At the moment my house is FULL of books… books galore! 250 copies of Angelicious landed on my doorstep  a couple of days ago – one of those moments of epic proportions that I realised, it was real and there was no turning back! People often ask me about what it takes to publish a recipe book. It takes monumental commitment and at times you might even wonder what on earth you’ve gotten yourself into. There are so many twists and turns along the way – so many incidental things that make it happen. It is worth every second of it!

In this post I wanted to capture a flavour of the epic, life changing journey of bringing a book like Angelicious into being.

Step 1: A recipe book needs recipes

Delicious recipes! That was the easiest part. I had no intention to write another recipe book, but the recipe inspiration just started flooding in. All I had to do was be me and allow it the space to happen. Being in the kitchen is like a moving, joyful meditation for me. The life force in the ingredients guides me, dancing and weaving themselves into delicious, alchemical delights.

I had to learn how to write everything down though. It’s a real skill that I had to work hard at! Before my first book, I could never remember which ingredients I’d put into my recipes. I’d make food for people on retreats and it would be different every time. People would ask ‘how did you make this?’ – I’d smile and draw a blank! It was only when people kept telling me that I should write a recipe book that I decided to make a real effort to write everything down. To begin with when I first switched on that part of my brain, I would lose presence in the kitchen and started coming more from the head. It messed with the vibe and I couldn’t recreate the same dish twice. After a while of exercising this dormant part of my brain, I managed to effortlessly start writing it all down. My note pad and pen became part of the conscious kitchen dance.

Step 2: A taste for photography

The truth is, I always wanted to be a photographer, but never quite got into it until I started taking pictures of food. Angelicious is brimming from cover to cover with full colour photos. There is a photo for every single recipe. A mammoth feat!

I estimate that I took well over 10,000 photos during the production of my book. It’s not unusual for me to take 100 photos during a photo-shoot (thanks to digital technology).

I like to experiment with all sorts of different angles until I hit that sweet spot. With so much to learn, I still feel like a beginner, doing things from a place of intuition, seeing where it takes me. After taking that many photos you do learn a thing or two though. I see how much my photography skills have grown over the last two years and am really pleased with where I am at. Lighting is a great metaphor for the spiritual path and is not surprisingly, key in photography. I understand more about that now and am really looking forward to exploring more about lighting.

Step 3: The divine art of food styling

In my photos, I want to capture an energy – the energy that I feel when I taste the food. Food styling is a real art. To me, it’s important that everything I do comes from the soul – after all, true art is an expression of the soul. I try to portray the energy, the taste, the aroma of the cuisine. I want people to be able to ‘taste’ the experience just by looking at the photo. I am certainly not perfect at it, but when I manage to capture this during a photoshoot, it feels like I’ve hit the jackpot, like everything comes together and the universe rises to meet me. The sparkles are flying and it’s all worth it! It’s such an thrilling experience!

Step 4: Designing a book – I don’t know what I was thinking!

When I wrote my first book ‘Trinity’s Conscious Kitchen’ I didn’t have a clue how I was going to do it. I wrote the whole book on paper and then reached a stage when I thought I’d better put it all together and design the layout. I don’t know what I was thinking… like it would be easier or something. I had no experience at all, so I did my research and concluded that to write a full colour recipe book I needed to go back to school and teach myself how to use Adobe InDesign software. At that stage I was wondering what on earth I’d gotten myself into. I opted for online professional training with Lynda.com (which is how I taught myself to edit video a couple of years earlier). I took a deep breath and did what I always do – put one foot in front of the other. I stopped thinking about the mountain peak and started feeling out each moment as it came along. My attitude was ‘if this is the last thing on earth I do, then I am doing it… no matter what’. I felt totally committed and had to re-organise my entire life to make it happen. I thought about getting a publisher, but then realised that to self-publish, was a really important part of my spiritual journey. By the time it came to designing Angelicious (two years after my first recipe book) my design skills were really starting to excel. This has taken Angelicious to a whole new level.

That moment when you hold the very first copy of your own book in your hands is priceless.
It’s one of those ‘did I really climb that mountain’ moments…

Step 5: A whole team of recipe testers

Every recipe book needs a dedicated team of recipe testers and I have such a fabulous Angelicious recipe testing team! Jen Stewart really excelled as chief tester for this book, testing more recipes than anyone else, followed closely by super star Mark Kennedy. Bethan and Amy were both also super helpful, always giving top notch, detailed feedback to help me fine tune the finer things. Fiona, Joann and my mam were my stellar sisters with their testing support for the journey. Even Kim chipped in an honorary testing recipe session or two. I really admire everyone in the team for their unique gifts and different strengths, each bringing something awesome to the table. These are really special people who I’d be happy to team up with any day!

Step 6: Learning to write!!!

It’s hilarious to think that I am a writer. I mean, I have lots of interesting stuff to share, and my writing skills have improved somewhat over the years… however, I am most definitely not known for my excellence in literacy and grammar. In fact I am not embarrassed to say that I have been pretty rubbish at it at times. It takes me long enough to grammar check a single article, let alone a 180 page book! So in stepped Becky, Fiona and Open, who were all invaluable for proof reading support. I still love breaking the rules, writing how I speak and making words up. Just can’t help myself.

Step 7: If you want to really go out on a limb, why not put yourself on the front cover!

You may have noticed by now that I am on the front cover of Angelicious. Well, that’s REALLY putting myself out there, considering I am (believe it or not) a really private person! It reminds me of when I finally (during the final hour) decided that I would in fact do some interview and share my spiritual story for the 5Gateways documentary film – because it was the ‘right’ thing to do. I didn’t want to be ‘out there’, but fighting destiny is just painful. Again, I pulled myself out of my tendency to want to hide and agreed that it was divinely given that I am meant to make a visual appearance in my own book. I mean I did write it after all. It felt so beautiful to make it much more personal and connect with my readers, knowing that we are all on a journey together.

For the first time in my life I actually hired a professional photographer! The cover photo was inspired by an exchange I had with my good friend Kim Agren in Florida. Kim saw a vision of a picnic and me sitting in a sort of meditation position looking up at the camera. When she told me, it made so much sense, I could feel it with every cell of my being. This gave me the inspiration I needed to come up with the cover photo. I needed to be outside, closer to the earth, because it’s an authentic expression of me.

Step 8: And if that’s not enough – there’s also the publishing part

There’s a whole technical nature of getting a book print ready and publishing it. Openhand Press (the Angelicious publisher), is really just ‘me’ having taught myself all the steps along the way. I had to figure out all the technicalities, (like colour specifications, changing everything from RGB to CMYK and making sure that that all the photos are modified to have a less than 240% ink coverage, embedding fonts, spacing, page bleeds, uniformity, alignment – and all that sort of thing). It’s not easy, but it is most definitely worth it.

Angelicious (like Trinity’s Conscious Kitchen) is a print on demand book with an isbn, which means it is available on online book stores and any book store could order it in if people don’t want to order from me directly. But really, all you need to know (unless you want to publish your own book) is that it magically happens!

And then before I knew it I was signing my first batch of books…

Step 9: Letting the ripples spread far and wide

Marketing is absolutely and totally not my forte whatsoever! My approach is ‘just being me’. I am completely relying on it getting it out there with people who resonate with what I do and spreading the word authentically. Personal testimonies are probably the most important thing to create a ripple effect, so I hoping to get a few of those along the way.

Step 10: Being at peace with my perfect imperfections

Of the most helpful things on my journey is accepting myself, as I am. Although I might strive for perfection, I know that I can never be perfect. There is always something that I can see that could be done better. Sometimes I just have to say ‘I’ve done the best I can right now’ and be at peace with my perfect imperfections. I am cool with that!

One more thing…

There are lots of other things involved in making it all happen that I haven’t mentioned… like my trailer! Something else I magically whipped up! When I contemplated making a trailer, all I could think of was that ‘I just have to be me’. I wanted to trailer to capture the real, authentic energy of Angelicious. I want it to connect with real people who resonate; whether that’s a handful of people or hundreds of thousands. I am just happy that I’ve created Angelicious and trust that it will do exactly what it is meant to.