A five-time Moth GrandSLAM winner and bestselling novelist shows how to tell a great story — and why doing so matters.Whether we realize it or not, we are always telling stories. On a first date or job interview, at a sales presentation or therapy appointment, with family or friends, we are constantly narrating events and interpreting emotions and actions. In this compelling book, storyteller extraordinaire Matthew Dicks presents wonderfully straightforward and eng...

It all begins on Christmas morning, 1978. Dan Kennedy is ten years old and wants a black Gibson Les Paul guitar, the kind Peter Frampton plays. It will be his passport to the coolest (only) band in the neighborhood—Jokerz. He doesn’t get it. Instead, his parents present him with what they think he wants most, a real-estate loan calculator (called the Loan Arranger) and a maroon velour pullover shirt with a tan stripe across the chest. It is the first of what will become a lifetime of vario...

What do most business owners have in common? A lack of freedom.If you're like most owners, tied to the business, you likely:Actively work in the business, trading your time for dollars.Follow Wall Street's advice, putting your savings away until "retirement," rather than putting it to work today.Wonder whether you'll ever have "enough" to step away from full-time active work.If you've picked up this book, od...

A groundbreaking study of the journalism startups that are solving the local news crisis one community at a timeA must-read for activists, entrepreneurs, and journalists who want to start local news outlets in their communitiesLocal news is essential to democracy. Meaningful participation in civic life is impossible without it. However, local news is in crisis. According to one widely cited study, some 2,500 newspapers have closed over the ...

The sudden death of a client leads private investigator Milan Jacovich (MY-lan YOCK-ovitich) and new associate Kevin “K.O.” O’Bannion behind the scenes at a harness racing track, where they find no shortage of odd characters, suspicious activities . . . and danger.Did wealthy horse owner/driver Glenn Gallagher make one too many enemies in the competitive racing world at Northcoast Downs? (Certainly the track’s owner, chilly Chloe Markham, isn’t mourning his loss.) Or did someone inv...

The Return of the Moguls chronicles an important story in the making, one that will affect more than just the newspaper business—it has the power to change democracy as we know it. Over the course of a generation, the story of the daily newspaper has been an unchecked slide from record profitability and readership to plummeting profits, increasing irrelevance, and inevitable obsolescence. The forces killing major dailies, alternative weeklies, and small-town shoppers are well understood—or...

How do you land a sweet six-figure marketing gig at the hallowed record label known for having signed everyone from Led Zeppelin to Stone Temple Pilots? You start with a resume like Dan Kennedy's:• Dressed up as a member of Kiss every Halloween• Memorized Led Zeppelin IV at age ten• Fronted a lip-sync band in junior high• Worked as a college DJ while he was a college drop-outIn his outrageous memoir, McSweeney's contributor Kennedy chronicles his misadven...

In The Wired City, Dan Kennedy tells the story of the New Haven Independent, a nonprofit community website in Connecticut that is at the leading edge of reinventing local journalism. Through close attention to city government, schools, and neighborhoods, and through an ongoing conversation with its readers, the Independent's small staff of journalists has created a promising model of how to provide members of the public with the information they need in a self-go...

A five-time Moth GrandSLAM winner and bestselling novelist shows how to tell a great story — and why doing so matters.Whether we realize it or not, we are always telling stories. On a first date or job interview, at a sales presentation or therapy appointment, with family or friends, we are constantly narrating events and interpreting emotions and actions. In this compelling book, storyteller extraordinaire Matthew Dicks presents wonderfully straightforward and eng...

A groundbreaking study of the journalism startups that are solving the local news crisis one community at a timeA must-read for activists, entrepreneurs, and journalists who want to start local news outlets in their communitiesLocal news is essential to democracy. Meaningful participation in civic life is impossible without it. However, local news is in crisis. According to one widely cited study, some 2,500 newspapers have closed over the ...

When Matthew, a forty-something media executive, finds his job, health, and marriage crumbling, he goes native: Lives in his car. Dips his toe in drug-running. Contemplates song lyrics. Takes a really good pottery class. Before long he’s on a stumbling, agonizingly funny vision quest that takes him from a strip-mall parking lot to Yellowstone National Park to a Bali medical clinic, from an unlikely romance with a Hollywood agent specializing in hot young vampire roles to extreme RVing with...

How do you land a sweet six-figure marketing gig at the hallowed record label known for having signed everyone from Led Zeppelin to Stone Temple Pilots? You start with a resume like Dan Kennedy's:• Dressed up as a member of Kiss every Halloween• Memorized Led Zeppelin IV at age ten• Fronted a lip-sync band in junior high• Worked as a college DJ while he was a college drop-outIn his outrageous memoir, McSweeney's contributor Kennedy chronicles his misadv...