Virtual Tour

Welcome to the headquarters for the Quiet Americans Winter 2011 Blog Tour. When Quiet Americans was published in 2011, the blog tour helped me—and the book—connect with readers worldwide. Here’s how the tour worked.

Sometimes, the blog’s host conducted an interview with me. Sometimes, the blog host posted a review of or commentary about Quiet Americans. Sometimes, I wrote a guest post tailored to the host blog/blogger’s interests. Every tour stop was unique, with fresh content. Reader comments were warmly welcomed at each tour stop, and I checked in periodically at each blog to respond. A bonus: If readers were too busy on a given tour day to check an appearance, they could always come back here, where the links have provided a permanent archive. I am immensely grateful to all of the talented and generous bloggers who welcomed Quiet Americans and me to their virtual living-rooms. Please visit their wonderful blogs.

  • Monday, January 17: The tour began with a guest post for the Jewish Book Council’s Author Blog series, which is shared with MyJewishLearning and The Forward‘s Arty Semite blog. Topic: “Jewish-American Literature as Multicultural Literature.”
  • Wednesday, January 19: Release day for Quiet Americans! And time for a second guest post—“A Birthday and An Anniversary: A Book and Its Inspiration”—on the Jewish Book Council’s blog.
  • Thursday, January 20: Our sojourn on the Jewish Book Council’s Author Blog series concluded with reflections on “Mark Twain, ‘Mishpocha,’ and Me”.
  • Friday, January 21: A contribution to the “Selling Shorts” short-story series on Ron Hogan’s Beatrice blog: “Erika Dreifus and Malamud’s ‘German Refugee'”.
  • Monday, January 24: John Griswold interviewed me for his InsideHigherEd.com blog, The Education of Oronte Churm.
  • Wednesday, January 26: I showed up on B.J. Epstein’s Brave New Words blog with a guest post: “Four Ways to Manage ‘Foreign Words’ in Fiction.”
  • Friday, January 28: Ellen Meeropol, herself immersed in the busy-ness that accompanies a book publication, took the time to review Quiet Americans for her Between the Lines blog.
  • Tuesday, February 1: Lisa Romeo, the writer behind the eponymous Lisa Romeo Writes, presented a Q&A focusing on individual stories in the collection—and offers a signed giveaway copy to one lucky commenter.
  • Wednesday, February 2-Monday, February 7: The Blog Tour took a week-long breather while I traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend the annual conference of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs and give a reading at the National Museum of American Jewish Military History. For details, please visit my News & Events page.
  • Tuesday, February 8: Veteran journalist Linda K. Wertheimer interviewed me for her Jewish Muse blog.
  • Thursday, February 10 and Friday, February 11: Thursday brought Part One of a two-day visit over on Lori Ann Bloomfield’s blog, The First Line. To start things off, Lori posted a review of Quiet Americans. The visit continued with a Q&A on Friday.
  • Friday, February 11: Over on The Quivering Pen, David Abrams hosted Quiet Americans for a “Friday Freebie.” (Click here to read Abrams’s remarkable review of the book.)
  • Monday, February 14: Jessica Handler welcomed me–and a guest post connected to writing on Jewish themes–to Swimming in the Trees.
  • Wednesday, February 16: I shared some thoughts on the experience writing about the same subject in different genres on Sage Cohen’s Path of Possibility.
  • Friday, February 18: Chloé Yelena Miller welcomed me to her blog for a Q&A.
  • Saturday, February 19:  Technically, they weren’t part of the blog tour, but our own two giveaways: one via Goodreads and the other via Facebook (the latter taking place via random selection of two people who “like” our page) concluded on this day.
  • Monday, February 21: Our tour neared its conclusion with an interview focused on historical fiction on John Vanderslice’s Creating Van Gogh.
  • Thursday, February 24: One final stop, on the Guide to Literary Agents blog, where you can read about “7 Things I’ve Learned So Far” in my journey as a writer.

Even after the tour ended, I was lucky to be interviewed about the book (and some other topics) several times.