I'm back home after my east coast travels. Bad news is that I brought back a nasty cold, undoubtedly exacerbated by five flights in five days. Good news is that my son got engaged, so I shall soon be immersed in wedding preparations.
One "advantage" of lots of air travel is all the time in airports and on planes with nothing else to do except read and work. On the work front, I finished a nine-page synopsis of RAV HISDA'S DAUGHTER, which I need to send to my publisher before they will give me a contract to write it [also need to send them the first three chapters, which is what I'm working on now].
On the read front, I discovered a lovely short book titled, "Women's Lives in Biblical Times" by Jeannie R. Ebeling. From birth to death, each chapter describes a different phase of a woman's life in the Iron Age, along with the tasks associated with it. Included are descriptions of baking, brewing, weaving, midwifery, plus pottery, wine and perfume making, among other things. Also how women dealt with menstruation, nursing/weaning, weddings, funerals & other life cycle events. Even though Ebeling's book deals with events 1000 years before my novel takes place, much of it is still applicable.
Another great find was a 1992 AJS article by JTS professor Richard Kalmin, "Talmudic Portrayals of Relationships Between Rabbis." It was a complete fluke that I should come across this article, which I saw while perusing a pile of journals that someone at HUC in NYC was discarding. Why am I so excited to find this? Because two of the Talmudic rabbis whose relationship Prof. Kalmin analyzes are Rami bar Hama and Rava, the two husbands of my heroine. Of course I've searched for Talmud passages that involve the two sages, and so far the few I've found have shown a clear animosity between them, not surprising since they're rivals for the same woman. Or as Kalmin puts it, "their lives, therefore, are intimately intertwined, and supply clear motivation for a complex relationship." Best thing about this article was Kalmin's listing of five Talmud passages that display this relationship; I can't wait to start studying them.
This will be my last blog post for a little while, as I leave this weekend for 10 day book trip taking me to Florida [W Palm Beach and Vero Beach], Virginia [Virginia Beach], New York [Manhattan] and New Jersey [Rumson]. For details see my web schedule
This morning I was up before dawn for a live radio interview with Brett Palmer of Florida station WAXE 1370. He was a delightful host, who composed a song right then for my 30-minute segment; apparently he writes a new song every day depending on his guest's topic. For those in the Vero Beach area, you can listen to the rebroadcast at 4:30 pm ET this afternoon. Other folks can hear me through the show's website.
Doing live radio interviews is both interesting and challenging, since my hosts are typically neither Jewish nor have they read my books, plus I have no idea what the questions are going to be. And we're broadcasting live to probably thousands of listeners, most of whom of course, are also not Jewish and have never even heard of my books. But these radio hosts are usually pros, with outgoing personalities and a charming way of getting the interviewee to open up and have fun. So I briefly explained what the Talmud is, who Rashi was, and how I got interested in writing about his daughters. And before I knew it, our 30 minutes was over and I went back to bed.
I realize that this post has nothing to do with Talmud, Jews in Late Antiquity, or progress on my next novel. But I can't resist sharing some good news I got from my literary agent. Those in the book biz know that most fiction enjoys its strongest sales in the first 3 months after publication, after which it slowly sells less and less until it finally goes out of print, often in just a year or two.
However [drum roll please], both RASHI'S DAUGHTERS: BOOK I - JOHEVED and RASHI'S DAUGHTERS: BOOK II - MIRIAM, are not only still going strong, but each sold over 40% more copies in the first 6 months of 2010 than in the last 6 months of 2009. This is all the more remarkable because you'd expect sales to be higher during the initial months after RASHI'S DAUGHTERS: BOOK III - RACHEL came out [August 2009], not 6 months later. And I can't explain this by my speaking gigs; I spoke at approximately 50 events between Sept-Dec 2009 and at another 50 between Jan-May 2010. Interestingly, sales of BOOK I - JOHEVED were higher than BOOK II - MIRIAM, demonstrating a continuing number of new readers for the trilogy, despite it being almost 6 years since the first volume came out.
Early on in my author career, I learned that most people read a certain book not because they saw/heard a review or advertisement, but because a friend recommended it [i.e. good "buzz" = good sales]. So do these new sales figures mean that my readership has reached a critical mass, that people will continue to buy my novels even if I stop promoting them? I hope this is the case, but I don't dare believe it.
So expect to me to continue speaking about Rashi's daughters and what life was like for medieval Jewish women. This month I'll be in Florida, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, and of course, my native California. I hope I'll see you there.