Laura Florand's Blog, page 41

Fall into Romance Festival, Durham NC Nov 10-11

Don’t forget the Fall into Romance Festival at the Southwest Library in Durham NC next weekend!

I’ll be talking about chocolate, with a chocolate tasting, on Saturday Nov 10 at 4 p.m., as part of the festival.  Chocolate provided by Miel Bonbons and Azurelise!  And Sunday at 4 p.m., I and many, many amazing authors will be signing books at Southwest.  (Sabrina Jeffries, Virginia Kantra, Katherine Ashe, Beth Williamson, Jennifer Delamere, Lydia Dare, Heather McCollum…check out the schedule for the full line-up.)  I’ll be signing THE CHOCOLATE THIEF.

I hope to see you there!

 

When in Italy, Eat Gelato

OK, one quick announcement:  CHOCOLATE KISS advanced copies are here!  If you really can’t wait for the pretty “real book” copies in January, check out the contest to win one.   And NOW, we return from all these announcements (it’s worse than the Olympics, the number of interruptions, isn’t it?) to continue the saga of Italy.

From the magical Matera, we made our way posthaste to Bari, where our time was fleeting, but it did allow us to meet these lovely ladies:

We met for coffee at the café Dona Flor, which delighted me quite a bit just from the location because when as an author I first started to Google my name in the desperate hope that someone was reading my book, I used to mostly come up with “Dona Flor and her Two Husbands”.  So–although little Giulia (my amazing Italian publicist, who chose the location) knew, this was just hilariously perfect.

(Now I don’t Google myself anymore.  Once you start actually coming up with yourself when you type your name into Google, it gets a little scary.)

AND…what better people to meet at the Café Dona Flor?  Book-loving, friendly women tolerant of my Italian.  That’s my kind of people.

From left to right:  Giada of  La Mia Passione?  I libri!, Floriana of La Biblioteca del libraio, and Ivana of Il libro eterno.  Grazie mille, ragazze, per la vostra accoglienza.  (Thank you so much for your kind welcome.)

Alas, no chance to see the Castel that Mina had recommended, and off we went, racing by the sea, signing a copy of Ladra di cioccolato for a friendly taxi driver, and just catching the flight back to Rome.

Where I got to Sleep In, it being Sunday and a day off.  Well, you know what I had to do with a day off in Rome on my first trip to Italy, don’t you?

That’s right:

Eat gelato!  This is Gelateria del Teatro, in Rome.

Look at some of these flavors:

Rosemary honey and lemon…lavender and white peach…garden sage and raspberry…

Yep, you guessed it, I tried all three.  Then I got three more flavors.  What??  I only had one day!!  What would you do in my place?

Plus, to be honest, by the time I got to Gelateria del Teatro, I had walked all of Rome from Saint Peter’s…

(This photo actually taken from the very first night of my arrival, when the sun was setting behind San Pietro and the moon was rising the other direction over the Tiber.  A much more lovely experience than my feeble iPhone photos can do justice to.)

…to Piazza Navona…

…to the Fontana da Trevi…

(By the way, if I ever read another scene where somebody bathes in the Fontana da Trevi, I will throw the book out a window.  The mass of humanity pressing around that fountain at all hours is incredible.  One of my pet peeves:  people writing about countries they have never been to.)

…to the Foro and the Colosseo…

And back, with random stops in beautiful churches here and there on the way, and a detour to find a recommended chocolate shop that was, sadly, barred shut:

The wrong side of the bars…

So I deserved a cup of gelato!

Or two…

The first one to try all the unusual flavors, and the second one to try all my favorites. Melon sorbet, mmm…

All this ice cream made me very nostalgic for my absolute top ice-cream place in Paris.  (And just go ahead and believe me.  It is THE best.  In Paris, at least.  I’m going to give myself more than a day or two in Italy before I declare myself an expert on ice-cream there.  Even if I did try seven places.  More about that later.  I didn’t try all seven the same day!)

And all that walking wore my sandals and me out.  And then it started pouring, around six in the afternoon.  So you know what I had to do my one free evening in Rome, right?

Curl up with pizza picked up down the street from my hotel.  Of course.  This pizza did not make me nostalgic for anything as, let’s just face it, the difference between Italian pizza and everyone else’s is just too big.

And then, while the rain poured down, it was time to try to get some sleep for the next big day!  Florence!  And a book signing complete with chocolate hearts!

 

Look What I Did This Week!

I published my own book.  Why, you ask, when I have kind of an overload of books to write for Kensington right now?

Well…because I wanted to.

It was fun.

In fact, I feel like I should have Dvorak’s New World Symphony playing joyfully as I step through an impossible pass and look down at the glorious expanse spread before me of…a whole new world.

That’s how fantastic it feels.

Light.  Like I’ve shrugged a whole old world off my shoulders and can dance on air.

Like…I can write a story because that story is driving me, and share it with you, and I don’t have to worry if it fits with what my publishing house wants, and I don’t have to wait two years to actually let you read it!

I *also* like working with my wonderful editor and publishing team at Kensington, or the wonderful team in Italy with Fanucci…things that are part of traditional publishing.  Very important things are accomplished through that structure.

But there’s something special about this.  It’s all my own baby.

Why this novella in particular right now?  I just really love this story.

It’s a kind of holiday gift.  Stories are what writers give.

Because it’s the perfect length for the escape from a hectic Christmas season.  A little over a hundred pages.  A cozy winter evening read, but not one you have to stay up all night to finish.

Because it’s set in the South Pacific, and it’s about a couple that has to step away from their lives to rediscover what it’s all about…and that, to me, is the perfect balance to the intensity of the holidays and the cold, long winter nights.

Because, about two-thirds through writing it, it hit me suddenly:  It’s the Gift of the Magi.  You’ll have to tell me if you see what I’m talking about, and if you agree.  There are no Christmas gifts, no cut hair, no watch, but if you see it, why I thought of O. Henry midway through writing it…let me know.

And because…let’s face it, most of my books are really expensive.  I haven’t had one come out for under $14.00 yet, nor are any cheaper ones on the horizon, from my traditional publisher.  And that’s kind of a lot.  It worries at me, because I used to nourish a book habit, excessive international travel, and some really extravagant tastes in chocolate all on a graduate stipend of $15,000 a year.  For years I juggled those tastes and that income!  $14.00 seems like a lot.

So…through the holidays, this novella is 0.99.  Something easy on everyone.  I’ll probably put it to $2.99 long-term, after New Year’s, but in the meantime…focus on stocking-stuffers.

Or chocolate.  (Speaking of which, I should warn you that while the hero is a chef, there is very little food in this book.  I know!  I’m sorry!  It’s about…something else.  A marriage, really.)

Or whatever other splurge you prefer.  Some other books, perhaps.  Let me know which ones you recommend.  I bet I have a few I could recommend, too.

I hope you enjoy this little present for the holidays!  And let me know if anything about these two characters makes you think of Jim and Della at all.

 

A Day in the Life of an Author on Tour

GUESS what I have to talk about to a crowd of first-graders tomorrow?  What it’s like to be an author on international tour!

Which is going to give them such an unrealistic vision of the writing life, that I hope I don’t send them chasing down totally the wrong path in pursuit of glory, but anyway…

The plus side is, it’s so very timely, because that was exactly what I promised to tell you about!  But, alas, you don’t get to act out the roles of journalists, TV crews, chocolate party organizers and partakers, and even that of the author, and the first-graders do.  I originally thought I was going to at least get to pretend I was the author in this First Grade Event, since that was why I was invited, but, in what is Highly Typical Fashion for Authorial Moments of Glory, I have been shunted off in favor of certain first-graders who want to be the author, instead.

What my actual role at the First-Graders International Author on Tour function is, I don’t know, and that is very, very like what happens after you share a book with the world.

Usually.

But sometimes you go on tour.  I mean, other authors always told me you didn’t, but apparently occasionally you do, because I just did.  We will call it an Incredible Fluke of Beautiful Luck.

However, following certain comments from certain someones about “And you claim you’re working.  Ha.  You’re jaunting around Italy!”, I thought I would share a day of an author on tour.   And you can decide whether any work might be involved.

So here’s an example of a day, and I’m going to use the actual hour-by-hour schedule from the post the other day on the Matera Women’s Fiction Festival day as it gives you a good idea:

7:00 a.m.:  Wake-up call from the hotel.  Note, this is ONE IN THE MORNING in the place you were just twenty-four hours before.  I got into my hotel in Rome from the flight around noon or one the day before.  In country less than 18 hours.

7:00-8:00 am:  Frantic attempts to shower and get camera-ready in a very nice Renaissance palace hotel where the shower actually pours down onto the toilet.  And the mirrors have no lights.  OK, seriously, look at this bathroom.  Look at the shower.  Look at the toilet.  Don’t say I never showed you anything interesting on this blog.  I’m showing you shower-toilets!!!

This was in the 4-star Hotel Columbus, on the Via Consolazione in Rome, right by Saint Peter’s.  A beautiful spot to be, no complaints.  But tricky for getting ready for TV interviews.

8:00 a.m.  Car to the airport.

10:00 a.m.  Flight to Bari.  From there, an hour in a car sent by the Women’s Fiction Festival to reach Matera itself.  Olive-filled countryside to ride through and vivacious authors for company.

12:30 p.m.  Arrive and install in the fabulous Palazzo Gattini hotel.  Of the vaulted ceilings and luxurious bed that Ladra di Cioccolato was sleeping in last post.

5 seconds to touch up and off to…

1:30-2:30 p.m.  Interview with RAI television, the major national TV station.

2:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m.  Lunch with some of the people from the Festival, like organizer Maria Paola and my editor Isabella, and more.  I discovered stracciatella di mozzarella!  The fresh amazing kind.  It was wonderful.  I have to go back to Matera just to have more.  Cream-soaked, dotted with strawberries…sigh.

4:00 p.m.  Interview with Francesco Altavista of Il Quotidiano della Basilicata.  Francesco had read the book, and his questions really dig at the why and how of writing.

At some points, we were having debates like this:  “So how can you explain the violence of the love scenes?” “The what?” “The violence.”  “I have violence?  What violence!  Let me see that translation!”  “He grabs her hair.”  “But…not violently!!  What page number are we on?”  My publicist:  “Laura, can’t you remember your own book?”  Me:  “But…well, I did write it three years ago and I have JET LAG, but…just point me to the scene so I can see what we’re talking about!  I don’t do violence!”

So after much heated debate…

5:00 p.m.:  Interview with Carmela Cosentino of La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno.  Out on a nice plaza sitting at a little coffee table in front of a bookstore, with a gelateria just across from us and a gorgeous view of the sassi over to our left.  Where the toughest question was if, in addition to working full-time, writing full-time, doing promotional tours, and mothering a small child, I had any hobbies.  And you know what?  I Failed this Question.  I felt so Guilty and One-Dimensional, that I actually said, “Well, I do triathlons,” and here is the Sad Thing, readers.  I don’t anymore.  I stopped a year or two ago.  It was a brief fling, me and triathlons.  But I was feeling pressured!

And then I thought…geez, we never really do enough, do we?  What is it with that pressure we put on ourselves?

6:00 p.m.:  Interview with June Ross of the blog Immergiti in un mondo…rosa.  This is the famous video interview in Italian I talked about last post.  Ha, ha, I was thinking this would be the most laid-back of the interviews, when I saw it on the schedule, but little did I know that videotape of me interviewing in Italian was waiting for me.

7:30 p.m.:  Radio interview with Radio Radiosa.  (Note that in all this schedule, you have to not only finish one interview but have time to get to the next one.  So we’re racing from the June Ross interview to this.)

8:30 p.m.:  Dinner.  Another big crowd of authors, editors, festival organizers.  Here are the three Fanucci girls.   Publicist Giulia Fea, Me, and editor Isabella Spanu.  Who only allowed me to have this photo on the promise that I could get the red-eye out, which just goes to show how much you can trust me to fulfill my promises, doesn’t it?  Oops.  On the plus side, I might just look like the Dufus of Vampires, but Giulia could totally be ready to take over the Non-Vampire World in a classy, elegant, vampiric way.

9:45 p.m.:  Chocolate Party at Shibuya Café.   See previous posts for more photos.  This involved not only eating chocolate but a talk from me and a book presentation question and answer session with Isabella.

12 a.m., midnight:  Some people were repairing to the Clock Tower where apparently the hot chocolate was incredible, but I just couldn’t stay up anymore.  Eighteen hours.  Even for incredible hot chocolate.  I’m still a little sad about that.

So that was pretty much a typical day.

To sum up:  4 Hours of Travel that included taxis, airplanes, and shuttles before arriving at destination.  5 major interviews, including radio, TV, video, and newspaper.  1 Major Book Presentation to a Large Crowd.  2 Meals with large groups of festival organizers/editors/authors.  1 Cop-Out of the Midnight Chocolate on the Clock Tower, which, admit it, would have been awesome.  Especially from a rested hindsight.

ALL with awesome people in an extraordinary setting, so wonderful memories.

That would be ONE DAY of being an Author on Tour.  What do you think?  Does it sound exciting or scary?  Exhilarating or exhausting?  Work or pleasure?  Or all of the above?

I have one thing to say:  Everyone promised me this was a career I could do in my pajamas!!  What’s up with that?

 

 

 

 

 

Matera the Magical and the Great Chocolate Party

You know, I could really wax on about this place.  I mean, it looks like this:

Those are more caves across the river, but I’m standing on a hillside of houses built into caves, too.

And remember, my photo abilities completely failed to capture this city with the full moon rising over it and lights shining up and down the hillsides!  You have to go there to see it.

And it has people like this:

Lunch in a piazza with some of the guests and organizers of the Festival.  The upside down fork would be the sign that someone who has eaten in a lot of French restaurants has been sitting there (paired with a knife, if there is one, it signals you’ve finished to the waiter).  The ones you can make out are a glimpse of the Marvelous Giulia Fea (the Fanucci publicist who had the idea for this trip and worked SO hard the entire time I was there) to the left, the Effervescent and Charming Irene Soave of Vanity Fair (Italy) across, the patient and friendly Lara Giorcelli, editor at Mondadori’s Piemme to the right, authors Rita Charbonnier and Carla Maria Russo across and midway down the table.  (Very fun and welcoming Italian authors of historical fiction.)

Talk about the ideal lunch.  Beautiful setting, fantastic characters peopling it…

This was one of the most wonderful things to me about this tour.  Normally when traveling in an unfamiliar country, your contacts with others are limited and touristic–asking for directions, talking to the hotel staff about local restaurants, interrogating local chocolatiers about their passion, striking up occasional conversations with people if a circumstance allows.

But this tour provided so many opportunities to meet interesting and engaged people.

Bloggers, for example.  I think from now on, whenever I’m in a country where my book is out, I should organize blogger coffees wherever I’m traveling.  It’s so much fun to get to talk with really engaged readers this way!  I think of book bloggers often as activist readers.  Where the love of reading has to be taken to the level of social engagement, to discuss and share with others.

In Matera, here’s the lovely June Ross, of June Ross Blog.   (If you’ve braced yourself, the link I gave to her blog will take you to the page where she posted the interview with me in Italian!  Don’t wince too much, I did my best!)

June Ross and Laura Florand, at the Women’s Fiction Festival in Matera, Italy

 

So we have:  Beautiful Setting.  Wonderful People.  Sleeping in a Renaissance palace,with many thanks to the organizers of the Women’s Fiction Festival for the beautiful, beautiful room:

Ladra di Cioccolato gets comfortable at the hotel Palazzo Gattini in Matera, Italy. (I thought in a room like that, I was probably supposed to sleep on the floor, myself.)

And add to all that:

THE GREAT CHOCOLATE PARTY.

A glimpse of the Chocolate Party for Ladra di Cioccolato (Chocolate Thief in Italian), hosted at the Shibuya Café in Matera by the Women’s Fiction Festival and Fanucci Leggereditore.

In the streets and plaza of the town, at 10 p.m. on through to midnight.  Chocolate provided by Shibuya Café (chocolate fondue, chocolate tarts, chocolate concoctions of every sort) and, of course, prosecco.

 

More of the Chocolate Party for Ladra di Cioccolato (Chocolate Thief in Italian), hosted at the Shibuya Café in Matera by the Women’s Fiction Festival and Fanucci Leggereditore.

 

Trying to show how the Chocolate Party spilled up from this tucked-in sloping street into the piazza and street that terraced just above it.

 

Thanks to Shibuya Café for the wonderful chocolate.

Once again, grazie mille, a thousand thanks, to Fanucci Leggereditore for inviting me on this tour and for the wonderful organizers of the Matera Women’s Fiction Festival for inviting me to launch Ladra di Cioccolato at this amazing Festival.  I’m very honored.

Signing at 5 p.m. today (Oct 13), Embassy Suites, Cary

We interrupt the continuing saga of the Italian Tour (brought to you thanks to Fanucci Leggereditore!) to bring you this important announcement:

Don’t forget the big signing tonight at 5 p.m., Embassy Suites, 201 Harrison Oaks Blvd, Cary, NC.

Lots of authors to choose from including Myself (in capital letters even), Madeline Hunter, Katharine Ashe, Beth Williamson, Jennifer Delamere (her first signing! books made available TWO weeks before you can find them in stores; come celebrate!), Lydia Dare, Heather McCollum, Deb Marlowe, Claudia Welch (also known as Claudia Dain), Nancy Lee Badger, Diana Hussey, Ava Stone, Carol Strickland, Catherine Gayle, Kianna Alexander.

It should be a lot of fun.  I hope you’ll be able to join us.

Back to Italy Saga tomorrow.

 

Italy! Matera! and More! oh, my!

Where To Start with the Italy tour, which was FANTASTIC.  So many generous, friendly people who welcomed me and worked hard to make the tour a wonderful experience.  You’ll be seeing a lot of them and of their beautiful country over the next few weeks, as I try to recap.

Some things we might talk about:

Lions (but not tigers and bears, sorry)
Italian Chocolate
A Day in the Life of An International Author Tour, or why they usually recommending capping your minutes of fame at fifteen minutes
Gelato (well, what did you expect from me in Italy?)
Venice
More Italian Chocolate
Oh, and More Italian Chocolate.

But we’ll start with the Matera International Women’s Fiction Festival, this amazing Festival in the heart of Italy started nine years ago by American-author-in-Italy Elizabeth Jennings, Mariateresa Cascino, and Maria Paola Romeo, all three of whom are still going strong.  The Festival has all the same wonderful energy that its organizers do!  And you couldn’t ask for a more beautiful setting.

Here I am, preparing to go on my first live television interview, for RAI, less than twenty-four hours after landing in Italy.  Notice the blue sweater and the heavy, double-layered fall skirt that I bought especially for this fall trip?  It was ninety-five degrees!  The interview was in the full sun (facing into it, priority going to the camera)!  No make-up crew!  Maybe it’s best I haven’t seen the video of it.

Getting psyched up for the RAI interview, which was filmed here a few minutes later.

How did I do?  I coined a phrase!  In Italian!  They got calls about it!  People kept asking me in interviews how I explained the “sudden” interest in women’s fiction, and I tried saying, “Hunh?” and, “By sudden, how many centuries are you talking about, exactly?”  (In European time, you know.  In a town where 200 AD frescos are so common nobody even bothers protecting them, you have to ask that kind of question.)

And none of that really worked, so finally, this was the third interview, and I just let a little indignation leak through and said, “Well, come on–era il momento di dare la voce alle donne.”  (It was time to give voice to women.)  Apparently this met with approval among some viewers.  I’m quite proud because I came up with it all by myself, in Italian, which, just in case people are interested, I don’t even speak, so you know…I get to be proud.

If I could speak Italian, I would have said, Well, it was high time, for crying out loud, and probably that wouldn’t have been nearly as good.

Also, probably there were, like, 0.5 calls, and Luigi was being nice when he told me later there were calls about it, because one thing I have learned:  Italians like to exaggerate to make you feel good.   If you say, “Me No Speak Italian”, they say, “Oh!  Parli divinissima!”

Hey.  It’s not a bad habit.  When my very Parisian husband heard about it, he, in his very Parisian way, said something very sardonic about my actual Italian level and people who might praise it.  See what I have to put up with?

My huge, divinissimi complimenti to the organizers of the International Women’s Fiction Festival, once again, because they really do dare la voce alle donne.

Here’s more of gorgeous Matera, with my wonderful Fanucci publicist Giulia Fea looking cute and wonderful and me looking very jet-lagged, but having changed into something much, much lighter.

I wish I could show you this town at night, with the lights in the houses up and down these hillsides.

Matera is home of the Sassi, old dwellings carved into the limestone.  We went into one old cave-monastery with frescos from the second, fifth, and eight century AD, just for an example.  (No photos, sorry!)  But you can see the hillside of the openings to some of the oldest caves here, in the view from my hotel.  (Oh, that hotel!  More later on that hotel.)

It is truly a magical town.  Most of us there for the first time were saying this in whispers to each other, deeply afraid that in three years or ten years, we’ll come back and find it packed with tourists.  Right now it’s a magical, real place, with just a small group of weekend visitors here or there.  But I really think that can’t possibly last.  I’ve seen a lot of beautiful towns, and this one is still something special.

More about the people I met and the Great Chocolate Launch Party, oh, and That Hotel next post!  I’m still jetlagged, this time the opposite way, and am unable to keep eyes open past ten p.m.  Or closed after 2:30 a.m.  On the plus side, you can get a lot of writing done between 2:30 a.m. and breakfast.

Next Event in the Triangle

The next event in the Triangle area after the Italy tour is:

13 October 2012, 5:00 p.m.  Embassy Suites, 201 Harrison Oaks Blvd, Cary, NC.  Laura will be signing books along with authors Madeline Hunter, Katharine Ashe, Lydia Dare, Jennifer Delamere, and Beth Williamson.  There’s something for everyone at this signing!

And I’m off to Rome tomorrow!  Wish me luck!  Or “In bocca al lupo” although I’m not sure I should call Italy the lupo.

Destressing…

A recipe for pressure:

1 Weekend at the beach body-boarding for 2 days in beautiful 80-degree weather

2 Coming home to a rainy, hint-of-autumn evening and this:

 

3  And this:

It’s all part of my Great Chocolate Hunt!  Research!  I’m putting myself out there to find the best chocolates for YOU, to go in the back of THE CHOCOLATE TOUCH (official name of Chocolate #3 now).

Christopher Elbow is a US artisan chocolatier based in Kansas City, MO.  I know, for some reason Kansas City doesn’t usually rhyme with top chocolate to me, either, which is what I love about this Great Chocolate Hunt.  The discovery.

He also has a shop now in San Francisco, which right away is ringing more gastronomic bells for you, isn’t it?  But he STARTED in Kansas City.  When I said I didn’t know of any great chocolatiers in the Midwest (not having traveled there since my teens), people Heard My Cry, I’m telling you.  More to come.

The hot chocolate is actually, properly speaking, hot cocoa, which I normally disdain, being an adamant hot chocolate person, but Christopher’s is so rich and full-flavored that we have been drinking little espresso cups of it every day (Sunday night, Monday night, tonight).  I’m getting a little anxious at seeing the bottom of the tin start to make its appearance.

And the very first of those scrumptious chocolates I bit into was that shiny purple luscious lavender-infused caramel (liquidy caramel not chewy), which was Perfect, because it is a theme flavor for a main character in THE CHOCOLATE KISS, of which I just finished that last, final proofs today.  Fingers crossed for ARCs to be ready soon!

The next chocolate I tried, the one with the curly blue script, was a Venezuelan dark chocolate ganache, which alas I had to share with my husband, because he only likes the pure dark ganaches with no flavors, so…that’s what true love is all about.  Either successfully sneaking those when Loved One is not around or…sigh…sharing.

So what about you?  What have you been doing to decompress and deal with pressure lately?  Found any good chocolate in the process?

Italian Tour Dates

Ladra di Cioccolato is in stores in Italy!  Grazie mille per tutte le ricensioni generose.   (IF I said that right, I’m trying to say:  Thank you so much for all the wonderfully generous reviews and the generous reception of the book.)

Fanucci, the Italian publisher, has very kindly invited me to do a book-launching tour of Italy to celebrate the release.  So for Italian readers or those in Italy, the main public events are as follows:

28 September 2012.  At the International Women’s Fiction Festival in Matera, Italy.  Just Laura at the Shibuya Coffee Music Shop for a Chocolate Party at 9:45 p.m.  [21:45 Shibuya Coffee Music Shop, Chocolate Party con Laura Florand, autrice di "Ladra di cioccolata", Leggereditore.  Presenta: Isabelle Spanu, Leggereditore.]

29 September 2012: Bari, Italy.  4:00 p.m. Giunti Bookstore, book signing.

1 October 2012:  Florence, Italy.  6:00 p.m.  Book signing and chocolate tasting at La Feltrinelli.  [Lunedì 1 ottobre alle ore 18,30 alla Feltrinelli di Firenze in Via de’ Cerretani Laura Florand “chocolate tasting” e presentazione di Ladra di cioccolato.]

2 October 2012.  3:00 p.m.  Facebook chat on the Ragazza moderna page with readers and bloggers.  [L’autrice sarà protagonista di una chat con addetti ai lavori e fan su facebook direttamente dalla pagina di Ragazza moderna  martedì 2 ottobre alle ore 17.]

2 October 2012:  Rome.  7:30 p.m.  Chocolate cocktails and a meet-the-author event at the SAID Chocolate Factory.  (Event by invitation.)  [Martedì 2 ottobre alle ore 18,30 da SAID Antica Fabbrica del cioccolato a San Lorenzo a Roma, Laura Florand presenta il suo romanzo e a seguire cocktail al cioccolato.]

I know there are also radio interviews scheduled for 27 September, 2 October, and 3 October, but I’m not sure yet which stations and when those will run.

It promises to be a very exciting week!  I’ll try to share photos.  Any tips of where to find good chocolate in Italy (besides at those signings!) are always welcome.  Or gelato.  Or any kind of food really.  I’m hungry just thinking about traveling in Italy for a week.