Wendy McClure

Author and Professional Obsessive.

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Country party! Country party!

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Tomorrow Almanzo Chris and I are heading out to hang out on the banks of Plum Creek and by the shores of Silver Lake (which, sadly, is no longer a lake) and in the little town on the prairie! We will bring back some horehound candy for you if you’re good. Oh, oh, I am so very excited to be going.

In other news, that book I’m in has a website now. And I updated my other website, too.

No, I’m not going to BlogHer this year, even though it’s in Chicago. I would probably consider going to something called BlogHa! though, given my paltry online output these days. Someone else just needs to organize it and I will be there!  Panel topics could include What To Write When We’re Trying Not to Talk About Working On Our Books and so on. And instead of exchanging business cards and weeping about stretch marks, we’ll just drink wine. Does that sound like a plan? Okay then!

See you on the other side of the Big Slough!

Til you get enough summer

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I was away for half the weekend, but I got back in time to catch a little of this weird and totally-awkward-to-watch author meltdown on Twitter yesterday.  I can’t say I know what Alice Hoffman was thinking (did she just not get that people read Twitter?), but I feel bad for her, that whatever kind of writerly wretchedness she was experiencing happened to be broadcast all over the internet. Oh well, when all the newspaper book reviews go away, maybe she’ll want advice for dealing with crappy online reviews, and then perhaps she can read this Buzz, Balls, & Hype blog post that Jami and I contributed to back in January (and somehow I never managed to link to it before now) about how not to let Amazon reviews get to you.  I don’t know, I guess writers had somewhat different coping skills before the internet, back when you didn’t get to see reviews in other city newspapers until your publisher found them and clipped them and sent them to you via stagecoach* mail delivery. Now it’s all so much more immediate, and the immediacy goes both ways.

(*Can you tell I’m watching a lot of Little House on the Prairie lately? Remember when Laura won some big writing contest and went to Minneapolis and her publisher wanted her to completely rewrite her books, so they stuck her in a hotel and made her work there because FedEx hadn’t been invented yet?  That’s totally how publishing worked in those days! And then authors were sent off to live in sod shanties for three months while the reviews came out so that they couldn’t recklessly telegraph their vitriolic responses! Really.)

As long as we’re talking about books, you should check out my friend Dave Reidy’s story collection, Captive Audience, which is his first book, and he is just now embarking on a grueling schedule of readings and Quimby’s karaoke parties and no doubt would love any support you can give (i.e., buying the book, coming to the reading, signing up to sing “9 to 5,” etc.).

I can’t believe it’s the middle of summer already. Because of all the work I have to do in my home office this summer, I broke down and got an air conditioner for that room. I tend to hate window air conditioners for the way they make noise, ruin a perfectly good view outside, and just sit there on the windowsill threatening to tip out and kill pedestrians on the sidewalk below. But somehow this year I really love this damn thing; I love that slightly musty air-conditioner scent that it has, because it comes with all kinds of sense memories of grade-school summer vacation. Basically my home office smells like NO SCHOOL FOR THREE MONTHS. I don’t know how that’s going to affect my work ethic, but I am digging it.

Finally, I’m totally late to the elegy party, but here’s how I’ve been breaking my own heart for the past four days…

…by watching all of Michael Jackson’s early low-tech videos. Like the one above and this one.  There’s no John Landis, no gazillion-dollar budget, no fourteen-minute prologue, but holy Jacko, look how exuberant he looks. And look at how funky his moves were! I know everyone loved his moonwalk, but I’m pretty wistful for this era when he was decidedly more earthbound.

To-Do List

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Write sixty gazillion pages for book project.

Email about five hundred people to interview for the book.

Find a maxi dress that doesn’t make me look like an nightgown-wearing loony lady.

Write BUST column.

Plan road trip to Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota to see Laura Ingalls Wilder homesites in July.

Order Walnut Grove Laura Ingalls Wilder pageant tickets.

Plan trip to New York City to read in July .

Plan trip to upstate New York to see the Farmer Boy house in July.

Outline sixty gazillion thirty gazillion more pages for book project in July.

Build fancy and slightly twatty author site at wendymcclure.net.

Install air conditioners.

Upgrade WordPress software on Poundy.com.

Find new blog template for Poundy.com because upgrade will probably make modified layout go wonky.

Tell people that I have a children’s book out.

Put hilarious Emily Flake flash animation on wendymcclure.net to promote new anthology.

Go to Kiddieland before it shuts down for good.

Write a real entry sometime.

Love Is a Four-Letter Word: update!

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The anthology Love Is a Four-Letter Word: True Stories of Breakups, Bad Relationships, and Broken Hearts will be out this month, featuring an essay by yours truly and many others. The book’s website is now live, with an awesomely morose Flash animation created by fellow contributor and illustratrix Emily Flake, who shows you just how it feels sometimes. (Go to www.loveisa4letterword.com to see what I mean.)

More news and announcements about the book soon, including information about the launch party and reading at Housing Works in New York City on July 29th. For now, check out the flyer:

housingworksflyer

You can also order the book at Amazon or Barnes & Noble or IndieBound or Powell’s.

Work in progress

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LHOP

Last year I rediscovered my old childhood obsession with the Little House books and Laura Ingalls Wilder. This year I’m writing a book about it all.  I’ve visited the sites of Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie and I’ve seen all manner of Laurarabilia at the Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield, Missouri. I’m making plans for another big trip out west in July to see the rest of the homesites, and in the meantime, I’ve been trying my hand at various nineteenth-century frontier activities, such as churning butter, frying salt pork, and playing with corn-cob dolls. And then I’ve been writing.

I’ll be working on the book through the end of the year, and Riverhead Books will publish it sometime in 2010. The working title is The Wilder Life—don’t know yet if that will change, but we’ll keep you posted.

Some days the work is as fun as roasting a pig’s tail, and other days it sucks like Plum Creek leeches. Either way I love it.

Would you like to help? I’m always interested in hearing about other people’s Little House memories and experiences—anything involving the books, visiting the homesites, or even the TV show. If you’re interested in sharing, contact me and I’ll send you a very informal questionnaire. Then we can talk Laura until the cows come home, though we should really keep them from running over the sod roof of the dugout house.

I’ve also been taking photos and video of my research adventures and eventually I’ll be sharing all of those, too. You can search using The Wilder Life tag on my Flickr site to see what I’ve posted so far. (There are many more where those came from.)

And if you still need an internet Laura fix after all this, you can always follow HalfPintIngalls herself on Twitter.

THE PRINCESS AND THE PEANUT ALLERGY is now out!

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Yes, I wrote a picture book. And as of this spring it’s out.

princess

There’s been a growing need for books about peanut allergy, and the folks at Albert Whitman were looking for something new. We’d published The Peanut-Free Cafe in 2006 and we wanted to be able to offer something else. And one day, during an editorial meeting, we were talking about how we wished we had another peanut allergy book. We were also talking about how we could wished we had some kind of princess picture book. (Memo from children’s book land: princesses are HUGE.)

“We need a book called ‘The Princess and the Peanut,'” I said, not too seriously.

“You need to write a book called ‘The Princess and the Peanut,'” my boss said. “Seriously.”

Okay, then! I promised I would try.

I had another reason for writing a book like this. Chris has several food allergies, including one to tree nuts: almonds, pecans, cashews—pretty much any nut that isn’t a peanut. So I know about having to to be flexible, checking food labels and asking questions; about having to speak up in inconvenient situations. I started thinking about how all this might affect someone’s very princessy birthday party, and that’s when Paula and Regina started to come to life.

And then I had to rewrite it a ton of times, and then wait around anxiously while everyone else at Whitman was off in another room discussing whether or not the story was as good as something that would have come from a writer outside the company, and also, I’m sure, discussing how badly I dress and how I never dust those action figures that I have in my office. (That’s definitely the downside of getting your book published by the same company you work for.)

The upside, of course is that I got to see my book get made, and watch slowly as Paula and Regina really came to life, thanks to  Tammie Lyon and her completely perfect illustrations. I especially love Regina’s big round owl glasses. THERE ARE NEVER ENOUGH CUTE GLASSES GIRLS IN CHILDREN’S BOOK LAND.  Oh, and you can see another illustration from the book in Tammie’s online portfolio.

Anyway, now the book is done—along with the other Spring titles that we worked on last year. Of course, now we’re already well into working on production for the next spring’s book, and you barely notice when a current title hits the shelf.  Except when you’re the one who wrote it, that is.

(Buy it from Albert Whitman, or Amazon, or BN.com, or Powell’s, or IndieBound. )

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