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ADVANCE PRAISE AND REVIEWS FOR WHATEVER HAPPENS, PROBABLY WILL:

"Whatever Happens, Probably Will is a splendidly varied collection of stories, all of which deserve to be read at least twice. Bravo..." - John Engell, Professor Emeritus of American Literature, Film and Creative Writing at San Jose State University

"These are remarkable and full-bodied stories with end notes as satisfying as a fine wine. With an eye for poignancy, and often absurdity, in the everyday, John W. MacIlroy deftly inserts the ominous within the commonplace." - Elizabeth Robin, winner of the Carry McCray Nickens Fellowship

"In this startling collection, John W. MacIlroy sprinkles his tales with wonder, and a hint of wistfulness. His stories call us to find hope in the everyday, meaning in the bittersweet, and strength in the punch to the gut..." - Andrew K. Clark, author of Jesus in the Trailer

"John MacIlroy's stories creep up like a fog on a page, waving a seductive spell around his readers, illuminating the fortunate, the forgotten, the sinners, the has-beens, and the broken with equally deft strokes. You feel the fingers of Spanish Moss on a Mississippi bluff, stare into the dark along a rural Georgia railroad right-of-way, taste the sweet wine of a long shared life as the sun slips toward the horizon. The best way to read a MacIlroy story is to relax, surrender, and fasten your seatbelt." - Jayne Adams, author of All the Right Reasons

"Whoever you are, you will find yourself in these stories... the bemusements, the sadness, the happiness, the longings, the joy." - Barry Dickson, author of Maybe Today

"Written with warmth and sensitivity, these stories delight in the mischievous turn of phrase, powering on to endings that bring both heartbreak and joy, often wrapped in a wicked twist. We feel the long and heavy shadow of the past, and the pain of the ordinary life. And in the end, John W. MacIlroy's writing simply leaves us wanting more." - Midge Pierce, former publicity assistant at Simon & Shuster

"John W. MacIlroy is a master of the moment - the moment when everything turns, and the reader suddenly and deeply knows the heart of the character who is, all at once, not so different from the reader herself." - Beverly Jean Harris, runner-up for the Short Story America Prize for fiction
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REVIEWS FOR NOT EXACTLY ROCKET SCIENTISTS AND OTHER STORIES:

Good kids at heart, we didn't try to screw up. It's just that we were Not Exactly Rocket Scientists.

Called "
A great book about friendship..." — Pat Conroy, New York Times Bestseller author

Not Exactly Rocket Scientists and Other Stories is a collection of "mostly, mostly true" short stories of life "writ small" in a suburban town in the 1950s and 1960s. Tied together by a certain sense of time and place, each story nevertheless stands well on its own, a nod to those with attention spans about as short as ours. In school, in sports, in the summer season of peak boyhood idiocy and even in church, we engaged the world in happy abandon, our band of buddies quick to find chaos and stupid just about anywhere. In the tradition of writers like Jean Shepherd and Garrison Keillor, our stories enjoy few triumphs, and even these were scarcely noted. Our failures, however, were many, although rarely the stuff of tragedy. 

Like almost everybody who has stumbled through their own zany childhood, we mostly tried, and failed, then tried again.
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REVIEWS FOR NOT EXACTLY ROCKET SCIENTISTS II: THE TOTALLY UNNECESSARY SEQUEL:

Kids grow up. We tried, but it didn't take.
And as we left our readers in Rocket Scientists, the good folks in our hometown had enjoyed our zany antics just about enough, ready to push us out the exit - any exit
- as long as it was far away. But that didn't happen: we mostly hovered fairly close to home for college, everyone hoping things might settle down a bit.

That didn't happen either, and NOT EXACTLY ROCKET SCIENTISTS II: The Totally Unnecessary Sequel tees up some twenty-four new stories as we bounced along the Aquarian nonsense of the late 1960's and 1970's. With headwinds both fickle and strong, we nontheless continued to find chaos and stupid everywhere, along with many laughs. Our readers will learn a bit more about some old friends, as well as meet new ones: guys like Squeak and Snatcher from a House called Delta; a curious sort named Rasputin from a University called Virginia; a dog named Mortimer Snerd; and even a curse called McFarland. We ask our readers to join us at a chili joint in New Mexico, a naked beach in Denmark, a run-down ski resort in Connecticut - and (almost) to the grave of Lenny Bruce. And that's just for starters. Funny stuff, we promise our readers, doesn't stop happening just because we made it through our zany early years.
 
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