November is so Sneaky!

How the hell does November creep up on me so fast (every year) and whirl me into the holidays when I still haven’t even taken down my Halloween decorations?

Add to that the embarrassment of realizing that I NEVER EVEN POSTED the winners of last year’s Annual Cutthroat Tunno Pumpkin Pie Competition! I am so sorry Nate, Alessandro and Muiriel! You deserve better. It truly wasn’t sour grapes, I just got really busy with cousin Irene in from Italy, and forgot. (That’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it.)

So, almost a year late (insert year-late, but heartfelt fanfare here) The winner of The Annual (2024) Cutthroat Tunno Pumpkin Pie Competition was Nate Tunno! (I refer to him as the world’s kindest teenager because he really is.) In second place was Alessandro Tunno and Muiriel Tunno came in third.

Competition was fierce. I think we Tunnos have to stop teaching our kids how to bake! Many pies were tasted, and votes were tallied, except the pie that brother Bob baked that somehow got left in the cooler.

It didn’t get entered, much to his dismay, but he took it in stride. I’m not sure but I think Bob got the Kid’s trophy for his efforts.

So, there’s one box I can check off in my never-ending parade of stuff I need to do but haven’t done because I’ve been in book hell.

Taking a book from — something fun I wrote for my family — to publishing it for the entire world to see takes a particular kind of masochism, that I definitely possess. I want to get this book and audiobook out there for you, before Christmas, but little did I know that each phase of editing takes many weeks. Duh!

Weeks for the cover, the copy edit, the edit of the recipes, for the page layout. Page layout? I never gave a second’s thought to page layout, let alone really considered what one was until now.

There are people who make their living looking at your manuscript and deciding whether at the end of a chapter, you should have a blank page or not, or whether you’d like some little design on the pages. They know things like line spacing, formatting, photo placement, etc. God bless them because I was painfully unprepared for this phase of book publishing. Just keep your fingers crossed that I can pull it off. If not, a book in January to put a smile on your face is hopefully not a bad thing.

In the meantime, I am testing out recipes. Since I am a new fan of pumpkin pie spice from Penzey’s, I’m going to try it in a test pie. I’ll fill you in with a recipe in time for Thanksgiving. I also have a recipe for some Cashew Cookies with Brown Butter Frosting that would be a yummy addition to your Christmas cookie tray. So much to do, so little time! Maybe I can just put little Santa hats on the Halloween ghouls.

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