Apologies for a brief diversion from food and drink for an announcement for my day job – fiction writing! We’re only 20 days out from Christmas, and thus the time for gift giving is upon us! For $15, you can send a signed, personalized copy of my epic fantasy, Wings Unseen, to anyone you love
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Faithful friends of the Gourmez, if you do not also follow my author blog, you may not be aware that my very first full-length book is slated for publication this summer! Wings Unseen is an epic fantasy ripe for the YA/New Adult markets and any adults as far as I’m concerned.  Meerkat Press is the
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Obligatory disclaimer: I received a complimentary review copy of A Perfect Score to read for this post. Released in September by Center Street, A Perfect Score ($26; 207 pgs.) tells the story of the founding and growth of the HALL and WALT wineries from the intertwined perspectives of its two founders, Craig and Kathryn Hall.
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Why isn’t this a Review, the Gourmez? The wine blogging world is scrambling madly to assemble media kits after the recent Wine Bloggers Conference, and I wanted to do my part in providing references and helping to demystify the concept a bit. At my panel on the samples relationship between bloggers and wineries, media kits
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Darling readers, I neglected to inform you that I had a new Localwise post go up a couple of weeks ago! I guess that’s what happens when you’re traveling the majority of October…oops. This one is all about the retail businesses now opened and opening soon at Oakland’s newest redesigned city block, the Hive. I
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In case you missed it, my next post is now live at the Localwise community blog! This one is on cheese shops in the Elmwood, Temescal, and Rockridge neighborhoods, which just so happen to be the closest neighborhoods to me…okay, they are conveniently the closest neighborhoods to me. I am blessed with amazing cheese options
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What’s that? I share a contributor credit with such famous speculative fiction writers as Elizabeth Bear, John Scalzi, Chuck Wendig, Mary Robinette Kowal, Alaya Dawn Johnson, and Jim C. Hines? You bet I do! The Ad Astra 50th Anniversary SFWA Cookbook came to be when a few  fellow illustrious Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of
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About two weeks ago, my first guest blog for Localwise went up! Localwise, you say? What’s that? Well, my friends, it’s a Berkeley-based start-up that’s essentially a classifieds board for local jobs. They began with listings in Berkeley and Oakland only, but after six months of operation, they’ve expanded to Alameda, Emeryville, and San Francisco
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Shortly before I headed out to the 2014 Wine Bloggers Conference (WBC14), I agreed to watch a demo of the new Quini app with Roger Noueim, the company’s CEO. Excepting the occasionally slow search functions, it works beautifully on iPhone, iPad, and the desktop. I’m mostly using a beta version for Android, which is much,
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It’s been a little over a week since I returned home from the Wine Bloggers Conference in Buellton (WBC14), and I’ve had enough time to form some opinions on the experience. Overwhelmingly, those opinions are good, and they come from the perspective of a first-time attendee who didn’t entirely know what to expect from the
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