A New Publishing Venture!

Up until now, all my books have been crime novels. Some of them included food as a significant factor. For example, Bernie demonstrates her northern roots by making hotpot and Peter experiments with Portuguese cuisine on a family holiday on Portugal. Sometimes I included pictures of some of the dishes and a few books have recipes in an appendix. Now I’ve taken the plunge and produced a cookbook, in which I’ve gathered together as many recipes as I could find for foods that are mentioned in the books.

Then came the question of a title. I consulted some of my readers and other friends on Facebook, and they helped me to come up with “Criminally Good Cooking”. I also consulted Facebook friends and acquaintances, including members of a mothers’ Union Facebook group, whom I thought would be knowledgeable about recipe books, about what format I should use. They overwhelmingly agreed that a printed book would be more useful for using in the kitchen. I decided that the recipes would be easier to follow if the print was quite large, so I fixed on 14-point, and I chose 6” by 9” instead of my usual 5” by 9” page size to make room for pictures and to ensure that (almost) all the recipes would fit on a double-page spread, with the ingredients on one page and the method opposite. Here’s an example from the Sinister Side Dishes and Snacks section. It’s one of the few dishes where I broke my rule and used four pages, so that I could add extra photos to illustrate the method of folding the pastry to make the samosas.