I’ve been doing a lot of preliminary research on pie. Reading a lot. Watching movies. (Ohmigoodness you HAVE to see Waitress if you are interested in pie—and who isn’t?) My next book MRS. ROWE’S LITTLE BOOK OF SOUTHERN PIE will be out next spring and the manuscript is due this summer. So, the blog will be focusing on that book, now. (I am actually thinking of changing the name.)
To give you some Idea of what I’ve been up to, along with all the research, I’ve been finding a pie tester. Now that we have one (Kate Antea), I am working with her, answering questions, and chatting about pie. Some of the recipes are handwritten and leave off some necessary details, like to use a double boiler, a very important thing to know, as well as temperature and time for baking. Hmmm. You’d think someone would have jotted that down somewhere.
And I am also creating lists and schedules to keep us all on the same page. We need to know where each recipe is. With the tester? With me? Yet to be gathered? Tested?
Yesterday, I made up a flier for the restaurants—asking people to call me with their pie stories. Today, I start making phone call to people I talked to for the first book. I am sure some will have a pie story or two.
As far as the writing goes, as I reported to my editor this week, it is scattered. I have bits and pieces of it, but there is no real substance to it yet. I am really beginning to focus on it now. But as you can see there are so many other little things I have to take care in order to keep the book moving forward.
It’s a vastly different experience that the first book, which I had written before I even had a publisher. Of course, it had to be rewritten (oh, a few times). And the main character in the first book was Mrs. Rowe herself. In this book, it’s pie.
