Slim Spaniards Eat Six Times a Day - Why publish this book?
I would like to find publishers for my book called Slim Spaniards Eat Six Times a Day. About 4 weeks ago, I decided that I was ready to take that step. I have never published a book before but decided in June 2005 to start writing. Five months later, the book is mostly written.
I think it is ready to be considered by publishers. With considerable trepidation, I have put up parts of the book on a web site. http://www.slimspaniards.com/ November 3rd was the launch of the web site. It was designed and configured by http://www.thewire.ca/. They did a great job.
However, putting content out there for all to see is unnerving. There are commas missing, there are sentences that are still too long, there are paragraphs that have no focus. But there comes a time when you need to say, it is good enough to start looking for a publisher, or perhaps an agent.
For more that 15 years, I have worked either in large corporations or in businesses that service large corporations. This is the first time that I have attempted to make a place for myself in the world of people and of the choices they make in their lives with their time and energy.
So who am I to be able to convince people to spend time reading ideas that I have committed to print? There are many reasons. So I will start with one today... The first is that I am writing about something that is important to me.
To me Spain represents a life long learning project. I married a Spaniard 14 years ago. My 3 daughters are both Canadian and Spanish citizens.
I did not grow up in Spain and so Spain is a puzzle to me. I am beginning to understand the puzzle, it fascinates me and there are parts of it I think others will also find interesting.
My parents-in-law are people for whom I have tremendous respect. From all accounts they are normal retired people living on a small fixed pension. Maria and Antonio are extraordinary to me in that despite the extreme hardship they have lived through, they are open minded, generous, fun, happy and quite modern people. They are one of the voices in the book.
They grew up hungry after the Spanish Civil War. As a girl, Maria worked as a servant to pay for food for her younger siblings. Antonio was a shepherd whose wages were sheep's milk for his younger siblings.
They courted 8 years before marrying. They raised 3 children, the youngest, my husband, contracted almost every possible life threatening childhood disease including polio and meningitis. They cared for their children without the benefit of public health care. Maria took a loan to pay for a doctor to care for her youngest son's polio. She carried him on her back to the sea so that he would regain the use of his legs.
They moved into a house with indoor plumbing in 1970. Before that Maria hand-washed all the family laundry at a public washing place, on her day off from working as a cleaner. When their son was finishing his masters degree at university, she pawned part of the household linen to send him money at the end of the month. Today she has a chest of linen that she is keeping for her grand-daughters when it is time to outfit their home.
Antonio, my father-in-law was the captain of a fishing boat when he was only 18 years old - responsible for the safety of between 15 and 20 men at sea for days on the Mediterranean. He eventually owned his own fishing boat. He did this without ever being able to read or write - not even a phone number. He fished for more than 40 years using techniques that were handed down by the Romans. He knows the depth of 100 miles of Mediterranean coast without the help of sonar.
Retired, he is now the chief cook and purchaser of food for their household. While he cooks, he sings flamenco songs whose lyrics are poems documented by the most important 19th century Spanish poet - Garcia Lorca. He lives life richly and food is one of the keys to this.
I started the book in June - a blank page and some thoughts about the meaning of food in people's lives in Spain. During the summer, I interviewed Antonio, Maria and their children Paco and Maria del Mar as well as my brother-in-law Manolo, and sister-in-law Carmen about recipes and food that they felt was core to their way of viewing food.
I pestered my Spanish friends to document recipes from their parents, as well as their own favorites. And I started to interpret these recipes to make them intelligible to people from Europe and North America. This was no small task - a subject worthy of its own entry. As the recipes were documented, I started to think of them in terms of groups - particularly in terms of things that I could manage to make myself when pressed for time and wanting to feed our girls who seem to consume Six Meals a Day.
I think it is ready to be considered by publishers. With considerable trepidation, I have put up parts of the book on a web site. http://www.slimspaniards.com/ November 3rd was the launch of the web site. It was designed and configured by http://www.thewire.ca/. They did a great job.
However, putting content out there for all to see is unnerving. There are commas missing, there are sentences that are still too long, there are paragraphs that have no focus. But there comes a time when you need to say, it is good enough to start looking for a publisher, or perhaps an agent.
For more that 15 years, I have worked either in large corporations or in businesses that service large corporations. This is the first time that I have attempted to make a place for myself in the world of people and of the choices they make in their lives with their time and energy.
So who am I to be able to convince people to spend time reading ideas that I have committed to print? There are many reasons. So I will start with one today... The first is that I am writing about something that is important to me.
To me Spain represents a life long learning project. I married a Spaniard 14 years ago. My 3 daughters are both Canadian and Spanish citizens.
I did not grow up in Spain and so Spain is a puzzle to me. I am beginning to understand the puzzle, it fascinates me and there are parts of it I think others will also find interesting.
My parents-in-law are people for whom I have tremendous respect. From all accounts they are normal retired people living on a small fixed pension. Maria and Antonio are extraordinary to me in that despite the extreme hardship they have lived through, they are open minded, generous, fun, happy and quite modern people. They are one of the voices in the book.
They grew up hungry after the Spanish Civil War. As a girl, Maria worked as a servant to pay for food for her younger siblings. Antonio was a shepherd whose wages were sheep's milk for his younger siblings.
They courted 8 years before marrying. They raised 3 children, the youngest, my husband, contracted almost every possible life threatening childhood disease including polio and meningitis. They cared for their children without the benefit of public health care. Maria took a loan to pay for a doctor to care for her youngest son's polio. She carried him on her back to the sea so that he would regain the use of his legs.
They moved into a house with indoor plumbing in 1970. Before that Maria hand-washed all the family laundry at a public washing place, on her day off from working as a cleaner. When their son was finishing his masters degree at university, she pawned part of the household linen to send him money at the end of the month. Today she has a chest of linen that she is keeping for her grand-daughters when it is time to outfit their home.
Antonio, my father-in-law was the captain of a fishing boat when he was only 18 years old - responsible for the safety of between 15 and 20 men at sea for days on the Mediterranean. He eventually owned his own fishing boat. He did this without ever being able to read or write - not even a phone number. He fished for more than 40 years using techniques that were handed down by the Romans. He knows the depth of 100 miles of Mediterranean coast without the help of sonar.
Retired, he is now the chief cook and purchaser of food for their household. While he cooks, he sings flamenco songs whose lyrics are poems documented by the most important 19th century Spanish poet - Garcia Lorca. He lives life richly and food is one of the keys to this.
I started the book in June - a blank page and some thoughts about the meaning of food in people's lives in Spain. During the summer, I interviewed Antonio, Maria and their children Paco and Maria del Mar as well as my brother-in-law Manolo, and sister-in-law Carmen about recipes and food that they felt was core to their way of viewing food.
I pestered my Spanish friends to document recipes from their parents, as well as their own favorites. And I started to interpret these recipes to make them intelligible to people from Europe and North America. This was no small task - a subject worthy of its own entry. As the recipes were documented, I started to think of them in terms of groups - particularly in terms of things that I could manage to make myself when pressed for time and wanting to feed our girls who seem to consume Six Meals a Day.
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