Guest-blogger Diane Saarinen on 5 Sassy and Well-Branded Blogs

Brooklyn-based writer and blog tour specialist Diane Saarinen is someone whose praises I often sing, for she did a superb job helping coordinate the fall 2010 blog tour for the paperback edition of my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire. I've been blogging here at Madam Mayo for four years now, and though I've often blogged about other blogs and blogging as a literary genre, the blogoverse is so expandingly ginormous, there were still-- as Diane showed me-- many outstanding book blogs I'd never heard of, though they've already achieved stratospheric numbers of readers. (And no doubt this is still true, and will always be true. Read more about blog tours and some of the guest-blog posts I wrote for mine here.) Diane Saarinen can be found at the Saima Agency which offers support for the harried writer with author services such as blog tours, virtual assistance, copywriting, and book trailers. The agency recently surveyed book bloggers and has an e-report available on the findings, Best Practices: Pitching Book Bloggers. Over to you, Diane!

5 SASSY AND WELL-BRANDED BLOGS

By Diane Saarinen

As a blog tour coordinator, I’ve worked closely with my blogging colleagues for a few years now and can tell you that every blogger – and their blog – is unique in the way he or she expresses the passion for reading and sharing opinions. I would imagine, however, that as a new blog publisher, it might be a challenge to stand out from the crowd. Here’s my list of five sassy and well-branded blogs that do just that:

1. Booking Mama Julie Peterson, a.k.a. Booking Mama, has carved a niche out for herself by recommending book club reads. Even her guest posts by authors often relate to book club-related experiences such as memorable readings or unusual insights offered by readers. A nice place for readers who want to connect to find community.

2. Her Circle Ezine Is it a website or a blog? I have a soft spot in my heart for Her Circle Ezine ever since I volunteered there as Blog Producer several years ago. The guest blog posts there are carefully planned and thought out with often unconventional writers offering their viewpoints. Plus it’s an online women’s literary magazine – what’s not to like?

3. The Book Lady’s Blog At first I didn’t understand why Rebecca Joines Schinsky, a.k.a. the Book Lady, was throwing her underwear at authors. However, being a huge Tom Jones fan, it didn’t raise any eyebrows either. Take a look at Rebecca’s site for an example of a blogger having a heckuva good time reviewing books with well-written reviews to support all the fun.

4. Wonders & Marvels The quirkier history is, the more interesting it gets. Wonders & Marvels has the wise, the weird and the wonderful – all in one place. Generous book giveaways as well with multiple copies offered. Truth is stranger than fiction.

5. Speaking of history, how can I forget The Historical Boys ? I’m anticipating historical fiction author C. W. Gortner will get a kick out of being on such a sassy list! Christopher works hard at interviewing other hist-fic authors as well as writing about the latest on research. With his busy writing schedule, he earns even more respect for keeping this blog well updated.

--- Diane Saarinen

>>For the complete archive of Madam Mayo guest-blog posts, click here.
Guest-blogs appear on Wednesdays (usually).
Last up: Teresa Nichols: 5 Links About Buryin' Daddy
Next up: Daniel Olivas, author of the novel, The Book of Want.

Five Favorite Characters: Frau von Kuhacsevich, Oseola Green, Josefa de Iturbide, General Bazaine, and the very jolly Belgian, Baron d'Huart

(Oops, how it get to be 2011 already? I meant to post this a month ago!) The blog tour for The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire continues... one of my recent guest-blogs was posted a at the Book Drunkard.

The Top 5 of the “Tussie-Mussie”
By C.M. Mayo, author of the novel The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire


A “tussie-mussie” is a bouquet of flowers and herbs (and just the thing for a Washington DC belle to press to her nose as she walks through the markets of 19th century Mexico City…) I like to think of my characters in The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire— from the likes of Louis Napoleon, Maximilian von Habsburg, the Pope (Pio Nono, none other) to a galopina (Mexican kitchen maid), a bandit who sings mermaid songs, and two (count ‘em) American princesses—as a tussie-mussie (and one with maybe a few misidentified weeds as well).

I’m often asked, of the dozens, which characters are my favorites? Well, there are oceans of difference between a character I’d like to be; a character I’d want to sit next to at dinner; and a character I enjoyed writing. Writing fiction is a process much like acting. Fleshing out a character sometimes requires reading and other background research, but mostly imagination. Some characters can be a painful, awkward stretch. Others, at least for a little while, can be jolly fun to play— like a game!

Here are the five I most enjoyed writing:

Frau von Kuhacsevich
Wife of the Purser of the Mexican Imperial Household, Frau von Kuhacsevich came to Mexico as a long-time member Maximilian von Habsburg’s entourage. That meant, to put it plainly, that she had extensive experience with Europe’s most exactingly formal protocol for, prior to accepting the Mexican throne, Maximilian, younger brother of Austria’s Kaiser, had served as Viceroy of a major province, Lombardy-Venetia, where he ruled from his palace in Monza. As might be expected, Frau von Kuhacsevich found no end of trouble and trauma in managing a Mexican staff in Mexico City, and later, in the winter Imperial Residence in what was then the picturesque but exceedingly remote village of Cuernavaca. Her opinions and her stream of consciousness could not be said to be politically correct. Ho ho.

Oseola Green
The younger brother of the American mother of the prince of the title is such a minor character that anyone reading novel might be forgiven for forgetting him entirely. But in writing the novel I was charmed to chuckles when he appeared— as little brothers do— saying dreadful things about his sister’s beau and, in the swimming hole, making fart noises with his armpit. (Did he really say and do that? I have no idea. Just a novelist’s guess.)

Josefa de Iturbide
The daughter of Mexico’s first emperor, Agustín de Iturbide, after her father’s execution by firing squad in Mexico, Josefa grew up in Washington, DC, where her mother, the widowed empress, found herself struggling to pay the rent. A spinster, after her mother’s death in Philadelphia, Josefa returned to Mexico City to help her younger brother, Angel, and his American wfe, Alice, with their new baby— the baby who was destined, it turned out only a little later, to be taken into Maximilian’s court. As per Maximilian’s 1865 contract with the Iturbide family, Josefa de Iturbide received not only the magnificent pensions and status of “Imperial Highness,” but, unlike the parents of the baby, she remained in Mexico, a member of the Court, and was, with Maximilian himself, co-tutoress of the heir presumptive to the throne. She had the most to gain and the most to lose. Think: Otto von Bismark meets Salma Hayek meets Queen Victoria meets Torquemada. (OK, maybe I am exaggerating, a little.) I particularly enjoyed writing her conversations with Frau von Kuhacsevich.

General Achille Bazaine
Most readers have heard of Cinco de Mayo, which commemorates the defeat of the French at Puebla on May 5, 1862 (no, it is not Mexico’s Independence Day). One year later, however, after hand-to-hand, house-to-house combat, the French finally took Puebla, and soon afterwards, General Bazaine, an able administrator and soldier famous for his coup d’oiel, who had made a spectacular career in North Africa prior to coming to Mexico, took command of the French Forces. Bazaine was both admired and despised, and in reading about him, I quickly learned to closely question the source. In Mexico he found himself in an increasingly difficult situation, for he represented an unpopular and costly occupation in suppport of an increasingly untenable and, alas, incompetent Mexican Imperial government under Maximilian. In the midst of this, his first wife, whom as a child, he had reportedly ransomed from North African white slaver traders, had an affair with an actor in Paris and, on the eve of leaving to join Bazaine in Mexico, she died suddenly. Soon afterwards he married her doppelganger, Pepita de la Peña, the 16 year old neice of one of Mexico’s multitude of ex-presidents. Bazaine is a character both serious and frivolous, tough, yet big-hearted, vigorous, though, as his portraits show, gaining weight, becoming exhausted, small-eyed, on the defence.

Baron Frédéric Victor d’Huart
A Belgian aristocrat, member of the delegation from the new King of the Belgians, the Empress Carlota’s brother, Leopold II, Baron d’Huart was shot in the head when his stagecoach was attacked near Río Frío, out of Mexico City in March of 1866. His murder was a debacle for Maximilian, for it sent the message to all of Europe that his government could not protect its highways. For all my research, I found almost nothing about the Baron d’Huart, so my portrait of him is based on an artistic choice: I wanted him to be sophisticated but naïve; a tourist avid for romance; a youth with every advantage and, stretching before him, a long span of life, so it seemed, until, from the dark woods: the crack of a rifle.

More anon.

Blog Tour (What's a Blog Tour?) for The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire

El último príncipe del Imperio Mexicano is out in Mexico, and so I'm south of the border for the time being (and happy to say, it's already gone into a second printing!). Meanwhile, the bookstore tour behind me (from DC to CA in 2009), I'm doing a fall U.S. "blog tour" for the English original, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, which is now out in paperback.

What's a "blog tour"? Just a series of "visits"-- it might be a Q & A or a guest-blog post, on blogs that cover subjects related to the book. In some cases my publisher, Unbridled Books, provided books for a giveaway to readers. It's a delightful kind of tour because I get to find out about other bloggers, reach out to new readers-- and not have to pack a suitcase!

So far:

Mary J. LohnesInterview with C.M. Mayo "The Politics of Love"

Latina Book ClubQ & A with blogger Maria Ferrer

HistoricalNovels.info
A review and an interview by blogger Margaret Donsbach

Hist-Fic-Chick: Celebrating History Through Literature
"Haunted Historicals: The Curious Coincidences Involving Senator Claiborne Pell's Mansion"
--> Now a podcast (and check out more podcasts on my page at iTunes).

Girls Just Reading "The Story of the Story of The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire"
Also: a review by Julie

Jenn's Bookshelves
An interview; also a review by Jenn.



Some previous stops on the "blog tour" (some from 2009) include:

Beatrice.com
"What Connects You to the 1860s?"

Work-in-Progress
"12 Tips to Help You Hang in There and Finish Your Novel"

Largehearted Boy
Playlist for The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire

Red Room
C.M. Mayo Celebrates a Batch of Bookstores

Potomac Review Blog
"Who Knew That Mexico Had a Half-American Prince? (And How Did His Mother, a Washington Belle, End Up in Mexico?)"

Reading Group Guides
"A Book Group Meeting Menu"

Savvy Verse & Wit
Interview by Serena M. Agusto-Cox

Coffee with a Canine
C.M. Mayo & Picadou

Write On! On-line
Interview by Deborah Eckerling

Christina Baker Kline: Writing/Life"Break the Block in Five Minutes"

Critical Mass: The Blog of the National Book Critics Circle
Interview by Rigoberto Gonzalez



---> Coming up this week: She Read a Book blog


More anon.


P.S. Read more about blog tours at Diane Saarinen's Book Blog Tour Guide Blog; also historical novelist Sandra Gulland has an informative post at Red Room about her amazing 2009 blog tour for Mistress of the Sun.