Answer Two Questions Correctly and You'll Win a Prize

Every morning on my way to the Aroma coffee shop where I sit and write for an hour before going to work I pass by the Reshet television studio. At that early hour there is a morning show and I can actually see into the studio as I pass by. One of the hosts of the morning show is media personality Avri Gilad.

On occasion, Avri goes out to the street and catches passersby for a quick quiz. He asks them three questions and if they answer two of them correctly, they win a prize.

I have been stopped twice before and asked to participate in the televised quiz but both times I was in a hurry to get to work. This time, I said OK.

Avri Gilad was certainly not ready for my "clever" spur-of-the-moment replies, as you can see in the video!

Thank you to my son who quickly starting filming when I messaged my family that I was going to be on television! The video was edited and subtitles were added by using the Kapwing Online Video Editor.

What Inspired Me to Write 'The Burgas Affair'

"During the two years I lived in Sofia, I fell in love with Bulgaria and most of my writing these days, both fiction and non-fiction, is based on my experiences there. Having grown up in Israel where, unfortunately, suicide bombings and terrorist attacks are an ever-present security danger, I assumed Bulgaria to be a completely safe place to live. That is why the terrorist attack at Burgas Airport was so upsetting to me. I read every media report about the bombing and the investigation in its aftermath. As the terrorists were never caught, my creative mind came up with some possible explanations. I envisioned a joint Bulgarian-Israeli investigation and the end result was my novel, The Burgas Affair."

Read the full interview on Lisa Haselton's Reviews and Interviews.

How It Came About that "The Burgas Affair" Was First Published in Bulgarian

The first blog article I published on The Huffington Post was entitled “10 Amazing Things You Don’t Know about Bulgaria.” The article went viral. It received more than 27,000 likes and was translated three times into Bulgarian (two of them without my permission). I gained a reputation as a Westerner who writes very positively about Bulgaria.

I love to read and I write many book reviews. I began specializing in writing reviews of books written by Bulgarian authors who have been translated into English. As a result, I established many connections with Bulgarian authors, publishers, and media.

My novel The Burgas Affair was published as Бургаската афера in May 2016 by Ciela, the leading publishing house in Bulgaria. It was strange, and exciting, to attend the book launch and a book signing for the novel in Sofia, when the book had yet to be published in English. The book was well received in Bulgaria, but it certainly didn’t become a bestseller.


Excerpt from an interview in the January-February issue of Doorway to Art.