Aagh, what an incredible, incredible night!! Thank you so much to everyone who came out. I loved seeing old friends and meeting new ones. My heart is filled with so much appreciation and love.
For those of you who couldn't make it (or those who could and want to relive the moment), here's the entire Q&A with my friend, Leiti Hsu, host of Word of Mouth on Heritage Radio Network, plus some audience questions. I love this sort of format (as opposed to a reading) because I get to have a little fun with the crowd.
I'll have some more stills and behind-the-scenes stuff coming soon!
I know it's pretty long, so here's a rough outline if you wanna skip and jump:
- lowest point of writing
- how the restaurant Daniel helped me get my novel published
- how I reacted when the title FOOD WHORE was proposed to me
- how the distinctive cover art came about
- my take on the state of the restaurant review
- would I want to be the New York Times restaurant critic
- how similar am I to Tia Monroe
- how I came up with the idea of FOOD WHORE
- my background in restaurants and how I was able to get the vibe right
- have I ever dated a chef
- what the original title was
- love lessons I learned as the community director of an online dating site
- (bonus) the story of my engagement
- my writing process
- my biggest takeaways from my 3-year study under Amy Bloom
- the spectrum of insider to outsider -- where do I stand on that?
photo by @j.k0ng