Random thoughts

Our chef is getting very bored, and not a little discouraged with the way his life is going. He's "stuck" in a relationship he neither wants or likes, but doesn't see many options. He has decided to maintain the status quo, and to just make the best of it. This will be chef's first chapter, background stuff.

His angle on how he found his love.

On a particularly warm spring morning, he was in an upbeat mood; he was in charge of a large banquet at one of the local hotels - A rarity in this part of the world; a Hollywood premier film was being shown in the burgeoning theater district. Problem was, he had no clue what he was going to prepare. So, being the clever guy he was, he went online looking for inspiration.

He eventually stumbles on a website...........(need to fill in lots of blanks....)

Do the movie event, having been rescued by what he finds on this spectacular website, where a particular journalists column catches his eye. He doesn't think anything of it, but he sure likes the way she writes. (We can actually put some of your columns here I think.) Reading them is starting to become a habit. At some point, he e-mails her. (Should we use the real story, or come up with something?)

I want to include something here about unsettled weather, chef getting moody, stirring feelings, long solitary walks, etc. Things are changing, but he doesn't understand yet what's happening. Maybe he gets cranky with his restaurant staff and his friends. The weather is an allegory for the turmoil in his mind.

Outline

Two people meet over the Internet; she's a columnist who writes about pet peeves; he's a chef. He e-mails her when she writes a column about Barry Manilow almost canceling a concert because of her.

She's 40, has been married once, and is now single. He's in his late 30s, has been married once and is living with someone.

I think in addition to just straight narrative, there can be lots of e-mails, and not just those between the two main characters; we can have the guy belong to a chef listserv or something and have funny e-mails from other members. We can also have complaining e-mails to the columnist and e-mails from her mother, etc. Also IMs?

For example, with the complaining e-mails, we can include the first part: "Dear blah, blah blah blah ..." then write "delete" without finishing it.

We can also include excerpts from columns -- for example, the Barry Manilow one.

I guess I'm seeing the book as mainly epistolary -- e-mails, IMs, etc.

So they e-mail and IM for awhile, then meet. Rather than writing a narrative of the meeting, we can tell about it after the fact via e-mail and IM. The book could end with one of them e-mailing a wedding chapel in Vegas to make a reservation or something.