stepping away from the cake

The scale at Weight Watchers showed a 3.4-pound loss after the first week. That's almost three and a half pounds of cake research (and beer research and Halloween candy research, et al.) gone. I realize it's time to step away from the cake in other ways, too.

As you know, I don't blog about confections, though I used to when I was working on The Book. Those days are gone now, and, though I would have loved a bestseller, I have to face some hard facts: I'm no Chesley Sullenberger. I'm no Sarah Palin. I didn't live through Columbine. And these are tough times. Some of us can't even afford a Ding Dong, much less a book that disses a few of them.

So I've redesigned my website to reflect my for-hire photography skills, and I've fixed my blog to reflect that I am more than my first book (and even my second book).

It's not a sweet parting of ways. I'm disappointed that Let Me Eat Cake won't be released in paperback, that it could easily wind up in the cut-out bin, that I didn't get on The View or feed cake to Stephen Colbert. And I could have done a lot more to promote myself.

I don't have that kind of head—the kind that can hand out business cards by the dozen to strangers and friends, that can impose on people, that can beg, that can toot my own horn in any but the can-you-believe-the-luck?! way. And most of the people who can do that are overbearing and obnoxious. For me, it would have been like wearing clothing that's many sizes too big; I would have lost myself.

That doesn't mean I can't or won't ask, every so often (but not face-to-face!) that you buy the remaining copies of The Book, especially from your independent retailer, if a copy can be found there. I worked really hard on it, I tell you tearfully, if the truth be told. And it's funny. And the person you give it to this holiday season will probably really like it a lot.

In fact, I have two signed books I would like to sign and give away, completely free, even the shipping. Here are the conditions. 1. If you like the book, please post a favorable review on Amazon and B&N. And 2.) Please share it with at least one other person. Leave an email address in your comment, and I will put your names in a hat and have a drawing next Monday.

(P.S. You can still see old Cake posts and links to author interviews and reviews at The Cake Life.)

reviews and stuff

My first book, Let Me Eat Cake: A Celebration of Flour, Sugar, Butter, Eggs, Vanilla, Baking Powder, and a Pinch of Salt, was published by Simon & Schuster on April 14th, 2009. Since then, I've been a busy cake lady. I'll post links to book-related events and articles here from time to time.

Here's my current calendar. On Mother's Day, I'll be live on KGO Radio's "A Matter of Taste," from San Francisco, on Mother's Day from 11:30 to 12:00, so you can listen if you're a left coaster. Sometime soon, my interviews with NPR's "A Chef's Table" and Silver Chair Books will go live. Check out "The Signal," on WYPR, this Friday, as I'll be reading about my grandmother. Then, Saturday, May 15 at 5:00 p.m., I'll be reading with three fantastic writers—for twelve minutes each!—at Minas in Hampden.


Five of many podcasts are up. You can hear them in the player below.



"She Takes the Cake" in the Baltimore Jewish Times

Baltimore's READ IT

Stuff Style Loves

The Cake Lady on a post card, by the great Michael Kimball

Cakespy gives me away

Jezebel blurbed

Cold Mud blurbed

Author is unabashedly smitten with cake" in the Deseret News

Mostly NF review

No Titles wants more

I'm a Nonfictionist

Cake on "Daybreak"

B More Sweet likes me!

Mark Scarbrough calls me "The Aquinas of Cake" at Real Food Has Curves

"Woman is consumed by a passion for cakes" in the Baltimore Sun

Shelf Awareness

Diana Page Jordon's review

Another radio player, just in case:

let me talk about Let Me Eat Cake

I've been having lots of fun the past week or so, talking to radio hosts and reporters. Today, in fact, I'm going to tape an interview on A Chef's Table in Philadelphia. Yesterday, I taped a WYPR "Maryland Morning" interview with Tom Hall, which will air next Wednesday morning.

Coming up this weekend, I'll be at the CityLit Festival on a panel with Warren Brown of CakeLove; Mary K. Zajac is the moderator. We're in the former Maryland Room (maybe now called Office of School and Student Services?) at 11:00 a.m. Sunday, I read in Bel Air, at the Barnes & Noble, at about 4:00 p.m. with other readers, so come early! Finally, I have a signing at the Red Canoe, April 25th, at 4:00.

Below are a couple of radio interviews.

Re: re: re: re: The Book

I live in the city’s best middle-class neighborhood. Restaurants; ice cream parlors; knitting, book, and liquor stores; and a beautiful hairdid are all within walking distance, and the purveyors are friends—if not before, certainly now.

Like any resourceful community, we have our own discussion group on the interwebs. Some people use the forum a little too much, forwarding emails about virus hoaxes and warnings to “NEVER LICK AN ENVELOPE.” (Messages from those special senders go right in my spam folder.) Sometimes subject lines contain misspellings or typos, which survive through repeated Replies To All, even after I reply with the correction and beg it be adopted. Most often neighbors ask if anyone knows what was going on at such-and-such intersection or what crime involved police on their block last night. We also have plenty of warnings about daytime burglars and teens casing houses.

My favorite emails involve bird and wildlife sightings (we've had owls and deer, and I found a flicker on my phone pole the other day.) This is one of the best parts of our community. But one of the worst parts is the increase in crime. This morning's email informed us that a beloved café was burglarized last night.

Recently a debate erupted over fines for loose dogs and then the issue of roaming cats, and it seemed to go on for weeks. Every time I woke up in the morning, I had five emails with “Re: re: re: re: Roaming Cats.” (What? Erase the extraneous Res?) The debate went something like this: Cats should not be allowed to roam. Cats roam; it’s what they do. You control your cat; he doesn’t control you. Cats roam; it’s what they do. Well, if you love your cat, you’ll keep him inside. My cat wants to roam; keeping him in is tantamount to torture.

Yesterday I found one of those roaming cats. His coat was shiny, and he was beautiful and all lovey-dovey—obviously someone’s pet. He was in my front yard for an hour, and I almost sent an email to the list about the Roaming Cat, but I couldn’t make myself stir that debate again. I just wanted to say that pet roaming cats need a collar, because this one was going to join my family. (I would give him a collar and let him go out!)

Last week, a neighbor I know wrote to the list against a new topic du jour but retitled her subject: “Speed Cameras NOT kitty cats.” She ended with some PR for me: “We all should be talking about Leslie's new book, anyway!” The debate continued, sans Book, even after my friend’s second attempt and my own reply (against speed cameras but pro The Book).

And speaking of neighbors and The Book: if you want the greatest muffin in the free world, you’ll find it at the Red Canoe on Harford Road. I talk about that muffin in the introduction to The Book, which is featured in twentiplicate on a table in the front. Grab one before it's gone!

autographs

I recently sold some gigantic (18" x 18") enlargements of birds on a wire—three different shots. While I was signing one of them, my extra-fine Pilot Razor Point ran out of ink. It’s about time, really; I think Pilot stopped making them ten years ago. Finding a pen compatible with my personality (the Razor Point was perfect for my former sharp tongue) became a priority, even on a day when my daughter and I were both home with pinkeye.

So I took Serena to a makeup girls’ lunch at her favorite pizza joint. I usually pick her up before mass on the last day of school before Christmas, Easter, and summer breaks and take her to Mamma Lucia, but this Christmas, I was indisposed. We wiped our seeping eyes, donned our dark sunglasses, and went out for a slice.

My ulterior motive was Office Depot across the street, where I could get a new box of black extra-fine-point markers. They’re imperative, as I’m expecting a giant carton of 35 copies of The Book to arrive sometime in the next week or so, and I have to send them, signed, to a few of the people who helped me. Forget those boring black and blue felt tips! Sharpies now come in every color, in every nib size.

We returned from lunch with several of them in a few colors: The Book pink, The Book blue, black, and a single lime green of my daughter’s choosing. Signs that she’d been practicing her own autograph remain on the kitchen sideboard. (Her generation might actually need to practice it, now that they pay bills online and don’t have the exercise of signing a slew of checks every month.)

Now comes the question of what to write, besides my name. No one will even be able to read the scrawl that represents Leslie F. Miller. So what pithy slogan can I make my own? “Thank you” is not sweet enough. “Cake or Death” belongs to another. “Mmm…Cake!” another. “Did someone say cake?” is Mr. Ratburn's line and too long anyway. Pie’s easy: “Semper Pie” would be my motto. Or “Pie’s the limit.” But cake? “Leslie F. Miller eats cake and leaves”? That’s nuts.

I have collected a few autographs, mostly from musicians: handwritten notes from Ivan Kral (Patti Smith’s bassist), Rick Nielsen, and Jane Siberry. I have the names of all the members of Cheap Trick on a wrinkled piece of paper. Bob Schneider and his band, Willy Porter, and Natalia Zukerman have signed my copies of their CDs. And when I met Richard Butler of the Psychedelic Furs at the Marble Bar in the early eighties, I had him sign a painting I made of him, complete with a blue car potato print stamp. ("Blue cars, big beat, dead on my feet.") He wrote "Into you like a train," misleading unless you know it's a Furs song.

Most of the time, those names remind me of a meeting with them, like when Kip Winger stole my notebook at Rock & Roll Fantasy Camp to write “Rock on!” Right now, my fridge wears an autograph—just a name, no frills—from Victor Wooten, who spoke to the kids at Serena’s school. She stood in line to get it and the reminder of the time their presence was graced by the king of bass.

In two weeks, I head to Philadelphia to tape an interview for “A Chef’s Table”; afterwards, I’m supposed to go to bookstores to sign stock. My husband wants to know who would buy a book just because it’s signed. But that’s how I came to read The Frog King, a fabulous book by Adam Davies. And it’s why I had finally picked up a book on my list, Diane Ackerman’s The Zookeeper’s Wife. My mom has a whole collection of first-edition, signed Edward Gorey books.

Marty wouldn’t stand in line for an autograph, but he wouldn’t take a picture, either. Most of the time, his memory suffices—he smiles when he remembers shaking Nelson Mandela’s hand at Bill Clinton’s first inauguration, and he talked guitar with Willy Porter while I was snapping away and getting a signature.

But maybe an autograph represents something else entirely—not just proof of a meeting or a desire to increase the value of a work of art. Isn’t it the artist’s seal? Sometimes I ask people not to use my name when I’m not fond of what I was forced to create. But a signature on The Book would say: I’m Leslie F. Miller, and I approve this publication—despite the mistakes I’ve made and my persistent battles with The Suck Voice.

Maybe my signature slogan should be a reminder to myself, just as much as it is a message to the reader.

a special note to stephen colbert

I know what you need. It is soft and moist. It's suh-weet. Getting it only makes you want it more. It's the perfect way to end a meal or start a day. It's the climax of any celebration. (If it's really, really good, it's worth celebrating itself!) And next April, when my book hits the shelves, I would like to sit on your lap and give it to you.

A slice of Truthiness cake is yours for the tasting. All you have to do to get it is invite me to be a guest of The Colbert Report.