While I had heard other authors doing this, I had not pulled it together to do a blog tour for my own books. Of course, I had not hired a publicist either, which in hindsight might have been a mistake. Online visibility and reviews spell life or death for a new book.
“It’s good publicity
for you to do these things. It gives you visibility,” someone who knows the vagaries and power of social
media told me Still, it
felt like one more social media “to do” chore.
***
***
It is a relatively recent phenomenon that women have been
encouraged by other women to seize their stories and compile them for
anthologies and short story collections.
We did this in the Circle with Slants of Light, which included memoir, poetry and fiction. Again, maybe we should have hired a publicist or gone on a virtual blog tour, since the book has not been selling as much as we hoped. In any case, writing our
stories vis-a-vis the snapshots that comprise anthologies is a way to break down,
analyze and express the isolation and feelings of alienation many women experience. In that alone, it is a worthy exercise.

In several stories women are betrayed by other women who take boyfriends or husbands without a second thought. But there is no pitying tone here. In one short story, "Aliens," Sarah realizes Paul’s narcissism is so prevalent that he views his betrayal as a non-intentional love affair; something neither he nor his girlfriend, Amy, were “looking for.” As her husband turns to leave, she says softly, “Go to hell.” But not before she struggles with the embarrassment of dropping her daughters off at Amy’s house where Paul is now living. “I almost died,” people say. That’s what it feels like: mortification so massive that she hears a roaring in her ears," Wheaton writes of Sarah. Then Sarah meets Amy, who looks at her as if she, too “might pass out.”
In "Milagros," Mila is
in Mexico with George, a successful novelist bedridden with typhoid fever. She has worked with him for years as muse, "helping him invent backstories for his women." "If we're to be friends," she tells him, "we would have to talk about me sometimes."
While
George is sick in the hotel bed, Mila heads to the pool where she
meets Mario, the father of two young daughters and a charming, sensual man who appreciates their shared Cuban heritage. After they make love, Mario
reveals he is not divorced, as he had led her to believe. Rather, the love affair has been a way to cap
off a vacation away from his wife. He presumes Mila has the same laissez fare attitude. “I thought we were on the same
page,” he says. "You come here with one man and the minute he gets sick you go off with another." Mila, who has fallen in love with Mario, protests. "That's different. George knows about you. He encouraged me to spend time with you!" Mario dismisses her protests as she lays naked in bed, surveying her from his "moral high ground." "You know the whole open-relationship scene is just too much for me," he says.
“So cad,” Mila decides, “is good for something: a taste of what you might have if you fell in love for real. But if I did fall in love, George would have to be part of the package, like a crazy abuela from the old country, living in a room off the kitchen.”
“So cad,” Mila decides, “is good for something: a taste of what you might have if you fell in love for real. But if I did fall in love, George would have to be part of the package, like a crazy abuela from the old country, living in a room off the kitchen.”
***
What does Wheaton hope her readers take away from Aliens and Other Stories? “I hope that readers who have been aliens as well as those who simply have felt that way will find they have something in common with my characters.”
As we say in the Women’s Writing Circle, “Job well done!” I was pleased to have had the chance to explore this little treasure, although it is work to read a book, write a review and decide how to hone it to your own platform. Let’s hope I have done justice to my first virtual blog tour. Whether I
will partake in another is up in the air.
For now we’ll file it away as another social media experience, among many!
Have you participated in a virtual blog tour? What has been your experience?
Have you participated in a virtual blog tour? What has been your experience?
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