What, No Meat? Traditional Italian Cooking, The Vegetarian Way is more that just a cookbook. It is a compendium of fascinating information about food, incorporating history and folklore, stories of origin, and the evolution of food and recipe names. Food has its own history and background and is an integral part of human existence. It inhabits a world of its own, and What, No Meat? invites readers to enter this amazing world, exploring the role of food in historical events, religious rituals, and healing.

Which Roman goddess was the inspiration for tortellini? What do bay leaves have to do with the term poet laureate? What herb, mixed with ginger and cool spearmint, do Scandinavians believe cures women of frigidity? Why did Romans drink saffron before a night of debauchery and sleep on it afterwards? The stories are all here.

Read how some foods were once shunned because of fear of illness, death, or madness. Become acquainted with people throughout history, like Caterina di’Medici, Thomas Jefferson, and other kings, queens and rulers, who were directly responsible for the acceptance of many foods by the masses. How about taking a soup-eating quiz? This quiz has profiles for different psychological types based on how people eat their soup. You could be a “cautious connoisseur” or perhaps a “free-spirited enthusiast,” depending on the utensil you use and whether or not you slurp. Ask yourself, “What kind of soup eater am I?” and read on.

What, No Meat? delivers over 180 recipes, some simple, some more complex. Some are quick to prepare, some are not, but all of them are delicious and bursting with the flavors and aromas of Italy. Sprinkled with a few advanced recipes that can pique the interest of more experienced cooks, they are perfect for weeknight meals and special occasions, for large families and dinner for two. The book is peppered with the author’s anecdotes and some of her own personal philosophies on cooking, practical tips, and other useful information that will guarantee you the freshest, tastiest culinary results.

How does it work? Simply leave a comment letting me know you’d like to be entered into the drawing. You do NOT have to put your e-mail address in the comment—I will be able to view your e-mail address on my end. I’ll have someone pull a name out of a hat, and I’ll notify the winner next week.

For an excerpt, table of contents, and sample recipes from the book, click HERE. You’ll also get a better image of the cover HERE, which doesn’t seem to want to cooperate for me in this blog.

The tentative publication date by Rogue Books is November. Publishing schedules get fiddled with sometimes (the original pub date in this case was October), but, hopefully, it will be out in time for Christmas shopping.

I’m very excited about being picked up by a traditional publisher. I wrote about the sequence of events (the condensed version) for Writers Weekly HERE. My concern when I submitted that piece for their “Success Stories” column was that people wouldn’t get the whole picture. After all, I only had a couple of hundred words in which to tell my story, so I couldn’t go into all the details of what went into that book. And I knew that some people would get the impression that I wrote the book, self-published it, and BAM, a traditional publisher picked it up. Overnight success, right?

Noooooooo. No way. Far from it. I put a lot of sweat, tears, energy, and money into that book, and it took years. I went through two agents, a publisher who turned out to be a nut job and a crook (and who subsequently was investigated by the North Carolina Department of Justice for her actions), numerous proposals, dozens of rejections, and hundreds of hours of researching, writing, revising, typesetting, cover designing, and crying. I endured an agent pitch slam at a Writer’s Digest conference (those things are BRUTAL, man) and the humiliation of being told that I would never get this book published because the book was not unique or I was nobody in the food world. I tested recipes for years, fed many, many people, and endured many negative critiques. There were people who I’d given enormous amounts of food to over the course of years, who raved about my food and got so excited over the idea of me writing a cookbook, and when the time came, couldn’t have given a rotten fig less that my book was actually out.

But, in the end, I believed in my book. I knew I had a good product and I just forged ahead. I started working on it in 1997; I self-published it in 2008; Rogue Books picked it up in 2009. Hardly an overnight success. But what that proved is that if you really believe in what you’re doing, you can make it work.

I don’t really know if the book will be any more successful with Rogue Books than it was with Booklocker. I hope it will. I’ll do my best to get it out there.

But in the meantime, enter to win a copy, make some food, and enjoy. That, in the end, is what a cookbook is for.

Have a great week, all. Ciao.

What that means in the publishing world is that I didn’t have a built-in fan base. How does one get a built-in fan base? Well, in the case of food writing, it could mean owning a restaurant or other food-related business, being a celebrity chef, having a regular food column in a widely read newspaper or magazine, or being famous for some other reason. The last reason is a pet peeve of mine. It seems that every celebrity who gets a bug up their butt about it puts out a cookbook. I’d venture to guess that half the celebrity cookbooks on the market are “written” by people who probably don’t even know how to boil water. Or, even if they do, what are the chances that they wrote the book themselves? Don’t get me started on this!

Anyway, having a personal chef business simply wasn’t enough and getting an article published here and there wasn’t doing it either. But I had put years of work into this book. Years of researching, writing, revising, studying the market, putting together proposals, and bad experiences with unscrupulous publishers and agents. I couldn’t give up. I couldn’t just let it die. So, what’s a frustrated girl with a good, well-written cookbook to do? Self-publish. I chose Booklocker as my publisher and embarked on the journey.

Since then, I’ve been networking and trying to market my book in every way I can, but when you self-publish, it’s very difficult to to make the industry connections that a publisher can. It can also get expensive. Furthermore, in querying agents for my cookbook-in-progress, I haven’t been able to mention that I already have a published cookbook because there’s a stigma attached to self-publishing. Mentioning something like that can actually work against you (although the perception is changing).

The press that has picked me up is Rogue Books, an imprint of Bedazzled Ink. They’re an eclectic bunch and they have a great reputation for treating their authors with respect and for actually putting in marketing efforts, something that the average author doesn’t get much of.

I was approached by them with the offer of being picked up. The head editor there said that she (a vegetarian) and another editor (a vegan) had been wanting to publish a vegetarian cookbook and that mine looked promising. I didn’t take long to make my decision. Having a traditional publisher behind me is going to be a very good thing.

So my book is going to be temporarily unavailable, as Booklocker has already deactivated my book page. The nice thing is that the owner of Booklocker (and the writer’s ezine WritersWeekly), to her credit, is actually happy when one of her authors gets a traditional publishing contract. I’ve had a good experience with Booklocker and I’m glad I went with them. But this is the next step for me. (If anyone wants a copy of the book in its current incarnation—for lower than the retail cost)—leave me a comment and I’ll contact you.)

I’ve got numerous projects bubbling on the stove, which is keeping me busy during this period of unemployment. Now, if only I could figure out a way to make some money. Frankly, I don’t think the mortgage company is going to be impressed with my publishing achievements. I’ve posted another recipe from my book on the recipe page. If anyone makes anything out of my book, I’d love to hear how it turned out, so leave a comment!

Have a great week, everyone.