A wonderful woman and award winning writer, Amy Tan (of Joy Luck Club) helped me launch in America – by providing a quotation for my book Sweet Mandarin.

“Sweet Mandarin is a banquet of family stories that take us from a small Chinese village to cosmopolitan Hong Kong and urban Manchester.   Along the way, the ingredients of special dishes and a rich life are added:  a homemade stock of hard life,  a pound of tragedy, a spoonful of daring, a dash of curses, and dollop after dollop of sheer will.  This is a family memoir of survival and victories, luck and determination, and perpetual mounds of dirty dishes waiting to be washed. “  Amy Tan

We hung out on Miami Beach after appearing in the Miami Book Fair – I spoke to students at Miami Dade College and to a packed out hall at the Miami Book Fair - Amy appeared in the Rock Bottom Remainders (a band made up of authors including Amy, Stephen King and Frank McCourt). This was a wonderful experience at one of the world’s largest book fairs.  Congratulations to Mitch Kaplan, owner of Books and Books and the creator of the 25th Anniversary of The Miami Book Fair.