Next to hit your bookstores and hopefully your bookshelves is the children’s book that’s been ten years in the making.  I’m not exaggerating. I’m not using my Russian hyperbole to make a point. I mean, these one hundred and fifty words you will read about a mommy and her baby have taken over ten years to reach you. I wrote them when my fourth baby was 18 months old.  She recently celebrated her twelfth birthday. In the intervening decade, I have written nearly a million and a half adult words. So now we know.Children’s books are much harder to write! The book is called I Love My Baby Because. I hope all the mommies out there love it, and their babies too. You can preorder it here and here for the US and UK, and it is out on July 31st, 2014.

I wanted to tell you all about the next novel I’m writing, a book I’m very excited about, called Lone Star. When I was a young girl growing up in Russia, I saw a movie called “Ballad of a Soldier.” I remember very little about it, except there was a girl, and a boy who was going to the front. They were on a train together. Then he hopped off.  He sang for her and played his guitar. She loved him. Lone Star is the Paullina version of that general theme, except in book form and with all the things I love in it, and I fervently hope the things many of you will love in it. Hint hint, wink wink.  I say no more.  I’ve said too much.