Hotel rooms occupied: 13

Flights taken: 19

Rental cars driven: 3

Roughly estimated number of book events: 21

Attendees at first Barnes & Noble event: 5

Attendees at second Barnes & Noble event: 125

Total pounds of butter churned at book events: about 4

Percentage of above flushed down hotel room toilets: 20

Estimated number of times Chris had to carry the butter churn to or from the car: 8

Public churning failures, attributed either to the half & half instead of cream or to improperly sealed container: 2

Pieces of storeboughten candy distributed at book events (approximately): 450

Instances in which I trekked down to WBEZ studios to remotely record content for public radio: 4

Instances in which I had to conduct a live radio interview via cell phone in a NYC cab stuck in traffic on the Willamsburg Bridge: 1

Words in The Wilder Life, not including front and back matter: 98,547

Words in The Wilder Life that are legally considered profanity, according to FCC guidelines: 3

Words in The Wilder Life legally considered profanity occuring in a quote attributed to Michael Landon: 1

Written complaints about “excessive profanity” in The Wilder Life, either by Amazon reviews or handwritten letters: 3

Highest Amazon sales rank: 104

Books ordered for relatives in fruitless attempt to bump sales rank into coveted top 100: 2

Seconds the animatronic figure of William Clark at the Museum of Western Expansion in St. Louis spends twitching: 25

YA manuscripts considered at day job: 41

Yards of bubble wrap accompanying wedding presents, estimated: 25

Minor finger injuries sustained while making brooch bouquet: 7,200

People who misheard the phrase “brooch bouquet” as “roach bouquet”: 5

People at our wedding who asked us, “Wow, who’s that guy with the kilt?” (It was Eben!): 8

Requests I have made to my husband to sing like Gordon Lightfoot: 11

Hours of delight this video, involving weird perspective and a very tiny complimentary soap in our hotel room in Minneapolis, has brought our household: MILLIONS:

I’ll stop here because I don’t think I could make a list long enough to convey what an incredible year 2011 has been.

And here’s to 2012—”this is now,” as they say, and may your now be a happy one.

Two things I need for you to do:

1.) If you dug The Wilder Life and are on Goodreads (or would like to be on Goodreads), you have until Sunday the 20th to vote for it in the first rounds of the Goodreads Choice Awards, where it is a nominee in the Memoir/Autobiography category. I don’t think I actually win anything and I know having to choose between me and Nikki Sixx puts you in a tough spot, but I hope you’ll vote this week.

2.) My last book-related event of 2011 (out of nearly twenty!) will be a benefit for Literacy Works Chicago on Monday, December 5th, at the Hopleaf. We’re going for a Little House Christmas (for grown-ups) theme, and it’ll be much more festive than a book-signing. If you’re in Chicago, this is a great opportunity to hang out in that upstairs room at the Hopleaf for a good cause. So, come if you can! (Downloadable PDF with all the info here.)

Five things I’ve been doing since my last blog entry:

1.) Reading your young adult novel manuscript: Well, maybe not YOUR young adult novel manuscript, but there are a lot of people out there whose agents have sent me YA manuscripts, and I’m reading the hell out of them. (The rest of you ought to be working on YAnovel manuscripts this month, right?)

2.) Getting hitched. See below:

Yeah, that was fun. The September weather was perfect, and my brooch bouquet did not fall apart, though it weighed a ton (and no, I did not toss it). Every day, for nearly two months now, I consider two incontrovertible facts: First, that the wedding was wonderful and it went far beyond our expectations and second, we do not have to plan it anymore. Chris and I are SO FREAKING GLAD.

3.) Traveling for the next three weekends after the wedding and subsequently recovering from all the travel. What were we thinking? Although one of the weekends was a stay at a Lake Geneva resort, where about sixteen other weddings were taking place on the grounds around us and it happily reminded us that WE WERE DONE WITH OUR WEDDING and could sit around in comfy clothes reading novels (published ones, not manuscripts).

4.) Writing an adventure story for This American Life. Hot zig! I have always wanted to be a contributor and I got the chance to do it last month. The episode is here, and my piece is in Act Two. (My piece was inspired by children’s time-travel stories, like this insane serial in a 1960s Boys’ Life magazine.)

5.) Preparing for winter: I keep hearing that the coming season is going to be a massive snowmageddon winterpocalypse of coldastrophic proportions. There aren’t any muskrat houses in my neighborhood that I can check, but I suspect that the regular, non-musk rats around here are scurrying more and building bigger garbage nests in anticipation. At any rate, I’m getting kind of excited/paranoid and wanting to TAKE ACTION about this. I’ve replaced the tires and battery on the car (okay, which I needed to do anyway, but I feel better and even a little righteous about spending the money, knowing that the car will be in much better shape to face the coming of the SnowAntiChrist), bought a new parka, and am looking for new snow boots (recommendations, please!), and racking my brain for more things Chris and I can do or buy to give us the smug satisfaction of being ready when the time comes and the Evil Snow Empire descends. Shouldn’t we get batteries? Candles? DVDs of stylish 50s melodramas? Yes, yes, and yes.

Oh, I know: it’s been so long. The book and I took up residence over at the Facebook page, where throughout all the mayhem of publicity and work at Whitman and wedding planning I could like like like my heart out. But thumbs-up gestures aren’t terribly reflective and I’ve been wanting to get back here for awhile.

So in April the book came out, which required me to travel all around the Midwest, sometimes with Chris, always making a churn-toting spectacle of myself. For about six weeks in April and May there were constant trips—an epic Kansas/Missouri/Iowa/Minnesota trip, a Wisconsin trip, an East Coast leg in New York and North Carolina, early evening car trips out to the bookstores in the suburbs.

Marianne in Durham made a prairie cake, while a Pudd’nhead Books patron in St. Louis made Big Woods buttons (I think there are some Farmer Boy faces in there, too). Jami had a party on her roof. I loved all of it so much.

I don’t know how, with all the travel we did in the Midwest this spring, we managed to avoid the myriad tornadoes and floods—somehow they all happened during the days we were home. This isn’t to say there wasn’t a lot of rain and weird green skies, like this one that we saw on our drive to Iowa City. And come to think of it, on the way back from Madison I did spend a pretty freaky twenty minutes stopped in traffic on the interstate while hail pelted my rental car. Still, I feel lucky.

On Easter morning we looked out our front windows and saw a chicken running around in the street. For about three days it hung out in our neighborhood, hiding in flower beds and posing for cell phone pictures. It really didn’t look like things would end well for this chicken, but our neighbors caught it in a laundry basket and found it a home with an urban chicken coop.

I can’t even begin to explain what’s going on here. This is me and Alison Arngrim and the butter churn and a martini shaker and some lyrics from “Rapper’s Delight.”  Maybe you can take it from here.

There was more travel in June, to New Mexico and then New Orleans, which I barely got to see beyond a couple of early mornings in the French Quarter. If nothing else, there were beignets and those steamy windows.

We’re not having attendants, so without bridesmaid dresses to worry about, I had no idea how to figure out My Colors. There needs to be a kind of litmus paper that can take a dab of bridal stress sweat and turn just the right shades to suit your wedding style. Based on the reception linen swatches below it would appear that we’re having a coffeecake-themed wedding, but sadly that is not the case. (Also, this Wendy McClure’s Wedding Blog is not mine, but it fascinates me, because Other Wendy McClure’s wedding is a week before ours, so it’s like a portal into my alternate reality wedding future. I wish she would update, because what is she worrying about now that I will have to worry about a week from now? Oh, wait: EVERYTHING, probably. Never mind.)

The last trip of the summer was for an event in St. Joseph, Michigan last month, and after my last churning demonstration for the time being, Chris and I wandered around in the antique stores and the crazy five-and-dime they have there. Next week I’m marrying the guy in this hat.

I can’t believe it. Thank you to everyone who helped make these past few months too incredible for words (and pictures). It’s gone by so fast! But that also means I’ll see you soon.

1968: According to the caption in our family photo album, this is OUR HOMESTEAD. Not long after they got married (and before I was born), my parents bought a parcel of land near Belen, New Mexico (south of  Albuquerque, where they met). They bought it at as an investment, with maybe the vague idea that they’d build on it some day if it was worth something.

(Note that the mountain is not included.)

Of course, when I was a kid in Chicago I always imagined that we’d wind up here and build a shanty or something. My parents did end up moving back to New Mexico in 2006, but they bought a place with running water and electricity and a hot tub in the backyard, because they’re no fun at all.

Apparently my dad still owns the land, and it still looks exactly like this.

1979: Our very own Long Winter in Oak Park, Illinois. I’m pretty sure the Blizzard of ’79 coincided with my Little House reading years. The snow in Chicago was so heavy that garage roofs began to collapse around the city.  One night my dad had to go out on the roof of the front porch and shovel off those snowdrifts—a feat that seemed at least as thrillingly treacherous as Cap and Almanzo’s seed wheat rescue.

I remember being disappointed that I couldn’t look out my bedroom window and see the snow at eye level the way Laura could.

1980 (?): You may have already read about how I was in a community theater production of A Christmas Carol and got to wear a bonnet. And a long dress. And a crocheted shawl.

This was pretty much the high point of my life, I think.

1981 (?): Here I am at my own version of Plum Creek, at a campground west of Chicago that we’d visit two or three times a year, mostly on holiday weekends. I fished (badly), waded, caught crayfish (or at least watched people catch them), and tragically lost swim toys to the current. If I could have done all of it while wearing a calico dress, I would have.

I also tried my damnedest to grow my hair long enough to braid.  You might have been able to wrench a couple of pathetic pigtails out of that mess, but just barely. That’s the longest I’ve ever been able to grow it.

2009: But who needs good hair when you have a BONNET? I bought at this one the Little House on the Prairie Museum in Kansas and preened in the mirror of my motel room in Springfield, Missouri. The first of many bonnets I would buy, and many, many more dorky photos.

Speaking of pictures, I’m in the process of putting up more photos of my Little House trips and shenanigans on The Wilder Life’s Flickr page as well as the Facebook page, so stay tuned.

Also! Book review blogger extraordinaire The Girl from the Ghetto has posted a truly EPIC review and giveaway of The Wilder Life today, so if you want another chance to win a copy of the book before it officially launches a week from Thursday, GO ENTER.

So sometimes I miss the days when you guys would leave blog comments, and I know some of you miss the days when I would talk about being a Plus Sized Lady. (Or, to borrow from my one of my favorite plus- size-store-names, a Forgotten Woman. Who wouldn’t want to shop at a place that sounded like a 70s Jill Clayburgh divorce film?)

Anyway, earlier this month I went to Weetacon and took part in what can only be called a FASHION EXTRAVAGANZA sponsored by Igigi, because what else can you call it when you and a dozen of your friends agree to pick a dress to review, only to find out that you actually got three dresses? I already own a few things by Igigi (whose name sounds like a sultry art house film), so I was happy that I got to try these. [Read more →]

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 →]