3Ws – Stacey Ballis

I’m primarily a novelist and sometime cookbook author. I write “foodie fiction,” novels with foodie heroines and recipes in the back. My current novel, Out to Lunch, is about a woman who loses her best friend and gains custody of her best friend’s annoying widower. My next novel, Recipe for Disaster, is about a house flipper whose life implodes leaving her jobless, homeless and fiancé-less in one horrible day, forcing her to fend for herself while living in the half-finished ruin of her current construction project. And my new digital cookbook is Big Delicious Life, over 150 recipes in a cool digital format, so a recipe resource right in your pocket! I also cook a lot, which always feels like an act of creation to me.

I don’t breathe so well if I’m not writing something. Whether it is the novels or my blog, The Polymath Chronicles, creating recipes for publication or just for Tuesday dinner, I always feel most at ease in the world if I’m working on something. It is the best expression of my soul that I can imagine. If I’m writing a novel, I’m reaching out to my readers in hopes of touching their hearts, making them laugh. If I’m working on the blog, I’m sharing my life in a much more personal way. If I’m cooking I’m putting my heart on a plate in hopes of bringing someone pure pleasure and sustenance.

Besides chocolate? Books books books, of all types. Contemporary, classics, fiction, non-fiction, mystery, humor, memoir, you name it. I read very quickly, I can read a whole book in a day if I get sucked in, so it helps to have a wide variety of interests. I consume anything related to food and cooking and entertaining, magazines, television shows, cookbooks, cooking equipment catalogs.

I’m a bigger consumer of television than I would like to admit, with a special focus on procedurals, if it is about police work or forensics, I’m pretty well hooked. And at the moment I’m consuming everything related to home improvement and interior design, because my husband and I are renovating our 107 year old home from the basement up, so my brain is very house-centric at the moment.

I’m also trying very hard to be a consumer of time with the people I love, and the people I like a lot. I lost a friend recently in an unexpected and sudden tragedy. She wasn’t one of my best buds, but one of those wonderful “second tier” people who you are so fond of, and always mean to get together with, but sadly let stay on the periphery because life intrudes. Every time we saw each other we laughed and hugged and connected and swore to make plans, and we just never got around to it. Her death made me realize how important it is to actually follow up and follow thru, and so I’ve been reaching out to all the other wonderful people I kept putting off in the name of being busy, and I’m making lunch dates and coffee dates and phone call catch-ups. I hate that I didn’t do it sooner, and that I didn¹t get a chance to do it with her, but I know I honor her memory every time I make room in my schedule for friends. Life is fleeting and precious, and the company of fine people is its greatest pleasure.