GALFROMDOWNUNDER UPOVER

Matador's Julie Schwietert Collazo interviewed me recently on the Handsomest Man in Cuba.

Pictured: Cheryl Lead took this shot of the coverguy admiring his cover! FIVE YEARS after the first edition of my book, Then Handsomest Man in Cuba , people are still somehow finding well-thumbed copies in doctor's waiting rooms (even a hostel bookshelf in Nepal!). It's gratifying to receive the occasional email from a reader who liked it - even a few who didn't . It's just been released in Germany as of 2009, thanks to my agent Peter McGuigan of Foundry Media - and I'm glad my German is rusty - I can't imagine how some of my Aussieisms like "threw a pickle in the cheesecake" came out of the Google Translator. Please ask for copies at your local bookstore - it really helps keep an author stay in the $1 bins inside the store rather than outside - soggy books are indeed sad. Dear Lynette, I just finished "The Handsomest Man in Cuba" and loved it, loved it, loved it!I THANK YOU for sharing such a wonderful adventure. I just wanted you to know

Wow! Since leaving NYC I've been on the go and bleating on everyone else's blog ( Bike Friday's and FastCompany ) but my own! I've been in doing the Bike Friday shuffle in San Francisco, Sacramento, and now Hawaii. I'm off to the annual Bike Friday Arizona Desert Camp in March, then to Australia for the Australian Bike Friday Club gathering . Here's a motion blur update ... Riding with the Honolulu Tradewinds Bike Club out to Waimanalo and back - fast furious! Sorry I couldn't manage a more scenic backdrop than this "unremarkable lump of rock" ... Chance encouter in Kapiolani park with daughter of the Bragg's Liquid Aminos empire and author of 'The Triathlon Endurance Training Book', Patricia Bragg. Dressed in pink, she seemed enamored with my hot-rod pink Pocket Rocket Pro Petite ... Gazillion dollar view from this Lanakai beach shack, where I was invited to a birthday party. The Hawaii Bicycling League Annual Membership Dinner - la

My my NYT book review has attracted at least one new sale as evidenced by this fan letter I received just today: Dear Ms. Chiang, I just finished reading your book "The Handsomest Man in Cuba" and I must comment that I have never read such egotistical drivel from a so-called travel writer. Your website says it all when it states "the self-indulgent writings" et al. If you're going to write about your travel adventures and expect other people to read them and enjoy it, please write about the culture, the people and the history of the countries that you visit and your experience in relationship to these cultures so that you can convey to your readers a sense of the country. All you did in "The Handsomest Man in Cuba" was basically bitch about everyone and everything in the most untrusting way. I have been to Cuba several times and my experience was totally different than yours. Perhaps because I didn't think solely of myself the entire tri

The Handsomest Man in Cuba has just appeared in the New York Times Sunday Book Review, June 2, 2007 - 'The Summer Reading guide'. It's about about 8 inches of review in a Travel book Section. My agent Peter McGuigan (pictured below) says it's very unusual for a first time paperback, especially by a fabulous nobody like me to appear in the guide. A friend in NY said, and I quote, "you should expect to get laid by the literati every day for a year now." (He's mortified that I actually wrote that, saying it drags the tone of this blog into the gutter). He'd better not read my book then! Bike Friday even gets a mention! Thanks to all the folks at Globe-Pequot, Bike Friday, Peter McGuigan, and those who made it happen along the way. Read the full review on the NYT site or read the text of it below. Read the blurbs from the first two pages of the book . +++ Travel books can generally be divided into two categories. First there are the ones

I was originally putting all my book, talks and DVD news on a separate Livejournal blog, but now I'm going to simply start putting it on GALFROMDOWNUNDER.BLOGSPOT.COM You (and I) can reference that earlier material here: http://gfdu.livejournal.com

I used to maintain a LiveJournal blog called gfdu just for my book and work kudos, but being a Customer Evangelist means there's no distinction between work and home life. That journal was also a repository for some very interesting shots and story from my readers who visited some of the people mentioned in my book - including the guy in the front cover! Take a look