Start Without Me (I'll Be There in a Minute) Book

RELEASE DATE - 22 MAY 2023

From New York Times bestselling author, Family Guy writer, and HBO star Gary Janetti comes Start Without Me, a collection of hilarious, laugh out loud, true life stories about the small moments that add up to a big life.

Gary Janetti is bothered. By a lot of things. And thank God he’s here to tell us. In Start Without Me, Gary returns with his acid tongue firmly in cheek to the moments and times that defined him. He takes us by the hand as we follow him through the summers he spends in his twenties, pursuing both the perfect tan and the perfect man to no avail and much regret.

At his Catholic high school, he strikes up an unlikely friendship with a nun who shares Gary's love of soap operas, which becomes a salvation to them both. And don't get him started on how a bad hotel room can ruin even the best vacation. This laugh-out-loud collection of true-life stories from the man “behind his generation’s greatest comedy” (The New York Times) is for anyone who has felt the joy in holding a decade-long grudge.

Whether you are a new convert to Janetti or one of the million who follow him on social media for a daily laugh, Start Without Me will have you howling at Gary's frustrations and nodding along in agreement at the outrages of life's small slights. It's the literary equivalent of a night out with your funniest friend that you wish would never end.

“Gary’s razor sharp wit comes alive in Start Without Me. A hilarious collection of laugh out loud stories!”
Andy Cohen

“Gary Janetti is a national treasure! Start Without Me had me screaming with laughter and seething with jealousy. But it also had me in tears. Because the sneaky secret about Gary is that as anti-social as he purports to be, no one writes with more connectedness or feeling. Sorry, Gary! Reading your book about how little you want to hang out with people is only going to make everyone want to hang out with you more.”
Casey Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of The Wreckage of My Presence

“Gary Janetti is annoyingly funny. By annoying, I mean funnier than anything I could ever write. Which I guess kind of speaks to my own insecurities. Whatever. I rarely laugh out loud but with this book I did. A lot. So did my wife, who said things like, ‘Gary Janetti is so funny. I wish he were my husband.’ Am I a small, petty man jealous of Gary Janetti’s talent? Yes. Should Start Without Me be read, and re-read by everyone I know? A resounding yes!”
John Kenney, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor and the New York Times bestselling author of Love Poems (for Married People)