the SIMMER blog

virginia is for readers

Once more, I'm taking the Kitchen Daughter show on the road... I'll be appearing this weekend in Charlottesville at the Virginia Festival of the Book. So excited about this! I've never really been to a book festival on this scale, so I'm really looking forward to seeing a bunch of my author-friends, meeting readers, and generally just being in a book-celebrating atmosphere. Awesome.

If you're in the Charlottesville area or know someone who is, spread the word! I'm doing a panel on Friday about family secrets, and one on Saturday about recipe development. Details here: check 'em out.

 

words around the web

Wanted to point you toward a couple of recent pieces of mine -- not food-related, but writing-related. One's a little silly and one's more serious.

Silly first! On Intrepid Media I guessed at a few ways the TV networks might try to capitalize on the recent success of the British period drama "Downton Abbey." Click here to read: downton, shabby.

And the more serious one is the first in a series of posts for Writer Unboxed that flips around cliched writing advice to give writers a new way to think about their approach. The series is called Flip the Script and the first installment explains why sometimes "Show, don't tell" should become "Tell, Don't Show."

Enjoy!

kuchnia duchow

One of the most surprising and wonderful things about the publication process of The Kitchen Daughter has been the international editions. I had never really thought about seeing the book translated into other languages, and being sold in other countries to readers across the world. But foreign rights sold in six countries -- yay! The really funny part? It's being translated into six languages, and I don't speak a single one of them.

So I particularly enjoyed this demonstration of the Hot Hot Chocolate recipe from the book, narrated in Polish.

Hot Hot Chocolate from Kuchnia Duchow.

(And isn't it cool to see another foreign cover? They're all so different!)