Long Ago…

The Divorce Diet Cookbook: Comfort Cuisine for the Broken-Hearted, traveled a long and winding road to publication, and now winning awards. It began with a novel I wrote back in the early 2000s called The Divorce Diet. I dropped the ball on that novel—a long story involving agents, and more agent stress down the line which will be canvassed below—and it sat on my hard drive sulking for years. Doing a cookbook derived from that novel was always a plan, but that languished as well.

The Divorce Diet novel continues to collect metaphorical dust taking up space in digital backwaters. But I moved forward on the The Divorce Diet Cookbook, creating funny comics from the text of the novel. I had been illustrating professionally for more years than I care to mention, and this part of the endeavor was up my alley, but I could not face the task of coming up with actual recipes, making them, testing them, and successfully pulling all that off with the aplomb and expertise required. Then…in 2011, I reconnected with a friend—Jennifer Sylvester, my coauthor—and voila! a masterful cook, writer, and overall talented gal agreed to create all the recipes!

Jennifer was superb. She came up with amazing, delicious recipes and humorous descriptions—so easy to work with in assembling, what I term, a comic cookbook. There was just one more thing that we deemed necessary—outstanding photos of the dishes created.

As I stated previously, I am an illustrator. Back in my advertising illustrating days, I art directed many food photoshoots based on my own layouts. I know how these things work—and they aren’t easy. I worked with the best photographers who had the best equipment and studios, and professional food stylists. To get one good shot usually took an entire day. Add to this that I am a perfectionist, and doing the photography for The Divorce Diet Cookbook was causing all kinds of anxiety.

I have done my own photography for several art-instruction books I authored, published by Walter Foster. I had equipment, lighting, and all the gadgets to photograph my own projects with props, and step instructions. But to photograph food, and make it look as delicious and inviting as it actually is, with all the right props and backgrounds, was daunting. We would also need to create or rent a suitable kitchen that would match the tone of the book.

In spite of not having yet produced the necessary photography, we still had the manuscript, the recipes, and the comics. So we solicited agents to represent our project. Either we would be kicked into gear and produce the photos ourselves, or we would hire someone to do it when a publisher agreed to sign us. We compiled a list of well-established NY and vicinity agents, based on their preferences, and picked up a literary agent/agency. So far, so good.

An Unexpected Detour

The agent also took on a new novel I had written, Cottage Cheese Thighs which became How to Rate a Soulmate. (This is also a convoluted story as I really liked the original title, but after some negative feedback I caved and sent out a questionnaire with some new options.) *sigh* Why did I cave?

Months passed, but I knew the drill and warned Jennifer that it could be a while. Every so often we got what I thought was a very anemic report. The last time we tried to contact our agent (I’ll call her Sally), there was no response. When we finally reached out to the owner of the agency she told us that Sally didn’t work there and had disappeared. We could not locate her at all. Apparently she was abducted by aliens or in witness protection or…who knows? 😛

This put a bit of a damper on the whole endeavor. (That’s a joke people.) We were shocked, flummoxed, pissed, and our heads were exploding, ready to track that bee-otch down for wasting our time!

So now what? The agent debacle seriously took the wind out of our sails and left us drifting in a sea of WTF. Years went by.

Every so often I desultorily tried to summon the motivation to get together with Jennifer, make the recipes, photograph them, and begin again. But the motivation just wasn’t there.

A Revelation

Until, one day, I woke up with the thought in my head, Why not just leave the photos out? Though all the recipes are legitimate, awesome, and integral to the process of getting through a tough time, the underlying concept is really about healing from divorce and breakups. This finally motivated me.

I really did not want to go through the process of finding another agent and submitting to their process of finding a publisher. I thought, I’ll just self-publish this book, easily done on KDP. The purpose of the book is to help the grieving, the hurt, the depressed, the dumped! with a little laughter, commiseration, and super-easy comfort sustenance. It’s helping no one sitting here on my hard drive.

After editing and more editing, I self-published our comic cookbook on Amazon KDP mid 2023. Finally, it manifested into the real world and out of the black hole of unpublished books. It may be destined to wallow in the wasteland of unadvertised Amazon books millions strong, but the idea was to just get it out there. Maybe we can reach a few people in need.

It pretty much stayed in the Amazon wasteland.

And the Craziness Continued

Thinking it would be a long shot—a comic cookbook is a mashup and certainly not traditional in either cookbooks or humor—I entered The Divorce Diet Cookbook in two categories of the Royal Dragonfly Book Awards. The winners were to be announced the last week in November 2024. I also entered a children’s activity book and used a different email address for that entry. November passed and no emails.

It didn’t surprise me regarding The Divorce Diet Cook, but I was surprised regarding the activity book—a genre in which I am accomplished. So I checked into the website for a list of the winners to see what books beat me out. WEEKS went by and finally they posted a list of the winners.

And there was The Divorce Diet Cookbook, placing in both categories I entered it in. And, my activity book was there as well.

So, after weeks of speculating how far out of touch I am with current trends, popular culture, and what may or may not be relevant in media, I’m like, WTF! Was it a random anomaly that BOTH my email accounts did not get the notification of winners, or, was the universe trying to tell me something? When I got in touch with the contest contact person she said it was an issue with the email service, that a few other winners had not gotten the notification. But still, both of my email addresses went awry in the contactee queue? We humans just can’t resist the impulse to recognize patterns, so randomness does not sit well.

And how far does speculation get you when you know there is just no way you will ever know something like the thoughts of the universe?

Lesson Learned

Whatever that is. Maybe something like: Nothing is ever as it seems, or some other amorphous assemblage of words alluding to mystery masquerading as a truism.

I only know that I am grateful for the accolades, my coauthor, and a world in which comedy can heal and determination will out.

— D. L. Fisher, January 2025