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Kimberlee Auerbach is our guest blogger during the week of July 30th. If you have any questions for Kimberlee Auerbach, add a comment to any of her posts. Here is some brief information about The Devil, the Lovers, and Me:

An irresistible memoir for anyone who's ever wondered what's coming next...

Kimberlee Auerbach has been in therapy. She's seen a Reiki Master. She's even given hypnosis a try. They can't give her want she wants... to know her future is going to be bright, that everything will be okay. So she makes an appointment with Iris Goldblatt, "tarot card reader and mirror of the soul." Instead of predicting the future, each card sparks a memory: like the time Kimberlee tried to be wild, and caught crabs from an Argentine painter; or the night her father "proposed" at Morton's Steakhouse (presenting her with an engagement ring for her boyfriend to use); or the moment Kimberlee found the strength to kick out her freeloading ex. In a Wizard of Oz-like twist of fate, Kimberlee realizes she had the answers all along-that's it's not about looking to the future, it's about trusting yourself along the way.

Exuberantly alive and refreshingly candid, The Devil, The Lovers & Me, will take you on a journey down one woman's path, only to reflect yours back. You, too, will see yourself in the cards ... The Devil, The Lovers, even the Fool.

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I was invited to a business lunch at Penguin to pitch for The Eyre Affair in July of 1999, and that first meeting was mildly strange, to say the least. I'd heard the rumours, of course, but I just thought the stories were urban myths - wild fabrications invented by agents and authors who had had one too many pink gins before a meeting.

The first thing you notice upon entering the lobby at Penguin towers is a small man next to the elevators, who has a selection of outdoor clothes on a rack just beside him.

"Where are you heading?" he asks brightly, and when I reply 'Penguin' he gives a knowing nod and hands me a lined gore-tex jacket and woolly hat.