Wendy McClure

Author and Professional Obsessive.

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Counting down

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With the book release coming up, it seemed like a good time to have a site makeover, so welcome to WendyMcClure.net, Pretty Prairie Edition! If you’re reading this through a feed reader you’ll have to click over to the site to see, and if you’re already here, made yourself at home.

The site’s new finery is the handiwork of Jennette, who has been promoting her own new book Chocolate & Vicodin this winter (PLEASE view the exceedingly-cute-despite-the-depressing-subject book trailer on that page, by the way), and who knows how jittery the book pre-launch experience can be. I’m not twitching that much right now, but of course there’s 18 more days left to freak out.

A few of you have asked if it makes a difference where or how you buy the book. I’ll just say that any new purchase or pre-order of the hardcover or ebook will directly support The Wilder Life, and whether you choose an indie bookseller, a chain store, or an online merchant is up to you. As long as you don’t buy an advanced reader copy on eBay (which is sort of illegal) or shoplift (definitely illegal), you will be doing fine by me (and avoiding jail & stuff).  That said, I have heard that early sales and pre-orders are important, so if you can buy early and buy often (Sorry, I know, I’m from Chicago), it will definitely help.

Other things you can do to support The Wilder Life right now… [Read more…]

If you miss me

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Michigan in winter

In my world it is forever the Long Winter and I am still twisting the proverbial haysticks needed to burn through to the end of this blasted book, this bloody blanged bucking book!  BUT. I am now an occasional contributor to the Beyond Little House blog, where I have written about Miss Virginia Kirkus and have recapped two of my favorite Long Winter chapters, so you can stop by my little shanty over on that virtual homestead and say hello if you wish.

AND. I will be introducing the enchanting Jami Attenberg, reading from her book The Melting Season (read about it!) at the Book Cellar in Lincoln Square this Thursday night at 7:00. And I know this is just a hurried blog post but it all kind of fits together, doesn’t it? Winter and burning and melting and haysticks and book covers with wheat on them. THERE IS A THEME TO EVERYTHING. That is how my mind goes these days.

See you in the spring!

The Launch of Love

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Love Is a Four-Letter Word To celebrate the release of Love is a Four-Letter Word, Michael Taeckens, our esteemed anthology editor, is the Guest Blogger over at the Penguin Blog this week, and today I was the Guest Blogger Guest with my post about the bizarre side effects of writing about past boyfriends. Go ye forth and read as I do Michael’s bloggy bidding.*

And then read D.E. Rasso’s post from yesterday (yes HER, from here! and now she’s back!) and then for the rest of the week read the posts that Said Sayrafiezadeh and Dave White and Maud Newton are going to write! And then buy the book and read the book but I already told you that, right? Or come to one of the reading, like the one I already told you about on Wednesday night, or this one on Thursday or one of the other eight or nine readings. See how we are trying to make it as easy as possible for you to comply, just like with the digital TV conversion?

*Doing stuff for Michael Taeckens is just like when he and I were in college in Iowa City and he worked at the Haunted Bookshop and he was CONSTANTLY asking me to go get him food from the  New Pioneer Co-Op deli next door because he was too lazy to ever make his own lunch. The guy can get Kate Christensen and Junot Diaz and Gary Shteyngart and Linda Barry and my girl Jami to be in his book,  but he could not get his shit together to bring a sandwich EVER and in fact I’m pretty sure the only reason why I got to be in this book is because I never said bitch, get your own turkey avocado with extra sprouts. Not to his face at least. But of course the moral of the story is to just do what he says.

Okay, heading out to NYC in the morning, and then on Friday making a trip upstate to see La Casa de Farmer Boy.  I’ll try to save you some pancakes!!!!

Now I can finally mention it

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Because it was in Publisher’s Weekly this week:

Megan Lynch at Riverhead has acquired world rights to Wendy McClure‘s new book, The Wilder Life, via Erin Hosier at Dunow, Carlson and Lerner. This humorous first-person narrative exploration of the life and work of Laura Ingalls Wilder retraces her real and fictional pioneer journeys, while also reporting on the phenomenon of Wilder’s contemporary fandom. Riverhead published New York Times Magazine contributor McClure’s I’m Not the New Me in 2005, and will publish the new book in 2010.

This is all to explain what I’ve been up to the past couple months (writing, thinking, proposal-writing, and selling), and what I’ll be doing for the next year (writing, writing, traveling, writing, churning butter, writing).  You might have guessed from my most recent BUST column that I’ve had Little House on the brain, and I decided to do something about it.

I’ll say more about this when I get a chance, but I have to go grind some wheat flour now. Happy Friday!

Two tiny things for your Friday

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The Bounty returneth!

1. The dark chocolate Bounty Bars that disappeared last December are back in stores around here (or at least one store) and we are pleased. A lot of you wrote in to tell me where we could order cases of the bars online and some of you even offered to send them from across the pond, and thank you, but we just held out and hoped the universe would return them to the place where we found them in the first place. Sometimes you want that little gesture even more than you want chocolately coconut goodness. As for those of you in Chicago, DON’T EAT THEM ALL PLEASE.

2. Sometime between 9 and 10 am CST today you can hear me reading my most recent Field-Tested Books piece on Chicago Public Radio WBEZ. If you miss it this morning (and you probably will, because I am posting this at the last minute), the segment will be archived here on the Eight Forty-Eight page.

Have a great weekend, chickens!

Lamest girl in blogland breaks unexplained hiatus just to plug some stuff & then leaves on vacation

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It is what it is, people.

First there is this, and you should come:

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If you show up at the Hideout on Wednesday night at 7pm you’ll see me and the other funny ladies read wacky stories about female stuff like housework and ovaries and how chocolate is better than husbands. Or… something. Just be there!

Also the new BUST is out, where you can read my PopTart column on Miley Cyrus, poor little flutterbudget that she is. I just turned in the next issue’s column on Monday, which is one of the 1,472 reasons why I haven’t been able to update.

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(I am rereading all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books right now, which is why I am saying a word like “flutterbudget.” I will tell you more about it when I get back.)

Oh, and I ran a 5K somehow. I have to tell you about that when I get back, too. NEXT WEEK I PROMISE, and look, here’s some ice cream and a five dollar bill, go buy yourself anything you want in the Walgreen’s toy aisle and DON’T GIVE ME THAT SAD FACE OKAY? Okay.

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