Steve and I checked out Botiwalla, a new-ish restaurant in West Asheville. I’d been watching the renovation from a distance for a while now, and when I saw it was finally open, we had to try it.

Basically this is a very casual eatery from Meherwan Irani, the chef who brought Chai Pani to Asheville back in the day. Chai Pani is all about Indian Street food. Botiwalla is a tribute to cafes created by Iranians who settled in India. Irani’s great grandfather ran such a place…

I couldn’t let another 9/11 anniversary pass without comment.

The thing is, I was there, watching the tragedy unfold from across the river.

Here’s the story…

Busy weekend for us. A local book festival, a friend over, and another book event. Through it all, a flurry of old friends and new, and an unexpected Elvis mystery.

Here’s how it all went down…

My books are packed, and we are headed to the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival in Burnsville today, Friday, September 8. We’re doing one talk at 3 p.m., and signing books at 5 p.m.

Details here. The full schedule is here. Hope to see you there if you’re going…

From Hoboken, NJ, this week comes the sad news that John Amato died at the age of 88 on August 30.

Mr. Amato played an interesting role in my childhood and later life.

He was the Hoboken cheese man!

Here’s the story…

My wife, Denise Kiernan, did a fun interview last week with Eastern Panhandle Talk, the morning talk radio and TV show for WRNR in Martinsburg, WV. It’s a full 30-minute chat, mostly on the topic of The Girls of Atomic City, her 2013 bestselling book.

You can watch the video right here…

When I meet math teachers at schools or conferences, they assume that I am a lifelong math lover since my picture book is about Leonardo of Pisa, namesake of the Fibonacci Sequence. I should come clean. Math teachers, here’s what I’ve been ashamed to confess: When I was a kid, there was no subject I feared more than math.

The Happy Hollisters were a family of crime fighters in a book series I read as a kid. Today I’m talking about them over at SleuthSayers. At first, I wanted to just talk about the Hollisters, but the conversation turned into something deeper…

Struffoli are a delicious Italian treat that we used to enjoy as kids. I wrote this tiny piece back in 2001 for a national food magazine. They paid me for it, but never ran it. No idea why. No explanation why. Freelance journalism is known for this sort of fickle behavior. Editors love things, then hate them. This article was deliberately short, intended for the magazine’s front-of-the-book section. It was supposed to run with a recipe that I provided. The article has never seen the light of day—until now…

I mentioned a while ago that I’ve been getting into watches. It’s a total pandemic hobby; something I dug into when I couldn’t leave the house. I thought I’d march through the trajectory of this insanity in a logical fashion, so you can witness the birth of an obsession.

I need to take you back in time to December 2019, when I had but three watches stowed in a box in my closet…