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Christina Pirello is our guest blogger during the week of April 20th. If you have any questions for Christina Pirello, add a comment to any of her posts.

Here is more information about This Crazy Vegan Life:

A manifesto on being vegan and living healthfully from the award-winning host of public television's Christina Cooks, Naturally!

Being vegan is not only about a plant-based diet. It means taking a whole new look at health, fitness, lifestyle choices, and the world. Christina Pirello not only advocates the development of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals, and the environment, but also promotes their impact on wellness. Beyond the value of eating whole, and organic foods, Pirello explores a host of subjects from nutrition and fitness to education and emotional well-being as she helps readers take control of their lives and achieve their personal goals, whether they want to lose weight, regain health and vitality, or simply look and feel better.

Featuring a 28-day nutrition and fitness plan, This Crazy Vegan Life also includes sample menus and more than 100 delicious and easy-to-prepare low-glycemic, phyto-nutrient-rich, high-fiber, wellbalanced vegan recipes that emphasize good carbs and good fat.

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Dalia Jurgensen is our guest blogger during the week of April 20th. If you have any questions for Dalia Jurgensen, add a comment to any of her posts.

Here is more information about Spiced:

In the tradition of Kitchen Confidential, a revealing and entertaining insider's tour through top restaurant kitchens, told from the unique perspective of a critically acclaimed pastry chef.

Spiced is Dalia Jurgensen's memoir of leaving her office job and pursuing her dream of becoming a chef. Eventually landing the job of pastry chef for a three-star New York restaurant, she recounts with endearing candor the dry cakes and burned pots of her early internships, and the sweat, sheer determination, and finely tuned taste buds-as well as resilient ego and sense of humor-that won her spots in world-class restaurant kitchens. With wit and an appreciation for raunchy insults, she reveals the secrets to holding your own in male-dominated kitchens, surviving after-hours staff parties, and turning out perfect plates when you know you're cooking for a poorly disguised restaurant critic. She even confesses to a clandestine romance with her chef and boss-not to mention what it's like to work in Martha Stewart's TV kitchen-and the ugly truth behind the much-mythologized "family meal."

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Eric Berlin is our guest blogger during the week of April 20th. If you have any questions for Eric Berlin, add a comment to any of his posts.

Here is more information about The Potato Chip Puzzles:

When puzzle addict Winston Breen and his best friends head to an all-day puzzle hunt with a $50,000 grand prize, they're pumped. But the day is not all fun and games: not only do they have a highstrung and highly competitive teacher along for the ride, but the puzzles are hard even for Winston, the other schools' teams are no joke, and someone in the contest is playing dirty in order to win. Trying to stop this mystery cheater before it's too late takes an already tough challenge to a whole other level. . . .

Packed with a variety of fun puzzles to solve, this fast-paced sequel will pull readers right into the action from start to finish.

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This month I have two books coming out-The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime, which has just appeared, as you can tell from this blog page; and In the Womb: Animals, which National Geographic Books will publish later this month. The latter, my fourth book about nature, prompted a colleague, an editor, to email and ask me about my interest in science and technology. He phrased it that way: "science and technology," as if they were linked, like Laurel and Hardy or time and tide.

So I had to explain that although I often write about nature and the natural sciences I really have very little interest in or knowledge about technology. Not that I'm a Luddite; I'm writing this on a laptop from my deck and sending it via email where it will appear on the Web. I use digital cameras almost exclusively nowadays. Clearly I don't hide out in a cabin in the backwoods of Manitoba and commune with moose. But I can't stir up much interest in technology in itself. In fact, after years of interest in photography in the 1980s and 90s, I got bored with the paraphernalia until digital came along and its immediate gratification restored my waning interest in, to use the origin of the word photography, "drawing with light."

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Ah, my favorite sport. I have been playing since 8^th grade with probably only two years off total (due to knee surgeries and one pregnancy.)

It is absolutely true that much of my personal voice as a teen became strong as a result of belonging to a team, with the reciprocal effect of feeling the strength of my athletic body back up my voice. I became strong in voice and body, and I believe that it saved my self esteem from drowning.

Volleyball requires connection. It requires learning to communicate with other team members in practice. It requires communication between players in the more stressful situation of a game. If you don't talk distinctly and with confidence on the court, the team can't play well because no other player understands your intentions and the game falls apart.

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Virginia Woolf famously said that a woman needs money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. I would agree that these assets are highly desirable but I do not believe them to be essential. J.K Rowling is, of course, a case in point.

At present I am busy promoting my new book, Keeper of Light and Dust, and one of the questions I was recently asked in an online interview, was what kind of environment is necessary for the creative impulse to flourish. It turned out that what the interviewer really wanted to know, was what my office looks like.

On a good day my office looks whimsical (I hope), on a bad day it looks like the playground of someone who needs serious help: stacks of paper and printouts, photographs, boxing paraphernalia, sagging pin boards with too many newspaper and magazine clippings, objets d'art made by my godchildren, CDs, many, many little bottles of hand sanitizers (neurotic, don't tell me, I know) and books, books, books. Of course, I am sure there are writers who have offices where all is serenity and order and whose creative impulse takes flight in the face of chaos. Still, I am relieved to know that most of my friends who are writers, also work in an environment of cheerful anarchy.