On Santa Claus Beach in Carpinteria with our dog. Photo by Chris Purdy Of course every writer dreams of a book tour. You know, adoring fans greeting you at dozens of strange, new, fabulous American cities. A ship in every port, a feather in every cap. In reality, we are living in the 21st Century at the end of a drawn-out recession and financial crisis when books are mostly digital pixels and a flash mob for a closing athletic shoe store garners more interest than any author peddling her novella.
Still, we can all do something to push our latest book project and sometimes creativity can go a long ways. Take the ingenuity of my publisher's marketing guru, Lori Hettler. She invited me to participate in a "virtual" book tour. I really had no idea what she was talking about, but I agreed. Turns out, she meant doing things an author might do if they were touring the country and appearing in various book stores, but without actually leaving my home. As a new business owner and mother of small kiddos, that worked for me.
So, today, I introduce my virtual self, the digitally retouched perfected version of the author and artist Maureen Foley. Untethered by actual reality, I can be any height, age, weight! I am astute! I am erudite! I never laugh nervously or say "like," in that embarrassing SoCal way. I am glamorous! Put together! Modest! Fabulous! I quote famous authors and read only Proust and Dickens and Austen and Marquez. I can quote George Eliot and all the postcolonialists, post feminists, structuralists and more! I can theorize your teleology and analyze your Marxist theory. I am represented by six different literary agents. I always remember your name, look you in the eye, shake your hand and make just the right compliment. I'm like an inert gas: perfectly self-contained and aloof.
Sadly, my virtual self only exists in the severe confines of this blog. Oh, and I'm letting her roam free for the next two weeks, from January 13-28, 2014, at various guest blog posts at the following sites: Booked In Chico, Love at First Book, Words, Notes, Fiction, Chick Lit Central, The Relentless Reader, Little Fiction, Curbside Press, Lesbrary, Lovely Bookshelf, WordPlaySound, Gapers Block, and the Guiltless Reader. To check out the posts as they go live, see the Women Float section of my website here. She's great. Go meet her. Tell her I sent you.
Still, we can all do something to push our latest book project and sometimes creativity can go a long ways. Take the ingenuity of my publisher's marketing guru, Lori Hettler. She invited me to participate in a "virtual" book tour. I really had no idea what she was talking about, but I agreed. Turns out, she meant doing things an author might do if they were touring the country and appearing in various book stores, but without actually leaving my home. As a new business owner and mother of small kiddos, that worked for me.
So, today, I introduce my virtual self, the digitally retouched perfected version of the author and artist Maureen Foley. Untethered by actual reality, I can be any height, age, weight! I am astute! I am erudite! I never laugh nervously or say "like," in that embarrassing SoCal way. I am glamorous! Put together! Modest! Fabulous! I quote famous authors and read only Proust and Dickens and Austen and Marquez. I can quote George Eliot and all the postcolonialists, post feminists, structuralists and more! I can theorize your teleology and analyze your Marxist theory. I am represented by six different literary agents. I always remember your name, look you in the eye, shake your hand and make just the right compliment. I'm like an inert gas: perfectly self-contained and aloof.
Sadly, my virtual self only exists in the severe confines of this blog. Oh, and I'm letting her roam free for the next two weeks, from January 13-28, 2014, at various guest blog posts at the following sites: Booked In Chico, Love at First Book, Words, Notes, Fiction, Chick Lit Central, The Relentless Reader, Little Fiction, Curbside Press, Lesbrary, Lovely Bookshelf, WordPlaySound, Gapers Block, and the Guiltless Reader. To check out the posts as they go live, see the Women Float section of my website here. She's great. Go meet her. Tell her I sent you.
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