Writing my next book, here, live

Week by week

I have two pieces of excellent news.

On Friday, I pressed ‘send’ on the last words - and as usual, the first that will appear - in my next book. At the moment, I can tell you little about it other than it is published in spring next year, but you will be the first to know when I can. I am extremely excited about it, and it has been a complete pleasure having its company over the last year and a bit.

The weekend passed very pleasantly if unspectacularly. There were excellent biscuits, I played some newly arrived vinyl, and I made perhaps the best white sauce I ever have.

It is now time to start the book that will follow.

And this is the second piece of good news: I’m going to write it here, live.

This is a big step, and I hope you are here for it with me.

Why am I writing it here?

For entirely positive reasons.

I’ve chosen to write a book here.

I love my publisher: the book after the one I write here is still happening and will be published by them.

I’m writing a book here because, more than anything, I have all faith that Substack is the farmers’ market of writing, shortening the journey from plot to plate - you and I interacting - to be as direct as it can be, without delay, live, as I write it.

As you’ll see below, it’s a book written in instalments, as life happens: if I wrote it as a physical book to be published in the usual way, it would be written the same - across the year as it unfolds - but it would be the best part of two years before it was in the shops and you could read it. Writing it here means you get it in real time. The thrill of there being the shortest of intervals between the cooking, harvesting, observing and the communication of it - us interacting with it - has totally set me alight.

And yes, I'm calling it a book because thats exactly what it is. I intend to put the same creative energy, photography, editorial care, deadlines and discipline, and follow exactly the process as if I was writing a physical book for a publisher.

The idea fell - like the first, and best, homegrown peach I ever ate - into my lap, and insisted I get stuck into it, so - after keeping it at arms length just long enough to ensure I really had to go with the impulse - I am doing exactly that.

I want to write it for you now, and I want you to read it now.

The idea

The book is a return to me writing about food in a gardening context, a gloriously fertile patch where I won food book of the year twice, garden book of the year twice, garden blog of the year twice, and garden book photographer of the year twice. And if nothing else, writing this book has given me the opportunity to say that again.

I’ll share the entire proposal I wrote for it soon. Whether you are taking an idea to a publisher or not, writing a proposal helps you get the idea into a shape that’s outside your head, that you can return to without having to hold it in your mind. It makes it real.

Here’s a brief overview.

Abundance: A Year of Stories and Recipes from a Gardening Cook

Written chronologically and presented across a year, I’ll share the abundance of produce and flavours we can call on through the seasons, the wealth of pleasure, the sense of connectivity and rootedness, and the sharing of love that comes with placing seasonal food a little more towards the heart of our lives. 

It will have one foot in the kitchen and one in the garden, with delicious punchlines throughout.

Abundance includes 100+ recipes, spread across the year, each highly adaptable to the changing seasons; what works in January can be tweaked for spring, and so on.  The book will major in seasonal celebrations - asparagus in May, onion soup and celeriac dauph to warm the shortest days, apple and quince cake, blackberry vinegar as summer dips into autumn, and iced cherries for when the sun is hot and high - as well as widely accessible wild harvests such as elderflower, wild garlic, lime flowers - that embellish the best of what the season brings to the gardener and seasonal shopper. 

In addition to recipes that relate to each month, there are diary entries that engage the reader with the time of year, what it means for the gardener and cook, and that complement the recipe that follows. These snapshots capture the presence and passing of the seasons in the kitchen and the garden and build a sense of connectivity with today, this week, in the place you live.

This will be a beautiful book. I will write it ‘live’, through the year, photographing as I go; each chapter building a picture of an abundant year. The sense of abundance relates not just to what the garden and shops offer, but also to the sense of an abundance of pleasure, of rootedness, of the elemental satisfaction that comes with eating simple food from the landscape in which you live, prepared with your own hands.

Abundance is a book to return to: a trusted, expert friend when you want to eat seasonally.  Of course, on a tired wet Wednesday evening, cooking can seem like a chore - this book is here for you on those nights too. 

It is also a book to be read for pleasure, start to finish, a writerly immersion in the seasons and the rewards they offer. It will be rich with photography of the recipes, the garden, as well as seasonal snapshots outside and in the kitchen.

Join me

Some of this book will be on the free side of the paywall; much of it will not. I need to make a living after all, as I’m sure you appreciate.

Whatever else I may do that relates, writing - this - is the heart of what I do, and I am committing to this in exactly the same wholehearted way as if I was writing this for a publisher.

It would mean a great deal if you felt like being part of it with me.

I’m sure someone has published a food and/or gardening book on Substack, but I’m not sure anyone has written one live. There is no model for this: I am taking a leap of faith. It is hugely exciting, if not a considerable risk: there is no advance; there will be no royalties.

I hope you’ll come across the divide to be a paid subscriber and be part of making it happen.

Here’s how it works: £40 a year (that’s just £3.33/month) gets you a ‘book’ written live, that you can relate to, comment on, influence, act on, adaptable seasonal recipes you can cook, and words I hope you’ll enjoy.

Although I have no plans for it, I guess there is the possibility that it becomes an actual hardcopy book down the line; in the event that happens, you can have a copy at cost as a thank you for being here for the journey and your name will be in it if you are happy for it to be.

There are other reasons to become a paid subscriber.

If you are hoping to write your own book or build a successful Substack that’s the home of your writing, you’ll get to see how I do it, and among the many insights into developing an idea that I include behind the paywall, I’ll be sharing the full proposal for this book, as well as showing how I’m building the audience for it here.

And if you are in the mainland UK, you can buy my last book SPICE/ a cook’s companion for very little indeed, and you also get 25% off plants and seeds at my online nursery.

Mostly, I hope you’ll fancy being part of what makes this book happen, of supporting the writer in the way you might a farmer. I’ll be doing everything to ensure you get value - in pleasure, recipes, ideas and more - in return.

I will be starting very shortly. I can’t wait.