With The Tale of Briar Bank off my desk and onto my editor's and The Tale of Hawthorn House due out in another month, it's time to turn my attention from writing the Cottage Tales to getting the word out. Peggy Moody and I finished the new website a couple of weeks ago, with some really nice Beatrix-y art work done by Peggy Turchette, who does the covers and the maps for the books. 
There's no tour for this book--two tours a year is just too much. So I'm doing a kind of minimalist thing. Bookwoman in Austin is hosting a Beatrix Potter teaparty on September 26 (if you're in the area, come on by and have some carrot cupcakes).
The big thing I'm doing for the book, though, is something I can do from home: a blog tour, which is a new experience for me. Julia Buckley just posted our interview on her blog, Mysterious Musings--she'll publish that again for the tour. (Thanks, Julia!) I got in contact with another reader, who had earlier put up a really cute post about the books, and I'll be stopping by her blog on the tour. I'm making a list of other blog possibilities for the publicist who is helping me with the project.
And then of course there will be the regular eletters and that sort of thing. I'm encouraged by the first review, from Publisher's Weekly. You can read it on the the book's Amazon site. Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, I want to say a big thanks to the readers who go to the trouble of posting thoughtful reviews on the Amazon site. That takes time and effort, and I'm grateful.
A couple more days, more household chores (finally got around to all that piled-up laundry!) and then the dogs and I are off to join Bill in New Mexico. He went out yesterday, with the cat. It was the first long-distance trip for Shadow Kitty, and I'm glad to report that she made it in fine style. She's discovered the loft in our house out there, where she will be safe from two-thirds of our dog pack. (Lady and Zach, the Labs won't go up the open stairs--chickens! Toro, the heeler, just closes his eyes and takes them by leaps and bounds.)
Oh, and my granddaughter just saw her first bear, in her very own front yard, through her very own front window. Becky is autistic, so her excited exclamation "Look! A bear!" was as significant an event as the bear itself. Way to go, Becky. Tell us all about it, but do stay safe. The wild world is wonderful, but sometimes the creatures we share it with have claws. And teeth.
Reading note, for Becky. It does not do to leave a live dragon [or a bear] out of your calculations, if you live near him.--J.R.R. Tolkein, The Hobbit
UPDATE.
I'm adding this note because Pam (see her comment below) just wrote to offer her blog as a possible stop on the tour, and I thought some of the rest of you might be interested. I'm looking for blogs that would be a good fit for the Cottage Tales and allow me to do something different, to go beyond the usual author interviews (which are nice, but I'm sure you don't want to read two weeks' worth of the same thing!). Pam has a nature blog, which would be a comfortable fit for a post about Beatrix's life-long interest in nature. Also, Pam's blog has some pretty good traffic, which makes it attractive from a publicity point of view. I imagine I'll be bringing some traffic, but the idea here is to connect with the readers who already connect with a particular blog. And the expectation for a tour is that at least some of the new readers will go with me to other blogs, and we'll all benefit from the sharing.
What other kinds of blogs am I looking for? Maybe a children's illustrator blog, an art blog, a miniaturist's blog, a cookery blog (there are recipes in the books, you know), a garden blog (Beatrix had a lovely garden), a kidlit blog, a reading-for-families blog, and so on. Get the idea? If you're interested, send an off-blog email to me at china at tstar dot net and we'll see what we can cook up together.