book launch – Patricia Ann McNair

September 24, 2017

Good Times Today!!!

And These Are the Good Times, Patricia Ann McNair

From Booklist, 9/1/2017: “Short story writer McNair (The Temple of Air, 2011) proves to be an irresistible personal essayist of refreshing candor, vibrant openheartedness, rueful humor, and unassuming wisdom. In the title piece, which opens this companionable, down-to-earth collection, young McNair joins her beloved father at Sullivan’s, his favorite Chicago tavern, bugging him for coins for the jukebox and dancing happily by herself. Enthralled by music, hubbub, and motion, McNair remains adventurous and omnivorously curious. Swinging backward and forward in time, she vividly chronicles such indelible experiences as spending her seventeenth summer as a volunteer at a dental clinic in Honduras, how she set about losing her virginity after her father died when she was 15, her bartender days, a fling in Cuba, and marriage. McNair frankly addresses sexuality and sexual abuse, the last two presidential elections, and the lives and deaths of loved ones. Throughout these vital, confiding, potent, and superbly well-crafted essays, McNair also muses on her path to becoming a writer and a writing teacher, generously sharing insights into the creative process and “the yearning toward wonder.”” – Donna Seaman

Sunday, September 24, 2017: TODAY IS THE DAY! In just a few hours I will be celebrating the launch of my second book, And These Are the Good Times, with friends and family and with the wonderful folks from Side Street Press, my publisher. In honor and anticipation of this life event, I am sharing the book’s review from Booklist, penned by the fabulous writer and editor Donna Seaman.

Please join us for the celebration today: 4:30 – 6:30, The Riverview Tavern, 1958 W. Roscoe, (Roscoe and Damen), Chicago, IL

I hope to see you all soon, and as always, thanks for reading! – PMc

September 23, 2017

Good Times Tomorrow!

interior-of-a-piggly-wiggly-grocery-store-1959-photo-u1 — Photo:14thCenturyHood/imgur

I watched as my mother selected things we needed (bread, milk, cigarettes) and put them in the cart. I watched her consider things we didn’t need but would like (steaks, orange juice, cookies), and choose a few of those as well. She calculated, the prices slipping over her lips like a murmur. ~ From “Saturday Shopping”

And These Are the Good Times, Patricia Ann McNair

Tomorrow, Sunday, September 24, 2017, I will be celebrating the launch of my second book, And These Are the Good Times, with friends and family and with the wonderful folks from Side Street Press, my publisher. In honor and anticipation of this life event, I am sharing the first few sentences of the essay “Saturday Shopping.” Why? Because it is Saturday, and I am going shopping.

I hope to see you all tomorrow, and as always, thanks for reading! – P

September 22, 2017

Good Times in Two Days

“I Go on Running” trailer

“And These Are the Good Times” trailer

And These Are the Good Times, Patricia Ann McNair

In just two days, I will be celebrating the launch of my second book, And These Are the Good Times, with friends and family and with the wonderful folks from Side Street Press, my publisher. In honor and anticipation of this life event, I am sharing links to two trailers made from excerpts of two of the essays. Trailers by the fabulous Philip Hartigan. Please click through to the links!.

Thanks for reading–and watching! – PMc

September 21, 2017

Good Times in Three Days

I overheard a friend recently say that every woman is afraid every day…. “Your characters are so stupid,” the woman said…. Two weeks in Paris, Philip and I.

And These Are the Good Times, Patricia Ann McNair

In just three days, I will be celebrating the launch of my second book, And These Are the Good Times, with friends and family and with the wonderful folks from Side Street Press, my publisher. In honor and anticipation of this life event, I am sharing the first sentence of three essays that hold the third place in each of the three sections of the collection.

Thanks for reading! – PMc

September 20, 2017

Good Times in Four Days

“unselfconsciously sexy” & “arrestingly good” & “superbly well-crafted essays” & “prose is luminous”

And These Are the Good Times, Patricia Ann McNair

In just four days, I will be celebrating the launch of my second book, And These Are the Good Times, with friends and family and with the wonderful folks from Side Street Press, my publisher. In honor and anticipation of this life event, I am sharing four things reviewers have said about the collection. And by the way…today is the official book birthday!

Thanks for reading! – PMc

September 19, 2017

Good Times in Five Days

I regret that when we were children on a plane flying with our family from Spain to Portugal, while he slept I took the postcard Roger had written to our grandparents from the seat pocket in front of him and erased what he had written. ~ From “Roger the Dodger”

And These Are the Good Times, Patricia Ann McNair

In just five days, I will be celebrating the launch of my second book, And These Are the Good Times, with friends and family and with the wonderful folks from Side Street Press, my publisher. In honor and anticipation of this life event, I am sharing a little teaser: after opening the collection to five different, random pages, I came to the line above.

Thanks for reading! – PMc

September 14, 2017September 13, 2017

Good Times in Ten Days

He loved to travel. ~ From “Finding My Father and the FBI”

And These Are the Good Times, Patricia Ann McNair

In just ten days, I will be celebrating the launch of my second book, And These Are the Good Times, with friends and family and with the wonderful folks from Side Street Press, my publisher. In honor and anticipation of this life event, I am sharing a little teaser that is the tenth to the last sentence of the book.

Thanks for reading! – PMc

September 12, 2017

Good Times in Twelve Days

All he wanted was permission to pass, but still, you let him move you, and after, long after, you remembered leaning into those hands. ~ From “What You’ll Remember”

And These Are the Good Times, Patricia Ann McNair

In just twelve days, I will be celebrating the launch of my second book, And These Are the Good Times, with friends and family and with the wonderful folks from Side Street Press, my publisher. In honor and anticipation of this life event, I am sharing a little teaser from page twelve of the collection.

Thanks for reading! – PMc

July 30, 2017July 30, 2017

On Distraction

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As a full-time college teacher, I find that the summer is usually the time when I can deeply immerse myself in my writing projects. This year, though, I have taken on the role of Summer Director of MFA Programs in Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago, which means that I have to spend more days a week at the office than I prefer. I could write there, I suppose, between emails and meetings, and I have. A little. But I am more the sort of writer who wants to be in my own (or a designated) writing space, away from the work distractions, feeling uninterrupted and, well, a little self-righteous as I clack away at my keyboard when others are out swimming, vacationing, sun-soaking.

So the new writing, or rather, new rewriting (because damnit! I am on draft ten or so of this damn novel, and this one has to be the one!) has been coming in dribs and drabs, filling the small gaps between freelance assignments and workshop teaching and book promotion stuff (have I told you I have new book coming out? September, this year, book party details coming soon: And These are The Good Times: A Chicago gal riffs on death, sex, life, dancing, writing, wonder, loneliness, place, family, faith, coffee, and the FBI (among other things)) and, because I haven’t enough to distract me from finishing this damn novel, moving.

That, my friends, the moving part, has been the biggest distraction of all. You try squeezing into a one bedroom with killer views of Lake Michigan, but not even enough wall space to lean all of your bookcases against–from a sprawling two bedroom flat with a sunroom and deck and leafy views and a storage space bigger than the kitchen of the new place. A whole lot of muttering under my breath: “Do I love it? Do I need it? Do I use it?” and a small fortune spent on big black garbage bags and file boxes to haul away (thank god for charity shops, friends, family, Craig’s List, and neighbors who literally stood on the sidewalk waiting for us to take out the trash so they could go through it) the things we decided No, No, and No.

But here we are, two weeks in the new pad with the killer view, eight weeks after we decided we were going to make the move, two months of sorting, sorting, sorting, replacing, replacing, replacing, arranging, arranging, arranging, and we are happy, happy, happy.

And almost done.

And the writing? In two weeks I am back on my regular school contract; in two months I will be thrown into new book mode.

Damn.

I better get going.

September 7, 2011

The Whacky World Wide Web and A Book’s Launch

So a little less than one day in advance of the book launch of your debut story collection, you find yourself trolling the internet, Googling yourself (!) and the book’s title. This is how you discover that the interview you did with that gentleman from the news service that includes 500 small papers is out, and you sound a little like you might have something interesting to say. This is how you find your interview with the big city weekly alternative paper. This is how you stumble over a review of your book by one of the jazzier on-line book sites, a review that makes you more than a little pleased.

Here, too, you find the expected: a short-short creative nonfiction piece; a reprint (with permission) of the book’s title story from some years ago; reprints (without permission) of travel articles you wrote; an interview about creative nonfiction (two, actually); information on panels, readings, presentations; an interview with that artist who is interested in text and image; mentions and plugs by friends and students and colleagues. And the not-so-expected: the title of one of your stories in a strange aggregate list likely put up by someone with more than a little OCD; a very nasty comment about your smile on one of those rate-your-teacher sites; summaries of talks you gave at a festival, a conference, a workshop; mentions in blogs by people you don’t know but should; pictures that are not all that flattering from one event or another.

Most interesting, though, are those things absolutely surprising, weird, and sometimes wonderful:

Discovering that nearly 700 people are in the drawing for your book on Goodreads, and that close to 100 have added it to their shelves.

The name of your book on the list of 52 books a young woman—whom you don’t believe you’ve ever met—plans to read before the end of this year.

Your book on the list of “Top Pre-Orders” in the category of short story collections of a book dealer in Australia.

And this, perhaps your favorite of them all so far, found on a website called Bruv World:

“I’m reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I think she had some serious problems (Rand, not Atlas). Just reread The Great Gatsby by F. John Fitzgerald. It was disappointingly uneven in the writing, with bits of brilliance (Mr. Wolfsheim’s tufts of nostril hair) interspersed with sudden shifts from first the third person for the purpose of back-story dumps…Last month I read a new novel coming out by Patricia Ann McNair, Temple of Air. Stunningly good…Of course, the best places to find zombies is any discussion of American politics. I’ve heard the same suggested of Brit politics lately but who knows if that’s true or not.”

Indeed.