Tom and Laura McNeal

	Dark Water - Fall 2010 “It wasn’t wrong in theory. It wasn’t forbidden. But I understood that it was very strange and different, someone like him and someone like me. The people who have nothing aren’t allowed to touch the people with cars and houses. They can work here. That’s all.”
	The Decoding of Lana Morris Lana Morris likes to draw. But when she buys an old drawing kit in an antique store, she draws things that happen. Rainstorms. Car accidents. Mole-expungement. It seems, in fact, that she now has the power to wish things away, and to wish them into being. But what should she really wish?
	California's Best: Two Centuries of Writing from the Golden State
	Crushed Audrey, C.C., and Lea are bookish juniors who transfer from the world’s smallest school (population 8) to Jemison High, home to Theo Driggs and his to-do list. Theo will soon be pilloried in the school's underground tabloid, but once Audrey falls under the spell of Wickham Hill, a lushly handsome southern boy who goes everywhere in a taxi, the jokes don't seem quite as funny.
	Zipped When 15-year-old Mick Nichols opens the wrong e-mail, he learns that his beautiful, affectionate stepmother is having an affair with a man named Alexander Selkirk. Uncertain whether to tell his father, he carries the deleted letters in a disk in the zipped pocket of his coat and watches his stepmother from afar, deciding, finally, to hide on the floor of her car when she goes on an innocent-seeming errand.
	Crooked Crooked is the story of 14-year-old Clara, whose mother nurses a secret grudge, and Amos, whose father has a secret of his own. They also share an enemy: a pair of brothers who drive a car they like to call a Seduck.
	Goodnight, Nebraska Goodnight, Nebraska is the small farm town that becomes both the punishment and the salvation of Randall Hunsacker, who after shooting his stepfather in Utah and crashing a borrowed car is given a choice by his former football coach: “If you go to Nebraska, the court will seal your records, meaning that if you don’t get into trouble for the next five years, they’ll cease to exist. Nobody will know anything about the shooting—not employers, not colleges, not the military, nobody. And most people will think of the car deal as a joyriding thing gone wrong.”
	The Best American Short Stories “Tom McNeal’s ‘Watermelon Days’ takes us to the Dust Bowl era in South Dakota to depict the beautiful and unexpected momentary reprieve in a difficult marriage.” --Sue Miller, guest editor
	The Bigger the Better, the Tighter the Sweater: 21 Funny Women on Beauty, Body Image . . . "When I informed my best friend almost nine years ago that I was expecting a male child, she said, after a distinct pause, “I can’t even imagine you with boys.” I couldn’t imagine it either, in spite of the fact that I’d been trying to get pregnant for four years and had just conceived with the help of a fertility stimulant. I knew that boys could be and frequently were the outcome of pregnancy. I was just assuming that, given my personality, a boy wouldn’t be the outcome in my case." --from "My Life as a Mammal" by Laura McNeal
	"Tully" Based on Tom's short story, "What Happened to Tully," Hilary Birmingham's independent film won five film festival prizes and was called "A real treasure . . . A wonderful movie with pitch-perfect acting" by Roger Ebert.

Dark Water - Fall 2010
“It wasn’t wrong in theory. It wasn’t forbidden. But I understood that it was very strange and different, someone like him and someone like me. The people who have nothing aren’t allowed to touch the people with cars and houses. They can work here. That’s all.”

The Decoding of Lana Morris
Lana Morris likes to draw. But when she buys an old drawing kit in an antique store, she draws things that happen. Rainstorms. Car accidents. Mole-expungement. It seems, in fact, that she now has the power to wish things away, and to wish them into being. But what should she really wish?

California's Best:
Two Centuries of Writing from the Golden State

Crushed
Audrey, C.C., and Lea are bookish juniors who transfer from the world’s smallest school (population 8) to Jemison High, home to Theo Driggs and his to-do list. Theo will soon be pilloried in the school's underground tabloid, but once Audrey falls under the spell of Wickham Hill, a lushly handsome southern boy who goes everywhere in a taxi, the jokes don't seem quite as funny.

Zipped
When 15-year-old Mick Nichols opens the wrong e-mail, he learns that his beautiful, affectionate stepmother is having an affair with a man named Alexander Selkirk. Uncertain whether to tell his father, he carries the deleted letters in a disk in the zipped pocket of his coat and watches his stepmother from afar, deciding, finally, to hide on the floor of her car when she goes on an innocent-seeming errand.

Crooked
Crooked is the story of 14-year-old Clara, whose mother nurses a secret grudge, and Amos, whose father has a secret of his own. They also share an enemy: a pair of brothers who drive a car they like to call a Seduck.

Goodnight, Nebraska
Goodnight, Nebraska is the small farm town that becomes both the punishment and the salvation of Randall Hunsacker, who after shooting his stepfather in Utah and crashing a borrowed car is given a choice by his former football coach: “If you go to Nebraska, the court will seal your records, meaning that if you don’t get into trouble for the next five years, they’ll cease to exist. Nobody will know anything about the shooting—not employers, not colleges, not the military, nobody. And most people will think of the car deal as a joyriding thing gone wrong.”

The Best American Short Stories
“Tom McNeal’s ‘Watermelon Days’ takes us to the Dust Bowl era in South Dakota to depict the beautiful and unexpected momentary reprieve in a difficult marriage.”
--Sue Miller, guest editor

The Bigger the Better, the Tighter the Sweater: 21 Funny Women on Beauty, Body Image . . .
"When I informed my best friend almost nine years ago that I was expecting a male child, she said, after a distinct pause, “I can’t even imagine you with boys.” I couldn’t imagine it either, in spite of the fact that I’d been trying to get pregnant for four years and had just conceived with the help of a fertility stimulant. I knew that boys could be and frequently were the outcome of pregnancy. I was just assuming that, given my personality, a boy wouldn’t be the outcome in my case."
--from "My Life as a Mammal" by Laura McNeal

"Tully"
Based on Tom's short story, "What Happened to Tully," Hilary Birmingham's independent film won five film festival prizes and was called "A real treasure . . . A wonderful movie with pitch-perfect acting" by Roger Ebert.

Books & Films