Many years ago, as an academic, I wrote books and articles about food and culture, but once free of that life turned to fiction. Sitting in my file cabinet are three (count them, three) novels that I completed and abandoned. Something must have been gestating, because when I learned about this international event called National Novel Writing Month (November), my brain got jazzed and I thought, let’s do it.
Well folks, it’s been just over 4 months and I have a complete draft done. The real work starts now–revision. Kind of like tai chi, right? You learn it and then you REALLY learn it. You revise and revise some more!
The novel is called “Her Last Cookbook” and right now, this is how it starts (revision may change it):
The mudroom door took major jiggling, the lock stiff and resistant, as if saying, huh—you again. What are you doing here? “Yeah, yeah, house, don’t you start asking questions. I don’t know for sure.”
Thank god the place was clean. When she’d called Asa, he’d assured her someone would tidy up, she could repay him once settled, no problem. But as Miriam lugged in things from the car, odd changes startled her. One of the fish pictures was missing, books on the living room shelf seemed sorted differently, the two old wing chairs stood at funny angles, too far apart. This was weird. In the kitchen too—mugs flat on their bottoms not hung on their hooks, the iron pans in a pile on the stove. Their usual destinations on the pegboard gaped empty. What the hell? Whoever had done the cleaning, had she taken things? The silverware drawer seemed full, but the drawer below. Damn, that beautiful horn-handled carving set, gone. Someone had come in and stolen things. She checked another drawer. The old hand-held egg beater, gone. She patrolled the rest of the house. On the surface, the other rooms looked okay. She’d have to ask Asa. She’d have to swallow hard and act like there was some logical explanation somehow.
