Hi all,
I've arrived from the the Gem and Mineral Society show to find a home full of 24, 25 and 26 year olds. Namely my daughter and her friends came to visit and go skiing. Having a household of hungry young skiers who had never been to the area of New Mexico was great indeed! We took them to the Inn of Mountain of Gods, we gambled and yes I won a small bit of cash using my trusty Casino Apache card. I made some of the recipes from my "Abuelita's Kitchen" cookbook.
Then came all the questions: "How long did it take you to write it?", "How did you decide to sell it?", "How much are you making off it?", "What prompted you to write it?", and of course the proverbial "How many copies have you sold?" and "Why did you decide to write it?" "Are you going to write more books?"
Well, I gave them my stock answers: Let me think?! It took 2 years to write it from start to finish. I queried agents, publishers and looked into self-publishing. I am making about 30% royalty of each copy which sells off the amazon.com site and less when I sell them myself as I discount them. I have sold under 500 copies at this time. I wrote it to document the recipes for my family members and it grew from there. I feel as if this is my practice book and yes, I will write more. In fact, I am writing three other books at this time. I just need some time away from volunteering to actually take the to write (which I enjoy doing).
Now, my dauther and the others are back at their jobs toiling away at their respective jobs and here I sit writing a note to my blog.
One small note. While in Tuscon, AZ my husband Steve took me to a restaurant his parents used to take he and his brother when they lived there. It was a quaint little restaurant, he ordered his favorite appetiser a gigantic flour tortilla topped with cheese. I am not kidding this tortilla was the size of a pizza, in a pizza pan and came topped with a oozing mess of melted cheddar cheese. It was wonderful and almost took too much of my appetite away so that I could barely finish my Carne Seca dish. We of course took the rest of what remained of the giant cheese "pizza" back to our hotel room and never looked at it again (it was a congealed mess of cheese). Yes, we did take our finds from the Tuscon Gem and Mineral Society's show and spread them out on our bed and reveled in our great buys. I wish I'd had more time to peruse about the displays of precious gems, fossils and the winding aisles of the Gem show.
