Posts Tagged‘Quiet Americans’
Thursday’s Post-Publication Post
Yesterday was a great day, and I thank all of you who posted congratulations here, on Twitter, and/or on Facebook for helping to make it a very special pub date, indeed, for my short-story collection, Quiet Americans.
Another highlight: Quiet Americans received a sage and sensitive review from Jonathan Kirsch, Books Editor for The Jewish Journal (of Greater Los Angeles).
Here’s a snippet—one of my favorites—from the review:
Dreifus does not confine herself to the kind of character studies and slice-of-life sketches that are the stock-in-trade of so many short-story writers. Rather, she cares deeply about history — her own family history and the larger history that we all inhabit — and that’s what makes her stories both engaging and consequential.
“Engaging” and “consequential.” Two adjectives any writer would be delighted to see applied to her work.
You can read the entire review here.
The Wednesday Web Browser for Writers: Pub Day Edition!
Please excuse the self-indulgence/self-referential links today, but…today is the official publication day for my short-story collection, Quiet Americans. To that end:
Friday Find: How to Plan Your Virtual Book Tour
So, as I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been hard at work preparing for the blog tour for my short-story collection, Quiet Americans. And it so happens that I’ve been receiving a number of questions about planning such tours.
True to form, I’ve been pointing my questioners to various links and websites to help them become more familiar with the idea and practice. Now, I have a new resource to share: Sandra Beckwith’s guest post for The Savvy Book Marketer.
It’s a post filled with good tips, and it’s exactly the sort of thing I would have appreciated back at the start of my own planning process.
On that note, here’s wishing you all a good weekend. See you back here on Monday for the start of an especially exciting week!
Thursday’s (Final) Pre-Publication Post
March 25, 2010. That was the date of our first “Thursday Pre-Publication Post.” Less than 10 months later, it’s time for the last post in the series. Next Wednesday, January 19, will see the official publication date of my short-story collection, Quiet Americans. And next Thursday, we’ll take this show on the post-publication road. I’m so thankful for the advice and support that you’ve shown me here on the blog in this pre-publication phase, and I hope you’ll stick around to see how this particular publishing story plays out.
Right now, I’m especially focused on launching our Winter 2011 Blog Tour, which begins next week. I won’t tell you exactly how much time I spent last weekend drafting guest posts for host blogs. Let’s just say that it was considerable. Not that I’m complaining! I am really grateful to have these opportunities.
This week, I’ve been shifting a bit from the guest posts to my part of author Q&As. In case you haven’t surmised, this time, I’m the one supplying the “A”, not the “Q.” And I have been blown away by my interviewers’ incisiveness. (Sure, I knew they were smart, but this smart?)
I don’t want to give you any examples yet. Let’s let the suspense build for the tour, shall we? But I will share that working on these interviews, on the heels of receiving excellent blurbs and more recent feedback, I’ve been reminded of a December blog post by Ellen Meeropol on what Elli, as another debut author, has been learning from her readers.
“I didn’t expect to be surprised–and humbled–by readers’ insights into my characters and their story,” she wrote.
Frankly, I didn’t expect it, either. In my case, there’s some especially delicious icing on this cake: readers’ insights into not only specific characters and stories, but also on the collection as a whole.
You’ll see what I’m talking about once the tour is under way. Happily, it’s not long now!