why i blog- my cooking blog

After much discussion over popcorn and pinot you lay awake all night reworking the reasons you chose what you chose, you do what you do.

There seems to be a presumption- among many- that food bloggers are secretly (or not-so-secretly) hungry for a shot at incarnating the next Rachael Ray. That cookbooks and cooking shows are the coveted brass rings of blogging. And, in fact, at least two well known bloggers have recently snagged such trophies [Julie Powell of Julie and Julia and Clothilde of Chocolate & Zucchini].

But in truth not all of us pine for fame.

Some of us have already published a cookbook. Or two. Recipes from a Vegetarian Goddess was my first. Cooking By Moonlight was my second. I’ve been one of those lucky enough to experience the thrill of seeing my book in print, holding it in my hot little hands, smelling that nifty new book smell of ink on recycled paper.

And it’s exciting, true.

But it’s also one hell of a wild eye-opening ride. Nosy people often ask me if I got an advance (visualizing I'm not sure what- a custard cream Porsche or a month in a Tuscan villa, maybe?). I mean, authors get a big advance and rake in fistfuls of cash, right?

Um. Not exactly. First time authors (that would be: me) sometimes decline the modest advance (you see, you have to pay it back via initial book sales, and unless you're Steven King or J. K. Rowling, the advance isn't usually big enough to impact your quality of life, so my thought was, why bother with the pressure of having to pay something back?). I like simple.

The downside of no advance?

Aside from the year developing recipes with my own ingredients, I often spent even more pocket money (post publishing) to make samples for bookstore staff and customer tastings. And more than once, I'm sorry to tell you, this modest investment cost more than the money I actually garnered from the royalties earned at these book signing events. Pine nuts and fresh basil aren't exactly cheap these days.

Especially when you make one tenth of what the bookseller makes per book.

The bookseller makes a 40 to 50% profit on their wholesale investment, you see. While I'm not very good at math- I'm the first to admit- I do know that 10% of 50% (first time authors are often paid royalties against the wholesale, not retail price) is less than the bookseller and publisher are making.

For the book I spent a year writing.

As a certain husband said after spending a Saturday driving his wife eight hours to and from a well attended book signing (well attended for a brand new author with no publicity machine in place, that is) to make a grand total of $41.59 (that she would eventually receive in a royalty check nine months down the road), Darling, this is a slow way to get rich.

And then there's how it changes you.

The worst part? Your book is now a product. You start thinking about sales, marketing, and selling. You feel pressure to drum up interest, not to mention, events. You know, hoopla. You don't want to let the publisher down (who by the way, does next to nothing to support you- unless you already have a media venue, preferably involving a hit television show).

And if you happen to be a thin-skinned wallflower (aka artistic visual thinker) like me- someone who derives happiness through a snappy word choice or an inventive use of the color zinc yellow- selling yourself is not what you do best.

In fact, just thinking about it can make a relatively sane visual thinker crazy. You start counting book sale numbers. You can't help yourself. And if you're even a wee bit compulsive, it can slide into addiction. I tracked the sale numbers at Amazon (watching them rise and fall and rise again) until I willed myself not to check them. I practiced my best inept attempt at Zen detachment.

This was definitely a sticky and meaningless tangent in my life I didn't need.

Then there was the warm peachy moment every author waits for- selling out the modest first edition (which normally runs under ten thousand copies). Yes, that moment was lovely. I was thrilled. Until the marketing division decided that goddess (visualize air quotes here) was so nineties and terribly passé and we needed to change both the title and my original cover design for reprint. [And, you guessed it. The reprint sales tanked. No surprise. Three thousand book sales later, the reprint was designated out of print.]

Roughly around this time (it's all a blur of panic infused irony) I was contacted by a producer- out of the blue- and flown to Los Angeles where a beefy young director (who liked to crank up Weezer in his black SUV) planted me in a blinding circle of key light, and yours truly stood stone faced and tongue-tied, squeezed into a see-through hand-crocheted dress two sizes too small, bare arms wrapped with leather thongs up past my elbows because the costume designer for the cooking show pilot thought Vegetarian Goddess meant Xena The Warrior.

Good times.

I stood goose-bumped and shivering in front of the eyeless gliding cameras, fumbling with garlic and plum tomatoes in front of a yawning, gum snapping crew. It felt beyond surreal. Even comical. Here I was on a rented set- some million dollar bungalow in a Malibu canyon, listening to the make-up girl kvetch about what a jerk Dick Van Dyke was when she patted him with foundation.

I was the classic deer in the headlights without an extroverted look-at-me bone in her body. At such a moment some of us have questioned not only the price but the value of fame- realizing with sharp animal clarity the cost of admission, the sting and snip of content manipulation. Objectification. Salesmanship.

And suddenly some of us recognize the quiet beating pulse of a certain lack of ambition- infused with a metallic distaste for self promotion and a far deeper need for autonomy and solitude than originally realized. The acquiescent people pleaser discovering a self that craved the process rather than the prize- the same self that was relieved when the silly pilot was canned. And that brings me back to why I created the cooking blog.

As fate (and lingering irony) would have it, I discovered I had celiac disease right in the middle of the final kitchen testing of my bread and dessert recipes for my second cookbook, Cooking by Moonlight- a goddess's guide to edible pleasures.

Suddenly I could no longer handle, inhale or taste test any recipe with flour. Someone else would have to do it. And as I boxed beloved antique bread boards and packed up favorite wooden spoons (forever contaminated with the enemy, gluten), friends and family stepped in to help with the recipe testing; and for that I am grateful. I was assigned the barely gratifying task of trusting their evaluations of flavor and texture and the overall success of the recipe (they loved them all, of course). It was a less than nourishing experience. I was still in the grief phase, after all. My weekly ritual of kneading bread dough was now off limits. I was missing chocolate croissants.

When the CBM manuscript was finished, I was persuaded by my publisher’s acquisitions editor (aka The Velvet Hammer) to drop the goddess slant of the second book in favor of the burgeoning Wiccan market, and it was a tweak that broke the back of my publishing enthusiasm. I agreed because the contract, you see, was signed (and the fine print stated the publisher retains the right to alter the title and edit freely). I had a mere pinch of influence. Maybe half a pinch. The editor cooed and soothed. And then there was that whole people pleasing impulse. I caved.

Soon after, my proposal for a gluten-free cookbook was turned down (by the same publisher) because it would appeal to “too limited a market”, and my enthusiasm for the whole business waned even further. Yeah, I didn't do much to promote the second cookbook. And neither did they. The writing was on the wall for everyone involved.

Flash forward four years.

My health was improving. I was enjoying cooking again. And I began hearing buzz about something called blogging. It sounded like the perfect fit for an enthusiastic cook- offering a new venue for sharing the three notebooks full of gluten-free recipes I’d been developing. Karina's Kitchen- Recipes from a [Gluten Free] Goddess blog was born.

Reading instant feedback from readers and developing a sense of community with other bloggers offers a tangible and dynamic sense of connection. It inspires my cooking. It invigorates me on gloomy days. And I can blog in my pajamas. As for a future cookbook? I haven't ruled out the possibility completely.

We'll see.