Irish Creativity

Think of The War of Art as tough love...for yourself. Since 2002, The War of Art has inspired people around the world to defeat "resistance"; to recognize and knock down dream-blocking barriers and to silence the naysayers within us. Resistance kicks everyone's butt, and the desire to defeat it is equally as universal. The War of Art identifies the enemy that every one of us must face, outlines a battle plan to conquer this internal foe, then pinpoints just how to achieve the greatest success.

The follow-up to his best-seller The War of Art, Turning Pro navigates the passage from the amateur life to a professional practice.

There's a mantra real writers know but wannabe writers don’t. And the secret phrase is this: "Nobody wants to read your shit." Recognizing this painful truth is the first step in the writer's transformation from amateur to professional.

Kevin Borden has a secret, and that secret is about to shake the world around him - a tame and suburban world ruled by his widowed mother, Sarah and peppered by his study-mate, Louis. Teenagers sometimes do the darndest things, but in Kevin and Louis' case, it's a stroke of wisdom wrapped in fool's gold. In a time not so long ago, in the days of JIM CROW and NO IRISH NEED APPLY signage, the world made hate clear to those regarded as the fringe. "Stay away." To those who know no better - or perhaps know best, such lines are only meant to be crossed, or why else would they be drawn. No Irish ...

The Story Grid is a tool developed by editor Shawn Coyne to analyze stories and provide helpful editorial comments. It's like a CT Scan that takes a photo of the global story and tells the editor or writer what is working, what is not, and what must be done to make what works better and fix what's not. The Story Grid breaks down the component parts of stories to identify the problems. And finding the problems in a story is almost as difficult as the writing of the story itself (maybe even more difficult).

On our artist's journey, we move past resistance and past self-sabotage. We discover our true selves and our authentic calling, and we produce the works we were born to create. You are an artist too - whether you realize it or not, whether you like it or not - and you have an artist's journey. Will you live it out? Will you follow your muse and do the work you were born to do?

If you've listened to his books The War of Art and Turning Pro, you know that for 30 years Steven Pressfield (Gates of Fire, The Afghan Campaign etc.) wrote spec novel after spec novel before any publisher took him seriously. How did he finally break through? Ignoring just about every rule of commercial book publishing, Pressfield's "first" novel not only became a major best seller (over 250,000 copies sold), it was adapted into a feature film directed by Robert Redford and starring Matt Damon, Will Smith, and Charlize Theron.

When you dream, you envision a magical future. You have heroically slayed the dragons and unlocked the creativity and genius buried deep inside. But how do you actually get there? You can analyze the myths of visionary creators - artists, writers, musicians, software developers, etc., who have accomplished the impossible. But exactly how these successful creators went from being fearful dreamers to accomplished artists proves elusive. Running Down a Dream unflinchingly bares the naked truth behind all creations and shares the practical to-do list to take you from here to there.

Michael Hogan, as a poet and educator, has been gifted with friendships of fellow writers throughout most of his life. Three of these were Nobel laureates, still others household names: Seamus Heaney, W.S. Merwin, Charles Bukowski, Marge Piercy, Naomi Shihad Nye and Ray Bradbury, among a dozen others . What is surprising is what he manages to do with such experiences in this book. Through a series of narrations centered on wide-ranging episodes with other poets, the author distills a unique kind of ars poetica, one that is tied less to a traditional memoir, than to the impression these men ...

Elizabeth Gaskell, famed author of Cranford, is cherished for her incise social observations and portrayals of the changing nature of English life through the Industrial Revolution of the Victorian era. In Cousin Phillis, Paul Manning has only recently left home to work on the railway line for the dashing Mr Holdsworth. Lodging with an Independent Minister on the outskirts of London, he becomes acquainted with his distant cousins, where he is delighted to meet his genial relations, and not least his cousin Phyllis

From USA Today Bestselling Author May McGoldrick… The Rebel SEQUEL TO...THE PROMISE WANTED…for crimes against the king In retaliation for the brutality of the English troops. The Irish rebel Egan is fighting back, leading a secret group of revolutionaries—and building his legend across the country. REJECTED…by his own family Jane Purefoy is a woman with a past. The daughter of an English magistrate, she watched her Irish lover die on the gallows. Now Jane’s reputation is ruined—and she has all but ceased to exist is the eyes of her family. DESIRED…with a forbidden passion. Sir...

In Cameo ~ A Profile In Courage, Mary McMahon, a Cornell University student in the year1900, mourns her lover, Casey, who dies when a wagon wheel crushes his neck. Her ashamed parents demand their pregnant daughter remain hidden until they can arrange a marriage. Mary rehearses the attitude of a lonely wife before fleeing to New York City. She lives with cockroaches in Una's tenement and rolls tobacco into cigars in Kezrat Carr's sweatshop. Checkmated by Casey who died and a child who lives, Mary trades the cameo Casey carved for her in exchange for an illegal abortion performed by Mrs. ...