Sunday, October 31, 2010

A Bronx Tale

On my day off, I went to the Bronx - to Little Italy in the Bronx, at Arthur Avenue just off Fordham Road. This is a tiny Italian enclave in the middle of a huge town that is practically entirely black and Hispanic. Or it was, because it has been taken over by Kosovo-Albanians, more or less. I bought a box of ravioli, four quails (the bird) and two pounds of Bratwurst, kind of like my grandmother used to make them, but Italian. On my way back, the subway was pretty crowded. Two gangs of teenagers passed through, also, a guy was listening to his MP3 player without headphones, and a woman was running up and down aimlessly and clearly disturbed. She had needed a bathroom one hour ago. That was the Bronx. In Manhattan, witches were gathering in the subway due to Halloween, but that was less scary.

Then my day off was over. It was around 9pm. At home, I ate some Bratwurst with ravioli, I tinkered a bit with the blog, settling for the third template, and I signed up for a workshop to turn books into e-books, especially the Kindle. I remember vividly from the last BEA that Amazon had promised to do that for free, but that is obviously not happening, or at least not for small publishers. Anyway, how hard can that be for someone who has survived the Bronx?

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Come to the Cabaret....

So, the company is incorporated, all the books are at the printer ... nearly all the books; the Berlin Cookbook is still in the making, Berlin in the Cold War still has some typos, but that should be taken care of on Monday. Or Tuesday. All the CDs and DVDs are at some place with Amazon manufacturing that has just moved, hence Amazon does not really know how long it will takes to produce them ... where did they move, anyway? The catalog is being printed, the website will be full-fledged 10 pages on .... Friday? I hope.  The calendars are up and running at Cafepress, so are the T-shirts at Zazzle, and, of course, the party!

The launch party for Berlinica will be on November 11, at 6pm, at the German Consulate in New York, at First Avenue and East 48th. You are all invited! (You'd have to RSVP, though). Holly-Jane Rahlens, our first and foremost author will read from Wallflower, a love story set when the wall came down, and Micaele Leon will sing. Here is the link!

http://www.germany.info/Vertretung/usa/en/__events/GKs/NEWY/2010/11/11__Berlinica,archiveCtx=1981346.html

There is beer, and the famous Sylvester Schneider will serve snacks. And I got a Berlin music CD, including Annette Humpe and Die Wilmersdorfer Witwen.

I‘d like to talk more, but I am so tired I need to sleep on my new elevated bed; elevated, because I put the book boxes beneath it. Tomorrow, I‘ll take a day off, the first since May.

Zazzle


Make a personalized gift at Zazzle.