Getting back to blogging after the launch of Sheffield's new restaurant

Last spring I started a blog which was going to document the process of adding a kitchen operation to my long established Chicago tavern, Sheffield’s (http://www.sheffieldschicago.com). While the blog started with the best of intentions, the demands of actually getting the restaurant up and running, along with the start of the 2007 baseball season and the slam of business that always goes along with that, led to the blog falling by the wayside. Three or four entries and then it just kind of tapered off.

Now I’ve got a new project and this one is going to require a lot of writing just to get the thing done. After a short fourteen years I finally earned my BFA in fiction from Columbia College, Chicago. Since I can now, at long last, turn my attention to my own work, rather than writing reams of papers about what other writers have done, I’m now devoting myself one-hundred percent to the sale and publication of the novel I’ve been working on (along with running my businesses and obtaining my degree – so don’t think I’ve been slacking here) for the last few years. Opening Day is a story about a couple of misplaced Miami wise guys who stumble into a scheme to lift the box office receipts from Chicago’s iconic Wrigley Field. The stumbling block is a local bartender with a Florida past of his own, and his ex-girlfriend, a high-class call girl who has gone over to the dark side but is trying to claw her way back into the light. You can read the first few paragraphs on my website, and, I hope, the entire thing soon, at your favorite INDEPENDENT bookstore.

This new blog will post weekly, and since the kitchen at Sheffield’s is still in the growth and development stage (which is to say I’m still losing my ass) we’re first going to examine the way that starting up and running a restaurant and bar business in Chicago is similar to writing and selling a first novel. The suspense hook is that, like with any real life story, we don’t know the ending. Publishing a novel takes a lot of hard work and luck. But as the man said, luck is the time when preparation and opportunity meet. So I’ll get to work, cross my fingers, and wait for the opportunity.

Next Blog Post: Getting the thing started.

— Ric Hess, Jan 18, 12:07 PM

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