Welcome to the first posting for Tango Me Home, the blog for my memoir, Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home.

As I set up book events, I hope to convince people to learn to dance, so they are going to be as interactive as possible. There will be dance demonstrations and in some venues, wine, live music and tango lessons will be part of the book presentations. There will be tango parties in art galleries in Sausalito and Half Moon Bay, and an Argentinean style asado at a butcher shop in Brooklyn; I will be overlapping with tango festivals in Portland, Oregon and Tucson, Arizona, and we will have an event at a hip new speakeasy and wine tasting room in the heart of wine country this spring.

If you can’t join me at some of these events, I hope you will participate online. I’ve made a Tango Playlist so you can get a sense of the different styles of tango, and I have a Youtube channel, TangoMeHome, to upload videos of favorite performers, friends, and characters waxing rhapsodic about dancing. If you see any good videos or film yourself in action, let me know and I will add them.

One of the best ways to be involved is to enter the Heartbreak Competition.  While not everyone dances, everyone has had his or her heart broken. When I was going through my rough time, people started telling me their tales, and I understood the betrayals, the disappointments, the sudden turns and changes life puts in front of us in a way I never could have before. And they made me feel better, not so much because misery loves company, but because everyone survived and many were better off because of their ordeal.

Visit the Heartbreak Competition page for details, but in short, we share our stories on this blog, and our distinguished judges agree on a winning tale. This story this is transformed into a tango song and recorded.  And then we dance to it…

Stay in touch, tell your friends, tell me what you think, become a fan on Facebook and most importantly, keep coming back!

Maria