Free Sample
Read the First Three Chapters
A chef who used to be somebody. An unremarkable steakhouse that doesn’t deserve her. A phone that keeps ringing from a person she doesn’t want to speak to.
Roughly seven thousand words, straight from the working draft of The Last Bites. Drop your email and start deconstructing the mystery.
What You’re Getting
The Opening, Exactly As It Stands
The book opens on a restaurant review for a dish called Frozen Symphony. The critic remarks that the dish creates a visceral reaction and that the chef is certainly destined for great things:
“It does what few other dishes are able to. It creates a sense of unease in how it plays with your senses … There is a true undercurrent of violence to the dish.”
From the review that opens the novel
Then the review ends and you are standing in a much worse kitchen, several years later, with the woman who cooked that dish.
The three chapters cover:
- A table of ten and one man who deserves less. Ella cooks four perfect steaks and one that is technically fine, and watches from the swinging door while a man discovers he is the only person at his own party not having an epiphany.
- A smoke break that turns into a thesis. Luca wants to know why someone who can do that is working here. Ella explains that food is not about the cook. It is about the person eating it, and what they have coming.
- A phone she will not pick up. Someone has been calling the restaurant for her. She goes home to an empty fridge, makes elaborate nachos for a boyfriend who falls asleep before they arrive, and times herself doing it.
It is a working draft. There are seams, but there is also mystery.
Reasonable Questions
Is the book finished?
No. It is outlined end to end and being drafted now. That is exactly why the list exists: the people on it are the first ones to hear when there is a full draft, and the first ones I ask when I need to know whether something lands.
What actually shows up in my inbox?
Occasional notes when there is real news: a finished draft, a cover, an agent, or a spectacular failure. If a month goes by without anything worth saying, you’ll hear nothing. Capiche?
Is it really free?
Yes, and so is everything else here. The five iPhone apps are free too, with no accounts and no data collection. I have a day job.
Can I read it with your commentary?
That is what Bookmark is for. It’s a free reading app carrying an Author’s Cut for these chapters, where my notes unlock as you reach the passage they’re about.