From Zero to Ten in 23 Years

It took six years from the day I started writing the first book, Top Secret Recipes, for it to land on bookstores shelves.

Not having a formal culinary education made the process of writing the book especially tedious since I had to learn the science of cooking and figure out how to adapt what I had learned to recreating well-known products. I see now that this worked to my advantage since the recipes were written in such a way that the book was easy to use for folks who, like me, didn’t necessarily have a lot of kitchen experience. My recipes required no fancy techniques, commercial equipment, or hard-to-find ingredients.

As I was putting the book together I was working as a TV news reporter in Arizona and Pennsylvania, so I tapped into my experience gathering information to help create the recipes. I interviewed fast food restaurant employees. I educated myself by reading a variety of cookbooks and watching cooking shows on TV. I went to the library to gather information on food production, all the while wishing that someone would hurry up and invent the Internet. I sought out exactly what I needed to know for each recipe on my list, and after several years I had produced the cookbook that previously existed only in my mind.

My art background came in handy when I decided that schematic-style blueprints would be the perfect way to illustrate the “top secret” recipes. I created each of the blueprints by hand using drafting tools and black ink pens that I bought at a nearby art supply store. When the art was done I made copies of the entire manuscript, sent it out to 30 publishers, and waited impatiently for a response, which I was hoping would come soon because, in an unexplainable leap of faith, I had just quit my job. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long. Within a few weeks I had offers from five different houses who wanted to publish Top Secret Recipes. Of the five, I chose the biggest one, Penguin, only because at the time they were publishing books by a guy named Stephen King, and I figured if they were good enough for him, they probably knew what they were doing.

When the book finally came out it in 1993 it was so different from any other cookbooks on the market that it got incredible media attention. I wound up on several national TV shows and in newspapers, and book sales were off the hook.

The success of Top Secret Recipes led to the next book, More Top Secret Recipes, which was more of the same type of convenience food clone recipes and it also sold very well. For the third book though, I thought I’d try something a little different. For Top Secret Restaurant Recipes, instead of creating clone recipes for fast food, snack cakes and candy bars, I decided to clone recipes for the signature dishes from the country’s most popular casual restaurant chains such as Chili’s, Cheesecake Factory, and T.G.I. Friday’s. This book was nearly triple the size of the first two books and it was my most ambitious project yet, but I had much more cooking experience under my belt and the book turned out really great. I even wound up appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show with that book, which, for any author, is the absolute best show to be on. Today, over 13 years later, that book still sells like crazy and is the all-time top seller in the series.

 After that I wrote two low-fat clone recipe books (Low-Fat Top Secret Recipes & Top Secret Recipes – Lite!), a book of drink clones (Sodas, Smoothies, Spirits & Shakes), a couple more convenience food books (Even More Top Secret Recipes and Top Secret Recipes Unlocked) and another book of casual restaurant chain clones (Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2). This next book due out in September, Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3, is the tenth book I’ve written, and a personal milestone. Over 1000 recipes, 450 blueprints, and ten books, all inspired by a simple chain letter that triggered a career of cloning recipes which has now lasted for over half of my life.

(Excerpted from Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3, to be released on 9/28/2010)