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8/22/2010
My new book, The Creative Writer's Survival Guide: Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist, is available here and there. If it's not available in your favorite bookstore, please ask them to order it. As my first book venture into the world of nonfiction, it even has an index, which includes such entries as Margaret Atwood, Ted Bundy, John Cheever, Evel Knievel, Socrates, and the Three Stooges. How can you pass it up?
7/18/2010
I'm often asked for book recommendations, so here are a few off the top of my head, in no particular order. Enjoy!
Revolutionary Road (Richard Yates), The World According to Garp (J. Irving), One Hundred Years of Solitude (Garcia Marquez), Light in August (Faulkner), Among the Missing (Dan Chaon), Fallng Angels (Barbara Gowdy), Cat's Eye (Atwood), Staggerford (Jon Hassler), Grand Opening (Jon Hassler), The Stories of John Cheever, The Coast of Chicago (Stuart Dybek), In Cold Blood (Capote), The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien), The Collected Stories of Flannery O'Connor, A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole), Winter in the Blood (James Welch), Three Versions of the Truth (Amy Knox Brown), The Shining (Stephen King), The Risk Pool (Richard Russo), House of Sand and Fog (Dubus III), Pop. 1280 (Jim Thompson), Black Boy (Richard Wright), Jesus' Son (Denis Johnson), Edwin Mullhouse (Stephen Millhauser), anything by Charles Portis but especially Masters of Atlantis, The Sweet Hereafter (Russell Banks), In the Garden of North American Martyrs (Tobias Wolff), Josie and Jack (Kelly Braffet), Where I'm Calling From (Raymond Carver), Little Children (Tom Perrotta), Little Beauties (Kim Addonizio), Speed Queen (Stewart O'Nan), Continental Drift (Russell Banks), White Noise (Don Delillo), Wilderness Tips (Margaret Atwood), We're all in this Together (Owen King), Cat's Cradle (Vonnegut), Chekhov, Kafka, early Paul Bowles stories, Pastoralia (George Saunders), He Sleeps (Reginald McKnight), Mickelsson's Ghosts (John Gardner), Pauline Kael (any of her books), Nobody's Perfect (Anthony Lane),The Habit of Being (Flannery O'Connor), Mysteries and Manners (Flannery O'Connor), Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck), Adventures of Huck Finn (Twain), Moby Dick (Melville), American Slang, 2nd Edition (Robert L. Chapman), Into the Wild (Jon Krakauer), Into Thin Air (Jon Krakauer), The Bell Jar (S. Plath), the crime novels of Chester Himes, and many, many more.
5/17/2010
All kinds of new stuff...
I've been told that After the Workshop has gone into another printing, which is totally awesome. (I never say "totally awesome," so I thought I'd try it out here.) If you want to know more about the book, click on the BUZZ button to your left...but not before reading the rest of this update!
Also: I did an interview for the Huffington Post. Check it out.
Oh, and I've got this book coming out in September titled The Creative Writer's Survival Guide: Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist. Novelist Janet Burroway, who is author of the all-time bestselling textbook on fiction writing, says this about my book: "This has got to be the most comprehensive nuts-and-bolts how-to that has ever been written about writing. McNally has answered every one—every one!—of the questions that always come up in a Q&A session when the writer's impulse is to talk about Art and the audience wants to know: how do I get to be you? I look forward to having this book in hand. It's a fine addition to the ever-growing literature of creative writing, and it covers everything." Is that great, or what? The book will be published by the wonderful folks at the University of Iowa Press, who published my first work of fiction, Troublemakers.
Finally, Northwestern University Press is reissuing my story collection Ghosts of Chicago in paperback in September. I'm hoping to make it back to Chicago in October to do some promotion. I'm thrilled to see this book, which took ten years to write, given a second life.
2/3/2010
My new novel, AFTER THE WORKSHOP, has already been released here and there! Check around. It's out there somewhere. In the "good news" department, it's been chosen for March's "Indie Next" list and is this month's book club selection for Toronto's EYE WEEKLY.
In other news, I just turned in the final major revision of my new book THE CREATIVE WRITER'S SURVIVAL GUIDE: ADVICE FROM AN UNREPENTANT NOVELIST, which will be published this fall by the University of Iowa Press.
Also, a paperback edition of GHOSTS OF CHICAGO will be released by Northwestern University Press, probably this fall as well. Details forthcoming.
Stay tuned!
1/6/2010
My new novel, AFTER THE WORKSHOP, is all set to be released on March 1. Reviews (Kirkus and PW) and blurbs have already come in; you can find those on the BUZZ page of this site. I'll be posting more review excerpts as they come in. Also, I've been piecing together a book tour, which you can also find here under, you guessed it, BOOK TOUR. I'm sure I'll be adding a few more readings/signings here and there, but I suspect that what's listed will constitute the bulk of them. I hope to see you on the road!
5/11/2009
Yo. Here's the catalog copy for my new novel.
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AFTER THE WORKSHOP: A Novel by John McNally
to be published by Counterpoint, early 2010
THE LAUGH-OUT-LOUD FICTIONALIZED MEMOIR OF A STUNTED WRITER-TURNED-AUTHOR ESCORT
You graduate from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop with a short story published in The New Yorker and subsequently Best American Short Stories. You stay in town and work on your novel. And work on your novel. And work on your novel. Until, finally, twelve years have passed and you are working as a media escort for author tours and your unfinished novel sits in a box under your bed. Your girlfriend has left you. Your car is missing a muffler. Your neighbor is walking around naked because his hands are too badly frostbitten to unzip his pants. You are at the whims of a slew of increasingly crazy writers, and when one of them disappears, an insane New York publicist begins stalking you.
This is the life of Jack Hercules Sheahan, a character well understood by author John McNally. He is also a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop as well as a former media escort, and these misadventures are brought to life by his very own.
Recalling the ease and humor of novels by Nick Hornby and Michael Chabon, After the Workshop tells the satirical story of a writer who confronts the demons from his past while escorting those of his present.
5/9/2009
It's Short Story Month over on Emerging Writers Network, and I posted my two-cents on a Guest Post. Nothing earth-shattering, but I hope it'll lead you to some writers you don't know, or, perhaps, revisit some writers you know but haven't read in a while. Enjoy!
3/19/2009
I am very pleased to announce that my new novel, After the Workshop, will be published next year by Counterpoint. Counterpoint puts out great (and great-looking) books, so I'm particularly honored to have a book with them. Some of their authors include James Salter (an old teacher of mine), Evan Connell (who wrote the Mr. and Mrs. Bridge books, as well as Son of the Morning Star), and Gina Berriault (a favorite of Richard Yates). More details as they become available.
3/2/2009
Ghosts of Chicago made The Believer Magazine's Reader Survey for top twenty best books of fiction published in 2008. I'm thrilled, but...how did this happen? No, I mean, really: If The Believer was published in Chicago, I'd understand it...maybe. I'm not complaining. In fact, I'm honored. I am. And, in addition to the members of the Academy and Touchstone Pictures, I'd like to thank whoever voted for the book. Seriously. Thanks, folks. Here's the list:
THE BELIEVER'S READER SURVEY RESULTS
1. 2666—Roberto Bolaño
2. Unlucky Lucky Days—Daniel Grandbois
3. Lush Life—Richard Price
4. The Lazarus Project—Aleksandar Hemon
5. Netherland—Joseph O’Neill
6. Vacation—Deb Olin Unferth
7. Unaccustomed Earth—Jhumpa Lahiri
8. Arkansas—John Brandon
9. A Mercy—Toni Morrison
10. Indignation—Philip Roth
11. Death with Interruptions—José Saramago
12. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle—David Wroblewski
13. Bottomless Belly Button—Dash Shaw
14. A Heaven of Others—Joshua Cohen
15. So Brave, Young, and Handsome—Leif Enger
16. How the Dead Dream—Lydia Millet
17. Personal Days—Ed Park
18. A Fraction of the Whole—Steve Toltz
19. The Drop Edge of Yonder—Rudolph Wurlitzer
20. Ghosts of Chicago—John McNally
11/11/2008
As those of you who saw me on book tour in October witnessed, I was sick for the entire two weeks, coughing on prospective book buyers and offering my clammy hand for them to shake. My apologies for anyone who fell ill after coming to see me.
But I'll be back in December for a one night reading/signing engagement on the fifth. Check out the Book Tour section of the website. Right now, I'm scheduled to appear on WGN-TV's midday news that same day to talk about GHOSTS OF CHICAGO. Afterward, I'll head down to Beverly for a reading at what I've been told is a very nice bar called O'Rourke's Office. I hope to see you there!
4/24/2008
For those of you from Burbank, Illinois, or the southwest side of Chicago, I've started a blog dedicated to Burbank nostalgia: Beautiful Downtown Burbank (Illinois). I hope you'll check it out. And if you have photos of Burbank -- or significant southwest-side landmarks -- please email them to me at bookofralph@aol.com
Thanks!
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