For those of you in the West Los Angeles area, I will be celebrating MIRIAM's publication on Tuesday night, Sept 4, at Dutton's Brentwood Books (11975 San Vicente Blvd, LA 90049) at 7 pm. Please come out and support your local independent bookseller in this, my only bookstore event in LA.
For those not in LA, get ready to be shocked and awed. Get this - both Book I and Book II are now for sale at Costco! Can you believe it? Now I know I've made the big time (actually I knew I'd made the big time when a friend saw both books selling at her local WLA car wash).
I have a favor to ask of you, my fans. Until yesterday, Amazon still
had the old pub date of Aug 28 for MIRIAM, which meant that they
didn't accept reviews. But now that's fixed and they're shipping
copies, and amazingly, MIRIAM is ranked #1 for Literature & Fiction:
United States: Jewish American as well as #7 in Romance: Historical.
So if you've read MIRIAM and liked it, please post a nice review of
the book on Amazon.com (and B&N too if you're industrious).
Wow! Just got my copy of this week's LA Jewish Journal, and sure enough, the cover story, "God Gets a Rewrite," is about Jewish 'pulp' fiction (with an appropriately lurid cover design), and the article (2 facing pages at the center) prominently features covers of both JOHEVED and MIRIAM. Plus quotes from my agent, the CEO of Plume Books, and several from me. Actually, the article was more about "Rashi's Daughters" than any of the other books mentioned.
Amazing! You can't buy this kind of publicity (and just after the publication date too). I'm shocked and awed. And very thankful.
For those in the LA area: Tomorrow night (Aug 7 at 7 pm), I'll be
teaching the final prayer class at Beth Chayim Chadashim (6000 W.
Pico), appropriately discussing the ending prayers in our service -
Mourners' Kaddish and Aleinu. While present in earlier forms in
Talmudic times, these prayers became popular and found their current
home in the Ashkenaz siddur during the 12th century, after the First
Crusade (and probably in a response to it). We'll study a little
Talmud to show the origins of the Kaddish too. I hope to see you there.