know your blessings, count them

That isn't me running for joy. She's younger, cuter, endowed with glossy hair.  But when I saw her yesterday afternoon at Valley Forge National Park where I had gone after a day of peaceful writing, I stopped and memorialized her moment with this picture.  I was feeling that way myself.  I was leaning toward good, and toward the future.

My Facebook friends heard me tell this story on Friday, but it bears repeating here.  You Are My Only, a little book if ever there was one, a book that nonetheless believed in itself, went back to press last week to boost its presence in bookstores.  I'm not going to pretend that the numbers are huge; they aren't.  I'm not going to suggest that a second print run gives this writer celebrity status.  Celebrity status is a state of mind.  No matter what happens, my friends, I will not enter that realm.  I like the world in which I'm living.

What mattered to me about the news is this:  You Are My Only would not have been given that boost without my book blogger friends.  These are people busy with their own lives—their jobs, their children, their partners, their dreams, their book projects, their countless other blogger friends—who stopped and started banging on a drum.  Pay attention, they said.  A book is coming.  They stopped to read, earlier than they'd planned to.  They created contests, at their own expense.  They entered my own crazy You Are My Only Treasure Hunt, a complicated ditty that took, yes, blogger time.  They Twittered and Facebooked and emailed and said, We believe in you, Beth, and in this book.  This was a rally based largely on blind trust.  There are no thanks great enough.  There are names and people I will never forget: Amy Riley, Pam Van Hylckama Vlieg, Danielle Smith, Florinda Lantos Pendley Vasquez, Melissa Sarno, Colleen Mondor, Wendy Robards, Shanyn Day, Becca Rowan, Serena Agusto-Cox, Melissa Walker, Leila Roy, Mandy Stanley King, Ed Goldberg, Lorie Anne Grover, Little Willow, Caroline Leavitt, Aquafortis, Valerie Burleigh, Vivian Lee Mahoney, Jennifer Donovan, The Perpetual Page-Turner, Sarah Laurence, John Jacobson, Lilian Natel, The Story Siren, Susan Taylor Brown, Carol Weiss, Mundie Moms,  Medieval Bookworm, Hippies Beauty and Books, Books Thoughts and a Few Adventures, The Reading Zone, Kay's Bookshelf, Bonnie Jacobs, Elizabeth Mosier, Ruth Koeppel, and Books and Movies, who wrote Saturday evening and touched me so deeply (thank you so much, Carrie) with these beautiful words.  A huge thank you to Darcy Jacobs of Family Circle.

And for all of you who have been there in the past, for other books and other dreams of mine, don't think for a second that I have forgotten you.  It has all made an enormous difference.  And if I have neglected any name here (and gosh, I have feared that, especially since I do not google my own name), tell me, and after I pick myself up off the floor from shame, I will make amends.

I have been blogging for four years now.  I have been privy, throughout this time, to the conversation about whether or not book bloggers can make an actual difference.  I want to say here, again, for the indelible record, that of course they do.  Book bloggers give writers hope that their work will be read and considered—no small thing.  Book bloggers stand at the heart of a movement; they stand central to stories.  Book bloggers have the power to give a small book life and more than that, most importantly, they provide proof of the power of caring.  I am proud of my friendships with these artists of hope.

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The Huffington Post

Thanks to the quick thinking of my Tiburon-based agent, Amy Rennert, I have a piece on the Huffington Post Book Page today, a short song sung in praise of book bloggers as well as a question raised, What can we do to help bloggers continue to do their work in light of the coming revised FTC guidelines?

I hope you'll take a look.

The last time I saw Amy we were sitting in a fabulous diner right down the street from this trolley. Hence the image of the day (or, more rightly speaking, the second image of the day).

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Why I Appreciate Book Bloggers

All week long, My Friend Amy and her most-amazing team have been gathering at their hearth the book bloggers of the world who have, in my humble opinion, rescued books from oblivion. I was a judge for one panel, I was a nominee in a different category, and I was also invited to write an essay about book bloggers, and why they matter. That essay was originally posted here, alongside a whole lot of good stuff from great bloggers. But just in case you haven't yet mosied over, I reprint it below.

The question, the theme, is why I appreciate book bloggers. The thoughts in my head are urgent and many. I appreciate book bloggers because they redeem, energize, and fortify an industry that would, I firmly believe, be in an untenable position without them. Few can rally readers to books the way that book bloggers do. Few can herald, in true blogger style, titles yet to come or books that too few of us notice. Few care as much as book bloggers care about covers, issues, themes. Book bloggers are readers, they are teachers, they are bookshop employees, they are librarians, they are parents, they are neighbors, and they love books. They summon and articulate their passions on a regular basis—not for pay, not for honors, but on behalf of stories, authors, and the written word.

I think of the time (and money) that book bloggers pour into their craft—all that reading, posting, commenting, all that mailing and sorting, all those events—and I ask myself: How did this come to be? And, Where would I be without book bloggers?

For truly: Where would I be? I am a writer of literary books—no commercial giant, no Personality, not the glam gal on the limo tour. I care—enormously—about the books that I write. I want them to find their right readerly homes. I know that, without readers, I do not have a writing future. But I have little control over the fate of my books. They are released into the world, and I wait.

It’s the angels with wings who move in after that—angels, by which I mean book bloggers. Those souls whom I have never met, who live in places I have never seen, who take an interest. On the release date of Nothing but Ghosts, this past June, I woke to a virtual book launch party that had been engineered by no other than My Friend Amy and Presenting Lenore. I had not seen it coming. I could not believe my eyes. I told everyone—for weeks afterward—that something extraordinary had happened. “They threw me a party,” I kept telling friends. “They believed in this book, and in me.” They had thrown open the doors to their own community, and invited me in, to stay. I have met extraordinary bloggers in the aftermath of that party. I have found, within myself, a deeper faith in the kinds of books that I try to write—literary books that cross genre borders, that will live or die solely on the recommendations of readers, readers who also happen to be book bloggers.

I am getting teary-eyed writing this. I am thinking about all those book bloggers who have come into my life since I myself started blogging two years ago—the stories they’ve told me about themselves, the books they’ve insisted that I read, the love that they have given, so freely, to me. I would be not be who I am without these souls. That’s a fact, firm and unyielding.

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