I have no idea how many book-lovers are out there blogging about the books they enjoy, but there must be a bunch. I decided to do a blog tour to promote VICTORIA REBELS. Some of my writer pals have organized their own, which seems to involve an awful lot of work, just to set it up, and so I opted to enlist the services of a bright and ambitious young woman, Gabrielle Carolina, who has a blog of her own, The Mod Podge Bookshelf. We decided to run it Feb. 18th to Mar. 13th.
I left on Jan. 9th for Paris and Spain, using my iPhone to check my email periodically, and toward the end of the trip (which was wonderful, by the way) the schedule and the interviews began to pop up. By the time I got home a week ago after more than 24 hours without sleep and a heavy cold coming on, all but one of the 18 bloggers who had signed up for the tour had sent their questions. On Monday, surrounded by Kleenex, I began answering.
The ones I enjoyed most were the "character interviews," in which I pretended to be the interviewee and actually made up my own questions or edited the ones submitted, and then I answered them in the character's voice. Most fun was answering in the persona of the villainous Sir John Conroy.
The hardest were the Top Ten lists. What were Queen Victoria's ten favorite things? Well, after her dog and her horse, the color blue and boiled eggs for breakfast, I began to run out of things. Even more difficult, what were MY ten favorite things about the Victorian Era? Hey, I love the hats and the gloves and the gardens! But then what? I struggled most of all with what seems like an innocuous question: My ten favorite or most influential books. I couldn't come up with even ONE that I'd put on such a list, and so I dodged and described the sources I used to write VICTORIA REBELS. Personally, I think that's much more interesting, and I hope the blogger agrees. Meanwhile, I keep thinking about what has really influenced me.
I left on Jan. 9th for Paris and Spain, using my iPhone to check my email periodically, and toward the end of the trip (which was wonderful, by the way) the schedule and the interviews began to pop up. By the time I got home a week ago after more than 24 hours without sleep and a heavy cold coming on, all but one of the 18 bloggers who had signed up for the tour had sent their questions. On Monday, surrounded by Kleenex, I began answering.
The ones I enjoyed most were the "character interviews," in which I pretended to be the interviewee and actually made up my own questions or edited the ones submitted, and then I answered them in the character's voice. Most fun was answering in the persona of the villainous Sir John Conroy.
The hardest were the Top Ten lists. What were Queen Victoria's ten favorite things? Well, after her dog and her horse, the color blue and boiled eggs for breakfast, I began to run out of things. Even more difficult, what were MY ten favorite things about the Victorian Era? Hey, I love the hats and the gloves and the gardens! But then what? I struggled most of all with what seems like an innocuous question: My ten favorite or most influential books. I couldn't come up with even ONE that I'd put on such a list, and so I dodged and described the sources I used to write VICTORIA REBELS. Personally, I think that's much more interesting, and I hope the blogger agrees. Meanwhile, I keep thinking about what has really influenced me.