Hemingway posed for beer ads, Walt Whitman self-published Leaves of Grass and wrote his own reviews under a pseudonym; In 1887, Guy de Maupassant sent up a hot-air balloon over the Seine with the name of his latest short story.

It never ends, this rabid self-promotion and the writer oftentimes feels like a cross between a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesperson and a Jehovah’s Witness. The act of creating can be an act as dark, dirty, and cold as a nascent flower bulb in March. But when the work emerges and you nourish it to full growth, you can’t help but want it to be seen and appreciated.

I struggle with balancing artful solitude and the noisy marketplace, and I swear I must be a descendant of an Irish apple woman hawking her rares in New York in the 19th-Century. Luc Sante writes in Low Life, “Irishwomen ( popularly identified as smoking pipes) sold apples, George Washington pie, St.-John’s bread, and flat-gingerbread cakes called bolivars.” You can imagine the Irish woman’s loud, boisterous voice over the noisy and raucous vendors on the streets. I can do it. I can entice a passer-by with my homemade scones and stories. But I prefer to be behind the scenes, sketching out characters in secret.

Pavlova in a Hat Box is a different kind of book, unlike my historical fiction novels. And rather than seek out a traditional publisher as I have done with my historical fiction novels, I am going to self-publish with a self-publishing company I respect here in New England. Pavlova is a book full of dessert recipes (I could easily hawk them on the streets and have no shame), art work, and essays. And it is a special tribute to my eighty-six year old mother. Here is just one luscious dessert to entice you -

lemon-lavender madeleines

Kickstarter fundraising failed and now I’m doing GoFund: http://www.gofundme.com/68rmyo