This is one of my favorite photos from my first cookbook Chocolate Bliss.  I arrived at photographer @jennifermartine’s San Francisco studio after a hectic food convention with only a few chocolates left, and here they are – dinged and bruised – yet they convey forgiven beauty of the dark and imperfect.  Can we talk about the process of selling a cookbook?  We can, and will, as this blog will chronicle our process from concept to completion of our new dessert travel book.  It took me 5 years to sell Chocolate Bliss….yes, 5 whole years…vulnerable to the whimsy of various publishers: first it was a big, handsome, travel book; then a little, handsome travel book; then it was dead; then it revived as a health and wellness lifestyle book.  It took only 5 months to write it.  Because I’m a speedy writer?  No, ha.   Because I kept the faith and for all 5 too- quiet, deal-free, round-in-circles years and in between various day jobs, I researched, traveled, interviewed, recipe-tested and believed that someday, someday, someday….the book would happen.  This photo – its narrative of so-happy me despite my skinny selection of yesterday’s chocolates, and Jennifer with her giant camera lenses and vintage fabrics for backdrops –  is a testament to hopeful, determined, conviction-infused, vision-forcing stubborness and a little fortitude.