I treat announcements like this with the importance of
the birth of a child, an engagement, election of a Pope, or a projected
retirement date—that one’s looking more important every day. Recognizing that
others do not consider such news in the same categories, I humbly ask you to
read on anyway, and share with your friends.
Coming soon—which means hopefully within a month or
so—my new novel, The Education of Stuart
McGrath. This book enters new ground for me, political satire. While I
profess no expertise in the political arena, in fact just the opposite—profound
ignorance—I can read a newspaper and view the internet with the best of them.
These days, that’s all I needed to inspire this work.
So what’s it about? Stuart McGrath, the mayor’s
erstwhile assistant, tells the tale of his meteoric rise (don’t meteors fall?)
from volunteer campaign worker to chief of staff for third term Mayor Nathan
Higgins. With a new degree in political science, Stuart is fascinated by
electoral politics and Scranton, and when he gets the opportunity to fuse them
by appointment as the high titled but low paid chief of staff to the mayor, his
real education begins. Hard scrabble fading coal town, Joe Biden blue collar
mecca, home of Dunder Mifflin paper, Scranton is all of these and none of
these. City government is however, a
combination soap opera and situation comedy and Stuart is up for best
supporting actor.
Updates will follow and as soon as I know more about
the schedule, so will you.
