Heading down to Belize

After an intense weekend that had me cooking for 30 people who came over for a book party Saturday night (to celebrate the release of Paula Derrow's new anthology, "Behind the Bedroom Door") and then filming a Spanish cooking video with two eleven-year-old girls for three hours on Sunday, I'm about to head down to Belize to fact check my book and open up to whatever unexpected or random adventures take place, as they often do down there. I'm a bit nervous about leaving the girls for a week, but Uzi knows the ropes well, and he's got a good support network of babysitters and friends around to help him. I'm traveling with the intrepid Jeff Wynne, my high school pal, who'll be toting one of those nifty small digital video cameras to shoot footage for an online book trailer. Internet access is bound to be spotty for the next week, but I'll undoubtedly have lots to report after our return on February 4. Stay tuned.

Stepping Back Into the Fray

What would make a writer vanish on November 9 and resurface in mid-January? Well, a book deadline, for one. Meaning...ta da! Finished. Manuscript brought to New York on January 8, went into production on January 9, and since then I've been full up with doing all the things that didn't get done for the past two months while I was chained to my office chair. The title is The Possibility of Everything, the publisher is Ballantine, and the publication date is September 29. All good. No, great. It's an enormous relief to finally have finished the writing.
And now, as all writers know, the work begins.
Not that I'm complaining. Because part of the work means heading down to Belize this Wednesday with my high school pal Jeff, who'll be toting one of those ridiculously tiny, astonishingly high-quality video cameras to shoot footage for a book trailer I can put on You Tube and on my web site. I'm also going down to fact check the manuscript, which means retracing some of the steps from the book in San Ignacio and Placencia. We'll be down there from Wednesday to Wednesday. It's still technically rainy season in Belize so hopefully we won't get too wet. I got a nifty new North Face rain jacket on sale at REI the other day, along with a dry bag for the camera equipment when we go canoeing, and when I put them in my suitcase along with my new forehead flashlight I felt like tres the adventure traveler. Well, except for the two makeup bags and the half-dozen bottles of anti-everything tinctures. But still.