WISH YOU WERE ITALIAN is out!

 

It's my adorable friend Kristin Rae's launch week for her amazing sweet teen romance WISH YOU WERE ITALIAN!

In the novel, main character Pippa comes up with a list of ten goals for her summer in Italy:

1. Don't get arrested
2. Don't make a fool out of myself in public
3. Get my picture taken at the Colosseum
4. Find random souvenir for Morgan
5. Get a makeover
6. See Pompeii
7. Swim in the Mediterranean Sea
8. Have a conversation with someone in only Italian
9. Eat a whole pizza in one sitting
10. Fall in love with an Italian

To celebrate launch week, Kristin wanted a few of us to come up with our own top ten list of what we would want to accomplish if we went to Italy.

It's funny, but one of my life goals is to GO to Italy. My maiden name is Pardini and I'm an eighth Italian (I inherited my dad's Italian nose), and I've heard there's still a Pardini flour mill in Lucca.

I also just finished a history unit on the Roman Empire with my home-schooled second grader, which means I now know more than I ever did before about the Pax Romana and ancient Rome. (It was an excellent curriculum, so that's not as pathetic as it sounds.) So, bring on my Italian vacation! I'm ready!

Now that you have a bit of background, here's my own list. (A bit different from Pippa's because I've already found the love of my life AND I'm of legal drinking age.)

1. Find the Pardini flour mill
2. Drink wine in Tuscany
3. Spend an entire day (or two) at a Tuscan hot spring
4. Take a cooking class
5. Walk around the city of Pompeii
6. Attend an opera in Verona at an ancient amphitheater
7. Cirque Terre! (Pippa goes there and I'm in love already!)
8. Of course gilato; lots of gilato
9. Wander through Rome
10. Art museum overload in Florence, please

Anything I missed?

And if you are like me and can't afford the time or money for a real-life Italian vacation at the moment, run out and buy Kristin's book and take a vacation in your head!

Also, there's a wonderful interview with Kristin here. You can read about all the juicy behind-the-scene book details!

Look What I Got!

My RED BUTTERFLY galleys arrived! These are uncorrected proofs that I'll be using for blog tours and giveaways.

It's so crazy to hold RED BUTTERFLY as a real book. And, perhaps the scariest thing is, my dashingly handsome sidekick is reading it. He hasn't read any of my writing before, so I'm terrified.

I'll be blogging more about the work involved in this stage of the process, and I hope to be able to reveal the beautiful cover by Amy June Bates soon. RED BUTTERFLY will be available for preorder early next month.

Can someone please pinch me? It's hard to believe this is actually happening!