This is my friend Gemma. Isn't she pretty? I love that smile. She's been a loyal reader since the very beginning, always demanding new posts, eating my leftovers (we lived two floors apart from each other for a few years in Queens) and bugging me about when I'd ever get around to writing a book.…

Folks! If you pre-ordered your copy of My Berlin Kitchen on Amazon.com, it'll be released and sent out on Thursday. This Thursday! If you preferred to wait and give your hard-earned dollars to bricks-and-mortars bookstores, they'll be selling the book as of next Monday. That's 8 days from now! Haa-haa-hooo-heee!! Now for a bit of…

Last fall, I was thrilled to record a piece for NPR's Berlin Stories series. Berlin Stories are "short, personal pieces" about Berlin that are broadcast on NPR's Berlin station. (By the way, did you know that Berlin is the only city outside the US with an NPR station?) For my piece, I adapted a chapter…

I was informed last night by my agent, via this hastily snapped cellphone photo, that the first actual copies of My Berlin Kitchen have arrived in New York. (!) Which means that it's only a matter of time now before I get to hold a copy myself. (!!) I imagine it will be a little…

Okay, folks, picture a drumroll, if you will. (Or imagine a drumroll? Conjure a drumroll? Whatever, a drumroll. Let's just pretend you're hearing one right now, okay?) Ta-da!!! Do you like it? I so hope you like it. Let me tell you a little how it came about. Back in January, during a Very Cold…

Sometimes I wonder where it all started. It could have been in Ms. Mercer's fifth grade class, I guess, when I wrote my first story, a bound set of loose leaf pages grandly titled "The Boarding School Murders" and illustrated with a luridly dripping knife, no less. But then I think it must have been…