Just the Facts: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Wanna-be’s by Mark Connelly

 

 

Just the Facts:  10 Things You Didn’t Know About Mark Connelly’s

Wanna-be’s

1.     The lead figure Winfield Payton is a mashup of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Pat Hobby, Saul Bellow’s Augie March, and Curb Your Enthusiasm’s

Larry David.  He is the ultimate wanna-be and fall guy – both social seer and a stooge.

2.     Wanna-be’s got a 5-star review its first week on Amazon: 

This book right here! What can I say about Winfield Payton...is he the most unlucky pasty or most unlikely fall guy...what a schmuck...I laughed so hard at this, for this guy....with this guy....every character described in this book will immediately remind you of a real life joker in the in the 24 hour news cycle on all of the Major networks and cable television channels regurgitating skewed facts benefiting them and lining their pockets....it's hip and fresh writing which could easily become a HBO series....

3.     The exponent of Liberation Capitalism Dr. Versawami is named after a character in George Orwell’s first novel Burmese Days. 

4.     The most over-the-top character Father Moses is actually a toned-down version of Alderman Mike McGee who urged blacks to engage in “urban guerilla warfare” to “fight our way to the promised land.” 

5.     The black Republicans in the novel speak their own jargon – calling liberals  whi’s whi’s for “white whiners” and token whites chiclets.

6.     The restored B-25 is named “The Ruptured Duck” after Ted Lawson’s plane featured in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.  The perfect prop for an embarrassing confrontation with Japanese businessmen.

7.     At a Halloween party in a black gay bar a Good Witch Glenda sprinkles glitter over a sweatered Bill Cosby leering, “Hey, hey, hey.”  There are several references to Halloween in the book because all the characters are wearing masks whether they know it or not.

8.     The bondage scenes were written years before Fifty Shades of Grey.

9.      Sadly, the bar called The Black Shamrock no longer exists.

10.  Wanna-be’s is set in Milwaukee because the bar is so low.  To call yourself an intellectual in New York you have to write a book – in Milwaukee you just have to read one. Or say you have.

About the Author

Mark Connelly was born in Philadelphia and grew up in New Jersey.  He received a BA in English from Carroll College in Wisconsin and an MA and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  His books include The Diminished Self: Orwell and the Loss of Freedom, Orwell and Gissing, Deadly Closets:  The Fiction of Charles Jackson, and The IRA on Film and Television.  His fiction has appeared in The Ledge, Indiana Review, Cream City Review, Milwaukee Magazine, and Home Planet News.  In 2014 he received an Editor’s Choice Award in The Carve’s Raymond Carver Short Story Contest; in 2015 he received Third Place in Red Savina Review’s Albert Camus Prize for Short Fiction. His novella Fifteen Minutes received the Clay Reynolds Novella Prize and was published by Texas Review Press in 2005. 

Mark’s latest book is the literary fiction/humor/satire, Wanna-be’s.

Connect with Mark on Facebook and Twitter.

About the Book:

Title: WANNA-BE’S
Author: Mark Connelly
Publisher: Mark Connelly Productions
Pages: 188
Genre: Literary Fiction/Humor/Satire

With his new girlfriend – a soccer mom with a taste for bondage – urging him to “go condo,” failed screenwriter Winfield Payton needs cash. Accepting a job offer from a college friend, he becomes the lone white employee of a black S&L. As the firm’s token white, he poses as a Mafioso to intimidate skittish investors and woos a wealthy cougar to keep the firm afloat. Figure-skating between the worlds of white and black, gay and straight, male and female, Jew and Gentile, Yuppie and militant, Payton flies higher and higher until the inevitable crash. . .

Praise for Wanna-be’s:

This book right here! What can I say about Winfield Payton...is he the most unlucky pasty or most unlikely fall guy...what a schmuck...I laughed so hard at this,for this guy....with this guy....every character described in this book will immediately remind you of a real life joker in the in the 24 hour news cycle on all of the Major networks and cable television channels regurgitating skewed facts benefiting them and lining their pockets....it's hip and fresh writing which could easily become a HBO series....or Starz..maybe..anyway get this book....I laughed so hard...almost popping my recent stitches from surgery...Mr. Connelly...thanks for making my recuperation fun...this book is not for the faint of heart..or PC sensitive readers...

-- Lynda Garcia Review

For More Information

• Wanna-be’s is available at Amazon.
• Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.