From Food Blogger to Mystery Author by Debra Sennefelder

Please welcome new WWK blogger, Debra Sennefelder. I will interview her about the first in her Food Blogger Mysteries, The Uninvited Corpse, on March 28th. We're delighted she decided to blog with us.                                                                                                                                 E. B. Davis

I am thrilled to be here today to introduce myself and share a little bit about my upcoming release, The Uninvited Corpse.  I made a few stops along the way to becoming a published mystery author and one of those stops included a stint as a food blogger. That's right, I was The Cookbook Diva. I blogged about my favorite cookbooks, shared some of my favorite recipes and hustled to get comments, page views and had a love/hate relationship with my DSLR camera. Yeah, good times.

These days I'm creating fictional worlds that include plotting murder, developing recipes for my and a creating bunch of lovable characters. So how exactly did I go from food blogger to author?

I'd been pursuing publication for several years and I got discouraged enough to look for another creative outlet. At that time blogging was becoming popular so I started my first blog on a community website. There were dozens of blogs (on the now-defunct website), and I was hooked.  After a couple of months I realized I wanted to branch out on my and I'd discovered food blogs. Talk about a perfect match. I love cooking and baking and I love writing. I began a free blog on Wordpress.com and after about six months I bought my blog domain and shifted over to my own website. The Cookbook Diva.com was born.

I reviewed cookbooks, developed recipes and struggled with my photography. I loved everything about blogging. What I loved most was the fact no one could tell me what to write, how to write it or when to write. The freedom was intoxicating. It was heaven, yet something was missing - fiction.

I realized I missed writing fiction, something I'd done since childhood. To say I was torn would be accurate. I could continue with food blogging, maybe becoming the Connecticut version of the Pioneer Woman, or go back to a dream I'd had since I was a kid, which was to be an author. I decided to ease back into fiction writing by connecting with a critique partner and spending a few hours a week writing in addition to my day job, blogging and life. A point came where something had to give, I couldn't do it all. The more I worked on my manuscript the more I realized that's what I was meant to do. Within a year I stopped blogging and a year later I let the website go and put all my eggs in one basket. Within a year after that, I'd had a completed manuscript, found an agent and was offered a three-book contract about a food blogger who has a side hustle of solving murders. I think I made the right decision.

In addition to writing The Food Blogger Mystery series, which debuts March 27th with book number one The Uninvited Corpse, I have sold a second series, The Resale Boutique Mystery series to Kensington Publishers and debuts in January 2019. I'm looking forward to spending every fourth Monday here with you and sharing my journey as a debut author this year.