Author Archives: John McClure

About John McClure

John McClure is a graduate of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator. A recovering philosopher, he can’t keep Aristotle from coming up in conversation. He lives with his husband and crazy dog in Somerville beneath the many drafts of his first novel.

Meet Brenda Peynado, Author of The Rock Eaters

“Society cannot exist,” the philosopher Edmund Burke cautioned, without “a controlling power upon will and appetite…men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” A similar warning may reside in The Rock Eaters, Brenda Peynado’s beautifully bizarre…

Dear COVID-19, I’ve Read Your Pandemic Novel

Thanks for sending me your manuscript—nearly finished, I hope! It’s certainly some kind of achievement to literally capture your audience inside this sprawling dystopia. Your stakes recall the four horsemen, even your scenes of grocery shopping contain conflict, and you’ve…