John Searles

By Andrea Sachs

OCCUPATION Novelist and senior books editor at Cosmopolitan

GOAL To write compelling books--and never wait on tables again

QUOTE "The people I knew didn't do things like write. They got jobs."

When John Searles was 18, he worked in a factory in Connecticut. Every day at lunchtime he would drive home and cry. "It was my worst nightmare come true," he says. His parents, a truck driver and a housewife with little money to spare, had refused to send him to college, and set him up with this job instead. "They weren't trying to be mean," says Searles. "College wasn't part of their world."

Neither was being a writer, an ambition he'd harbored since second grade. Working three jobs, he eventually made his way to Connecticut State University, then left for New York City. After getting a master's degree from N.Y.U., he read fiction submissions for Redbook for 50[cents] apiece. He moved on to Cosmopolitan, where in two years he became books editor.

Now he has written his first novel, Boy Still Missing (Morrow), due in bookstores in February, and it's getting the kind of buzz a former factory worker can only dream of. The story of a teenage boy who gets into a sexually charged relationship with his father's mistress, leading to an accidental death, it has been championed by such big-name writers as Wally Lamb and Frank McCourt. The birth of a new literary star? "I'm so busy writing my next book," says Searles, "I haven't had a chance to process any of this."

--By Andrea Sachs