So this morning an interesting e-mail exchange with the wondrous NYC and San Miguel de Allende-based writer, Janice Eidus, who has a sure to be fabulous new novel coming out, The War of the Rosens. (She's a well-known writing teacher and author of the story collection, Vito Loves Geraldine, among many other works.) She's the third writer this week who has asked me about blogging and how it can help promote a book. Well, amigas, here's an example: just this morning, the widely-read Phronesisaical, a philosophy, torture, fruit pix, and politics blog of a DC area philosophy professor who goes by the "nom de blogue" Helmut, just--- bless his heart--- mentioned the news that my memoir, Miraculous Air, is now out in paperback. And by the way, "Helmut" himself has an anthology of essays on torture forthcoming with Johns Hopkins University Press. Stay tuned! What's fun is that new readers find my work thanks to "the Phron" while, perhaps, new readers will find Janice Eidus and "Helmut" thanks to "Madam Mayo." Yes, it can get cliquish and circular. But at the same time, it sends readers out in all sorts of fresh directions, no? While I lament the recent and precipitous decline in print book reviews, I love reading blogs. The world seems much larger and certainly quirkier to me as a result. All this said, here at Madam Mayo I don't blog much about book promotion. (Pretty much everything I have to say about that is here.) For an outstanding blog about that subject, check out M.J. Rose's Buzz, Balls & Hype.
