I'm in the Boston Globe!

Thanks to the lovely Liza Weisstuch for this fun article in the Boston Globe last week! :-)

Friday, March 23, 2007

Kristin Harmel and Amy Tangerine
The novelist and fashion designer bond over tapas and tops on Newbury Street
By Liza Weisstuch, Globe Correspondent

Kristin Harmel travels with an entourage. On book tours, she has close friends and their friends in tow. During a recent stop in Boston to promote her latest novel, "The Blonde Theory," she and the entourage stayed four to a room at the Park Plaza. With not a lot of bathrooms among the eight of them, they got off to a late start.

Most of the posse had never been to Boston, so they moseyed down the Freedom Trail. Harmel and her friend Amy Tan, a fashion designer who goes by Amy Tangerine, headed to Tapeo, a stylishly rustic Spanish eatery on Newbury Street. Their ultimate destination was the nearby boutique Queen Bee, which stocks Tangerine's flirty, feminine tops and was the site of a launch party for Harmel's book.

Harmel was bundled in a long camel wool coat, a vintage score from her mom's closet, and Tangerine sported a cropped bomber jacket. It was one of those almost-warm winter days, but warm is relative to Harmel, who is based in Orlando, and Tangerine, who lives in LA. Despite the continent between them, they've developed a creative collaborative marketing enterprise. Harmel, 27, a natural blonde, writes books she calls "women's fiction." (The term "chick lit" never comes up.) Tangerine, 28, designs T-shirts to go with them. It's a great excuse to road trip together, said Harmel, explaining that this is their "second annual" tour. They did it last year for Harmel's debut novel, "How to Sleep With a Movie Star." (Harmel, who covers her fair share of A-listers as a regular contributor to People magazine, swears it's not a thinly disguised autobiography.) Harmel was wearing one of the new tops: a soft gray T with "Boys like blondes" embroidered above a girl's profile.

They opened their menus, but diversions were fast and furious. The Manhattan launch party at the W Hotel was two nights before, and they buzzed with chitchat and gossip. Conversation bounced from Tangerine's two Jack Russell terriers to the doings of their common acquaintances. They've only known each other two years, but they resemble the longtime friends in "The Blonde Theory," which centers on a Manhattan attorney whose boyfriend leaves her after she makes partner. Urged by her tight-knit circle of companions, she tests out a hypothesis: Can behaving like a ditzy blond make her more attractive bait for men?

Conspicuously absent from Harmel and Tangerine's conversation was mention of a man in Harmel's life. She considers herself "foolishly optimistic" about guys. The bad dates she's been on? She's written them off as "research."

The food arrived -- olives, a creamy sausage cazuela, and potatoes with a garlicky mayo -- and they casually picked. It was a change of pace from the last few days.

"I'm trying to keep seven other people with completely different personalities happy," Harmel said.

"Especially if you have picky eaters," Tangerine said with a shrug, going for the potatoes. "He's the anything."

"When is Cap'n meeting us?" asked Harmel. "He's the nicest guy in the world," Harmel said of Tangerine's boyfriend, who lives on a boat in Marina del Rey, Calif. "It gives me hope that there are nice guys out there."

Soon, Harmel decided it was time to leave. Her entourage was going to be particularly big that night and she wanted to get to Queen Bee early. She used to live in Peabody and had family throughout the state coming. Plus her sister, a student at Harvard's Kennedy School, was bringing a small crew.

As they beelined down Newbury, Harmel noticed Tangerine's wilderness-chic boots. "If I ever decide to enter a life of crime -- breaking and entering -- I'm starting with your closet," she said matter-of-factly.

They stopped into a few shops to browse the dresses, tops, and accessories, then dropped into Borders. Tangerine declared she was "in heaven" amid the shelves of stationery. Harmel wandered through the paperbacks, cooing about favorite novels as if each were an old friend. A table of Red Sox tomes caught her eye.

"Boston teams stay in your blood. I had a hard time when the Red Sox played the Cardinals [in the 2004 World Series]," she said, thumbing through a book. She worked for the Cardinals while in high school in St. Petersburg, Fla., then the team's home during spring training. "I thought I was safe rooting for the Red Sox as my American League team and the Cardinals as my National League team."

Who needs blonde theories when you have baseball?