Nonna’s Sunday Gravy

The trend these days is for mystery novels—particularly if they involve food—to have recipes printed at the end. I’ve therefore been pondering over the past few weeks what dishes from my manuscript, A Matter of Taste, would be good to include as recipes in the published book.

One of the obvious choices is Nonna’s Sunday Gravy, which the Italian grandmother of my protagonist, Sally, cooks up every week for a family dinner. This hearty, tomato-based stew is called “gravy” by many Italian-American families, as it’s traditionally eaten as two separate courses. The sauce (i.e., “gravy”) is served over pasta as the primo, or first course:

my gravy, over penne and rigatoni

Does This Make Me an “Author”?

To celebrate having acquired representation for my mystery novel, A Matter of Taste, Robin and I went to dinner a few weeks ago at our favorite neighborhood restaurant, Avanti. Over an apéritif of sparking rosé, Robin confessed something to me:

“I know I’m the one who’s been telling you all along to skip the whole agent thing and just self-publish,” she said. “But now that you’ve gotten one, I’ve gotta say it does change how I think about you and your book. All of a sudden it’s like you’re a ‘real author’ now.”

real authors on my bookshelf

This had been an point of contention between us. When I’d bemoan the frustration and disappointment that went along with the search for a literary agent, Robin would ask why I even needed one, when I could simply publish the book on my own and omit the middleman altogether.