John at eight weeks old. 1/66.

From time to time, you may wake up from a dead sleep and wonder, "What's new with John?" That's what this page is meant to tell you.

Of course, John may not update it as often as you'd like. Or he may update it more often than you'd like. It's hard to tell what will happen.

Whatever the case may be, new things are always happening to John. When those things happen, John will ponder them at length, make lists, jot down notes, and distill all the new things into two categories: 1) new things worth mentioning, 2) new things not worth mentioning. In the end, what you'll find below is a list of all new things worth mentioning. Enjoy!

(Warning: You'll occasionally find one or two things that were not worth mentioning. Please ignore them.)

7/20/2008

I will be off the Internets, as it were, for two weeks, from July 22 to August 5, so if you need me, call my cell. If you need to contact me for something business related, and if it's urgent, please contact my agent. Thanks!

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!

4/21/2008

Hey, hey. Amazon has finally added book jacket images for my two forthcoming books. The first book, which I coedited with Owen King, Who Can Save Us Now?: Brand-New Superheroes and their Amazing (Short) Stories will be out in mid-July. It is precisely what it sounds like: 22 superhero stories by writers such as Jennifer Weiner, Tom Bissell, Jim Shepard, among others.

The publisher is presently running a short story contest, but if you want to enter, you'd better hurry. The deadline is May 15.

My other new book, a collection of short stories titled Ghosts of Chicago, will be published in October. Here's a description of the book: "John Belushi. Walter Payton. Richard J. Daley. Nelson Algren. Frazier Thomas. These dead Chicagoans are among those who hover over and haunt John McNally’s Ghosts of Chicago, his first story collection since the award-winning Troublemakers. Gene Siskel, impatient with the movie he’s watching, taunts Roger Ebert; Miss Betsy, the host of Romper Room, experiences her own awakening during the sexual revolution; George Pullman remembers his greatest triumph as he draws his last breath. But there are also stories here of everyday people who must confront their own private ghosts: an accountant who falls in love with a woman who’s in love with a man on death row; a boy whose fascination with movie monsters grows stronger as his mother’s pregnancy comes to term; a memoirist whose dark night of the soul leads him on a journey from which he may not return. Praised by writers as diverse as Richard Russo, Irvine Welsh, Elizabeth McCracken, T.C. Boyle, and Mitch Albom, John McNally confirms with Ghosts of Chicago what National Book Award finalist Dan Chaon wrote after reading America’s Report Card: 'John McNally is emerging as one of the best American writers of the new century.'"

Keep checking the book tour section as I'll be adding dates throughout the year.

1/17/2008

What’s New? What’s New?

Actually, a lot’s new. In the next two years, I’ll have four new books coming out: an anthology, a short story collection, a novel, and a nonfiction book.

1) WHO CAN SAVE US NOW?: BRAND-NEW SUPERHEROES AND THEIR AMAZING (SHORT) STORIES.

My buddy, the writer Owen King, brought this idea to me and was generous enough to invite me to co-edit the book with him. It’s shaping up to be a great anthology, complete with illustrations for each story by the genius Chris Burnham and contributions by such writers as J. Robert Lennon, George Singleton, Jennifer Weiner, Jim Shepard, Elizabeth Crane, and a host of others. Our publisher, Free Press, is sending me and Owen to Comic-Con in New York at the end of April to start promoting the book. For those of you interested, the pub date is July 2008.

2) GHOSTS OF CHICAGO, a collection of short stories.

This book is about eleven years in the making – my first full-fledged story collection since TROUBLEMAKERS. GHOSTS OF CHICAGO is a collection of literary short stories that resurrects a number of dead Chicagoans (John Belushi, Gene Siskel, Walter Payton, Richard J. Daley, Frazier Thomas, and Nelson Algren, to name a few) for a series of vignettes (and a couple of longer stories) and then alternates those with regular-length stories in which everyday people are confronted with, and are forced to deal with, their own private ghosts. There will be a book tour, and I anticipate many, many appearances in Chicago. This book is tentatively scheduled for fall of 2008. Not sure what month yet.

3) THE LAST SEMESTER, a novel.

I’ll hold off on saying much about this book yet, except that it will be published in the fall of 2009. I’m hoping to drive cross-country for this one, doing readings and signings at a variety of colleges. More details to come.

4) UNTITLED, nonfiction

Nope, the title of the book is not UNTITLED. The publisher and I just haven’t settled on a title yet. Also, I’m still writing the book, so it’ll be a while before I unveil this project, but what I can tell you is that it will be my first nonfiction book and that University of Iowa Press will be publishing it in the fall of 2009. I can also tell you that I’m thrilled to be working with U. of Iowa Press again; these are the same people who brought my first work of fiction, TROUBLEMAKERS, to light.

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I also have stories coming out in various magazines, plus some stories I’ve been asked to write for assorted anthologies, and I’m doing research for a big, BIG novel that (hopefully) you’ll see somewhere down the road. I’m sure, in the meantime, I’ll be coming up with more anthology ideas (I have two ideas brewing right now, in fact). So, that’s pretty much what’s on tap until December of 2009. Once I get more details (actual publication dates; book tour dates), I’ll start posting the hell out of them and sending out announcements.

If you want email announcements, please sign up on my mailing list. I can guarantee that you’ll rarely hear from me, and I never share information with a third party. (Oh, I guess if someone came knocking on my door with a check for a million dollars for the hundred or so email addresses I have stored here, I might be compelled to share them…but until that happens, you’re all safe.)