Thank you, Savannah and Washington, DC plus sexy shop photos from Lotus Blooms

I'll make this a brief thank you, since I'm heading on a train to New York, then running a few errands, then catching the bus to Atlantic City so I can spend my final night of my thirties at home and wake up on my birthday in the same place as my boyfriend. I've had an amazing trip, in two parts, Savannah and Washington, DC. I got to catch up with two of my closest friends, who I used to see all the time when we all lived in New York, eat wonderful food, explore a new city, and do a fabulous reading and teach a highly engaged workshop. All of that has energized me for the rest of my month, which includes teaching my Litreactor erotica writing class and launching Dirty Dates tomorrow. Many thanks to Nichelle Stephens for organizing Friday's reading and Lotus Blooms for booking last night's workshop.

Here's me at Back in the Day Bakery, which I highly recommend visiting if you're in Savannah.



And here's me outside the newly opened Lotus Blooms in Adams Morgan in Washington, DC, plus some photos inside the store. Great selection, and amazing shoes and corsets and other sexy clothing. And erotica and other sex related books, of course. Had a great meal at Libertine across the street, and my workshop was actually upstairs at The Black Squirrel, which was a wonderful space!




If this isn't erotica writing fodder, I don't know what is!












Last but not least: corsets! If you want a corset and are in the DC area, get yourself to Lotus Blooms.

Join us Wednesday for the world's longest cupcake kebab!

WHEN: Wednesday, August 12, 8:00pm - 11:00pm
WHERE: New York City’s Crash Mansion, 199 Bowery
WHAT: Our first-ever themed night of world records. And the theme? Fooooooood! Though recent appearances on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and at the Pitchfork Fest in Chicago have been fun, we are bonkers with excitement about this upcoming event.

“Food records” doesn’t necessarily mean shoving hot dogs down your throat. Past records we’ve documented include Tallest Carrot Cake, Most Names Written On A Dry Piece Of Spaghetti and Fastest Time To Open A Can Of Alphabet Soup And Spell ‘PANTYHOSE’. Be creative. To join the bill and set a food-related record (or beat one from our site), email dan@URDB.org.

CURRENT LINEUP:

* Longest Cupcake Kebab - Nichelle Stephens and Rachel Kramer Bussel of Cupcakes Take The Cake (http://bit.ly/DXtMg) and Nora Vetter of Nibbles by Nora

* Most Times Changing Order While Ordering Chinese Food Without Getting Hung Up On - Matt Vescovo

* Most Crustless PB&J Sandwiches Made By 10 People In 1 Minute - Hilary Hodge & Friends

* Tallest S’more - Clint Cantwell

* Most Tortillas Frisbeed In 30 Seconds - Alexandra Young

See this site for more details

Nichelle in a bathtub with cupcakes

How hot does my friend Nichelle Stephens look here? (via Flickr) The photo is by Matty Baker, aka The Drunken Photographer, and of course Nichelle is my partner in cupcaking at Cupcakes Take the Cake.

Am exhausted tonight; took the redeye, dropped bags at home, came to work, and have jury duty tomorrow! Slowly catching up on multiple projects and plotting promotional ideas (hopefully I will soon have promo condoms to give out at my events!).

Party prettiness

In a word, last night's Cupcakes Take the Cake party rocked. If you missed it, you missed a lot of cupcakes, an insane amount of raffle prizes, a super-packed White Rabbit, me having a drink, and much merriment. Seriously, it was awesome. Huge props to Nichelle Stephens for planning and promoting the whole thing in two weeks! DIY PR all the way - we got listed in Serious Eats, Grub Street, Time Out New York, and, yes, the fantabulous New York Times' UrbanEye newsletter. Join our Meetup group to find out what's happening next.

My cupcake of the day yesterday was an amazing Elvis cupcake (banana cake topped with peanut butter frosting and BACON!). Photos by Stacie Joy.

The night all Nichelle's money disappeared

Nichelle Stephens is one of my best friends. I've known her since April or May 2004, when we did the WYSIWYG reading together, and we have since become fellow cupcake bloggers, traveled together, and gossiped a lot. You can see lots of photos of her in my Flickr stream.

Please read her post, The Night All My Money Disappeared. It's sad and scary, and even if you don't have any advice or a way to help, you can comment and think good thoughts for her. Here's an update.

She's also asking people to donate to RightRides, a New York organization. I'll let them explain themselves:

RightRides offers women, transgender and gender queer individuals a free, safe, late night ride home on Saturday nights from 11:59 PM - 3 AM, early Sunday morning in 35 NYC neighborhoods. To call for a ride, the dispatch number is (718) 964-7781.

Since 2004, RightRides has driven over 1,000 riders safely home, thanks to hundreds of dedicated volunteers and our vehicle sponsor, Zipcar.

Visit the RightRides homepage and donate via Nichelle to get her to her $1,000 fundraising goal.

One of the things I love most about Nichelle is that she has a huge heart. She is always ready to listen (okay, sometimes I know I annoy her with my madness, especially when it's of the romantic kind, but she puts up with that anyway) and has a big heart. She also is the organizer of our NYC Cupcakes Take the Cake Meetup (please join and help me reach my personal goal of 1,000 members, just cause that would sound so cool) and you can hang out with us and Allison on Sunday starting at noon at The Brooklyn Flea eating yummy homemade cupcakes while helping charity! You know it's special cause even I'm gonna bake some banana cupcakes!

Please show Nichelle some love, cause I want to see her smiling again, like this (from the set of The Martha Stewart Show):



Nichelle, I am sending happy thoughts and news your way. And, virtually, this money cupcake from Flickr user heath_bar:

Cupcake pinup girl

I can only hope Sunday's photo shoot for the NYC Sex Blogger Calendar (go there for info on how your blog can be part of it if you sponsor us!) goes as well as this one by Hilary McHone. See her entire Flickr set here.

Please vote for my SXSWi Foodblogging panel "Nom Nom Nom"

The SXSW Interactive Panel Picker went live yesterday. I would really appreciate it if you'd do me a favor and register and vote for my panel proposal “Nom Nom Nom: The Secrets of Successful Foodblogging.”

(details below). And yes, I know there are dozens, if not hundreds of other worthy panels being proposed by my friends and colleagues. Do your research and check those out too, but, you know, please vote for mine. FREE CUPAKES! (Yes, I am up for bribing, plus I want to sample as many Austin cupcakeries as I can.) And if you can't figure out the Panel Picker system (it's easy, I promise), drop me a line at cupcakestakethecake at yahoo.com and I'll try to help.

Here's the official description:

What does it take to build a successful food blog? From niche single-food specific blogs like Cupcakes Take the Cake to broader blogs like Midtown Lunch, we’ll share the secrets of making readers hungry for more and attracting press and advertisers. Free cupcakes.

Panelists include (this may change slightly, but hopefully will stay as is):

Rachel Kramer Bussel (Moderator) of Cupcakes Take the Cake

Nichelle Stephens, Cupcakes Take the Cake

Zach Brooks, Midtown Lunch

Hunter Walker, Editor-at-Large, Digital City (formerly Associate Editor, Gridskipper)

Cathy Erway, Not Eating Out in New York

Voting closes on August 29th.

I’ve yet to peruse the numerous listings, so if you are pitching a panel I should vote for/know about, please let me know at rachelkb at gmail.com (put SXSW in the subject line). Same goes if you run a unique food blog and are interested in being on the panel; that’s iffy cause right now we have enough people, but there is a chance I may need someone down the road. Thanks!

What's going on

Me with two of my closest friends, Twanna and Nichelle. The three of us are going to Martha's Vineyard over Labor Day weekend. Me, to visit my grandmother (who grew up there) and they to have fun. I can only imagine the troubleadventures we will have!



I'm in Minneapolis this weekend, visiting friends, seeing Fringe Festival shows (tonight I have many options, so if you have a great suggestion, let me know!), eating cupcakes, and doing a booksigning and reading (today at 5:30: Amazon Bookstore, tomorrow, reading and open mic 7-8:30 at Smitten Kitten)

And cupcakes! Do go check out Miel y Leche's FANTASTIC cupcakes at Letterbox Creative if you're in town today at noon. I am gonna try to hit them up, then am going to the inaugural Minneapolis/St. Paul Cupcake Meetup at Cupcake, home of the best S'mores cupcake I've ever had.

I'm staying with friends in this really cool apartment building in the Elliot Park neighborhood:



I went for lunch with my super-awesome publicist Buzzy Porter for Bedding Down, my December Avon Red novella anthology of winter erotica, and this is the dessert we had (I forget exactly what it was called but it was delicious!):



And now, the food that has captured my taste buds and won't let go - the shawafel from Chickpea, which just opened on Houston Street on the Lower East Side (after being on 3rd Avenue off St. Marks). Twanna can tell you; I devoured it in about two minutes!



This is the shawafel from Chickpea, which just opened on Houston (near the Sunshine theater) after being on Third Avenue off St. Marks. They are the felafel restaurant that had a reader contest to name them. Anyway, they make a felafel and shwarma combo sandwich called the shawafel that is so amazing. There's also hummus and salad and (if you want) hot sauce in it. Omg! They also have flavored felafel which I had never seen before (3 flavors of felafel, 3 flavors of shwarma). I chose spinach and broccoli felafel and was not disappointed. The felafel is baked, not fried, too.

It was so good I went back the next night and had another! And I also cannot recommend enough the side of roasted eggplant- I could eat a giant bowl of it! It's mushy and tasty and yummy. Getting hungry now just thinking about it.