About

I was born in Nashville TN; I live in Asheville NC. I was raised in Cupertino, CA.

I began my writing career by publishing, in the early 1990’s, a dozen short stories in as many little literary magazines.

After moving to San Diego in 1996, I became a freelance writer for quite literally every publication in that city, including San Diego Magazine, The San Diego Union-Tribune, San Diego Jazz and Blues, Mean Street, and The San Diego Reader (which has the largest circulation of any alternative weekly publication in the country). During this time I also freelanced extensively for websites AOL’s City Guide and Microsoft’s Sidewalk San Diego.

Three months into freelance writing, I was given a one-page column in San Diego’s largest music tabloid, SLAMM (now San Diego CityBeat). Three months later I was named SLAMM’s editor.

After a year at SLAMM, I was hired by The San Diego Union-Tribune as a founding editor and writer for their then-new $4 million website. There (and always under the watchful scrutiny of a phalanx of the newspaper’s veteran print editors), I wrote and published 30,000-35,000 words per week. I also ran on the site a weekly column, “Cordials, Tonics & Zombies,” which received some 45,000 page views per week. It was the most read regular feature on the site.

After a year at SignOn, I took the position of managing editor of On Air, the monthly four-color subscriber magazine published by San Diego’s public broadcasting station, KPBS.

A year later I was named executive editor of San Diego’s Decor & Style magazine (148-page four-color monthly; circulation 55,000). A year after that I was hired as founding editor of a four-color magazine in San Diego called Downtown.

Following the success of Downtown I moved on to editing books—and from there to ghostwriting them, and finally to writing my own.

You can learn more about my books here.

From 2008-2013 I was one of the most popular bloggers on The Huffington Post. During that time, my own blog did over 300,000 views per month.

You can read about some of the main work I did on my blog here.

Here are some nice things some writers have said about me:

“John Shore is one of those rare writers who can make people laugh and think at the same time.” — Richard Louv, author of international bestseller, Last Child in the Woods

“Shore’s territory is the daily, personal challenges of how we live. He traces the very real, very emotional lives of ordinary people who are just trying to keep up—with, often, their own hearts.” — Bruce Steele, The Asheville Citizen-Times

“John Shore is a remarkably gifted writer who knows exactly what he is doing.” — Jacquelyn Mitchard, bestselling author of The Deep End of the Ocean (the inaugural novel of Oprah’s Book Club), and Two If By Sea.

“John Shore, the legitimate son of Kurt Vonnegut and Dave Barry, writes with great energy and humor.”—Richard Lederer, Anguished English, The Miracle of Language

“John Shore’s unique style is a delight to read—a literary feast!”— Michael Flachmann, author of Beware the Cat: The First English Novel

“What a funny, bright writer this man is!” — Judy Reeves, A Writer’s Book of Days; Wild Women, Wild Voices

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My novel, Everywhere She's Not, is now available wherever books are sold.

It’s not easy to tell a story that is filled with hilarious humor, the pangs of love lost, excruciatingly sad family life and deep, deep inner circumspection that ultimately uplifts your soul, but John has done just that. I highly recommend you read this book; you will thank me later. — Jon Mayes, Advance Reading Copy.

Deeply engrossing . . . a hightly satisfying reading experience . . . Shore's writing is so stylistically on target that the language itself falls away, allowing the reader to enter into the subtleties of the story completely. . . . Shore’s protagonist is authentically funny and rawly sympathetic . . . This novel stands apart for its originality. It is a testament to the notion that the strongest works are often those with simple storylines, exceptionally told. 10 out of 10. — Publisher's Weekly BookLife Prize 2019

A powerfully compelling introspective look at life. . . This is a harrowing and fascinating novel. — K.C. Finn, for Readers' Favorite

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