headstrong boys growing up in mid-century America, McDonell took his mother for granted, never giving her life much thought. He was bright, cocky, and determined to make his own way, separate from her and from his complicated roots. But as he matured, built a career, married, divorced, remarried, and raised his own sons, McDonell came to see that Irma had lived her life in a way that allowed him to discover what he wanted his own life to be. The person he was would be forever tied to Irmas courage and wisdom and love. From his recollectionsa series of colorful, deeply personal, sometimes funny, stunningly composed vignettesan intriguing and poignant portrait emerges.Irmais the story ofa formidable woman who built the life she wanted as she raised her son to be the kind of man and father he had longed for but never knew.

The brilliant debut novel by the acclaimed author of The Accidental Life   “The twisted truth about where California came from . . . A rare, original piece of work.” —Hunter S. Thompson   California Bloodstock is a novel of exploding imagination, an epic comic saga of nineteenth-century California. A fifteen-year-old heroine seeks revenge and comes of age in the tradition of True Grit. Like a female Huckleberry Finn, her heart reflects the ironies of history—Manifest Destiny, indeed. Gold is discovered in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, and a rag-tag republic is born out of a free-for-all landscape of blustering and doomed historical players—from John C. Freemont and Brigham Young to the Donner Party. The mythic “Animal People” gobble peyote, while boom-town San Francisco rollicks with the unhinged entrepreneurs selling fairy tale schemes to buckskin drifters and New York publishing scions. Even the legendary swordsman Zoro is here and at large, robbing stagecoaches in the idyllic grasslands that will all too soon become Silicon Valley. Read it and weep—with laughter as the so-called Golden State invents its future.

Wyoming (The Lost Poems) is a run of poems written and put away in the 1970s. It is the work of a writer who began as a student of poetry but who became a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. None of the poems have been published previously or submitted anywhere for publication.It is a collection of exploding imagination and acute observation. Love, sex, betrayal, redemption . . . tossed like dice on uniquely American landscapes. With the first poem you wonder where Terry McDonell has been; by the last you are shocked by his answers.

An Amazon Best Book of 2016A celebration of the writing and editing life, as well as a look behind the scenes at some of the most influential magazines in America (and the writers who made them what they are).   You might not know Terry McDonell, but you certainly know his work. Among the magazines he has top-edited: Outside, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated. In this revealing memoir, McDonell talks about what really happens when editors and writers work with deadlines ticking (or drinks on the bar). His stories about the people and personalities he’s known are both heartbreaking and bitingly funny—playing “acid golf” with Hunter S. Thompson, practicing brinksmanship with David Carr and Steve Jobs, working the European fashion scene with Liz Tilberis, pitching TV pilots with Richard Price. Here, too, is an expert’s practical advice on how to recruit—and keep—high-profile talent; what makes a compelling lede; how to grow online traffic that translates into dollars; and how, in whatever format, on whatever platform, a good editor really works, and what it takes to write well. Taking us from the raucous days of New Journalism to today’s digital landscape, McDonell argues that the need for clear storytelling from trustworthy news sources has never been stronger. Says Jeffrey Eugenides: “Every time I run into Terry, I think how great it would be to have dinner with him. Hear about the writers he''s known and edited over the years, what the magazine business was like back then, how it''s changed and where it''s going, inside info about Edward Abbey, Jim Harrison, Annie Proulx, old New York, and the Swimsuit issue. That dinner is this book.”