She spoke with us about the paperback release of Murder on the Gravy Train , how she made the transition from restaurant critic to popular novelist, and what the life of a famous restaurant critic is really like. To start with the early ones, I was a big fan of Curious George , Babar and Madeleine . I went on to Nancy Drew, of course, then in high school read everything Steinbeck wrote. I'd like first to talk about your other career as a restaurant critic and food writer. Write, write, write.
Many people plan to write, which is a farther cry than they realize from actually writing.
I was lucky. I'd always been a cooking fanatic, since around age 3. And I'd always been writing. Then, when I was working on my master's thesis, my advisor invited me to a dinner where I heard about a restaurant-critic job at a very small paper. I tried out for it and got the job, and immediately discovered that was the job for me.