Introducing My New Book: Austin Food Crawls!

I’ve been waiting more than a year to share this news with you, and I’m literally shaking with excitement as I write this blog post! I’m so excited to finally share this book with you!! 

A publishing house reached out to me in April 2018 asking me to write a neighborhood food guide to Austin, and I signed a contract for my first book deal (eeeks!) more than a year ago. I’ve been diving deep into the restaurants and neighborhoods of Austin. Say hello to… 

Austin Food Crawls: Touring the Neighborhoods One Bite & Libation at a Time (September 2019)

(Pre-order here:) 

AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE | BOOKS-A-MILLION

About the book: 

• Publication date: September 1, 2019 (Globe Pequot Press)
• Austin Food Crawls is a fun, colorful guide to help you navigate your way through the Austin food scene! Each chapter focuses on a different Austin neighborhood to create a full day of eating. Use this book to fuel the perfect tourist day, a fun way to experience your own city, or simply as food porn to enjoy from home. 
• There are three “bonus crawls” at the end of the book that focus on the hottest food trends in Austin! 
• I wrote this book for both new and long-time Austin residents who want to get to know the Austin food scene better, and for tourists who want a fun, easy way to understand the restaurants in Austin. It’s a beautiful coffee table book to simply inspire your next food adventure, but it’s lightweight enough to be carried around the city as your own pocket guide to the Austin neighborhoods. 

Austin is one of the hottest food cities on the planet right now; my hope is that Austin Food Crawls inspires lots of foodie adventures as you explore the Austin restaurant scene!

About the writing process:

I mean…it’s been a whirlwind! I’ve had a blast writing this book, and I’m still kind of pinching myself that the publication date is almost here!

Here’s a timeline (from the very beginning!) of what’s been going on:

• October 2016: Nate and I were engaged and checking out a restaurant called Emmer & Rye (still one of my favorite Austin restaurants. Here’s the blog post from our dinner that night…it’s one of my first blog posts I ever wrote!) to celebrate the fact that I had just finished paying off $15,000 of student loans in 11 months. I told him the main reason I had hustled so hard to pay off my loans: I planned to start an Austin food blog, and I wanted to be 100% debt-free when I started it so I could fully invest in this blog. 
• November 2016: SoMuchLife.com was launched! After years of eating around Austin and giving restaurant suggestions to friends, I had tons of information in my head that I was eager to share on my blog. 
• 2017: Lots of hustle, lots of fun! 
• January 2018: As the page views and social media accounts grew (yay!), I knew I had to take a big, scary leap and hire web designer to give my blog a facelift. I asked Madison at Grace + Vine Studios to create a custom logo, new fonts and colors, and a completely new web design, including my new Austin Index page so readers could run their own searches on my blog. It felt super scary to invest that much money in a redesign when I was hardly making enough revenue to even call my blog a “side hustle,” but it turned out that taking that leap in faith was the best thing I’ve ever done for my blogging career. 
• April 2018: I got an email from an acquisitions editor at Globe Pequot Press saying she had found my blog and liked the easy writing style and fun photos and….had I ever considered writing a book? 
• May 2018: I wrote an outline to Austin Food Crawls and pitched it to the team at Globe Pequot. They loved it, sent me a contract, and I signed! (Easiest HELL YES decision ever!)
• June 2018: Sooo many restaurant visits! I already knew the restaurants I wanted to include in each neighborhood chapter, but I had to set up a lot of visits to interview chefs, take more photos, and do some field research. 
• December 2018: I submitted the final manuscript to my editor. Honestly, the months of June-December were whirlwind. And so much fun. Aaaand I’m very happy that I didn’t get pregnant and deal with the first trimester nausea/fatigue until the book was submitted. 😉 

Head over to instagram today; I’m going to be sharing a whole bunch of behind-the-scenes clips on my Instagram stories of pictures and videos I’ve been saving for the past year. Writing and photographing content for this book has consumed a lot of my time since last summer, and I have so much to share with you! 

It feels so good to finally get to share this project with you! Still to come: book release parties, giveaways, and the final reveal on September 1 when this book is officially out in the world! 

One more thing: getting a book deal is the goal that almost every blogger dreams about in the back of her head. I had definitely thought about it, and I hoped it might happen down the road (like if I ever made it through 10 years of blogging!), but I didn’t expect a book deal to land in my lap 18 months after launching SoMuchLife.com. 

I feel ridiculously thankful to everyone who reads this blog and follows the instagram account. It’s really fun to have a food blog as a creative outlet, but the meaningful part comes from knowing that I’m helping hungry, adventurous foodies find the deserving chefs and restaurants in Austin. I love supporting the local food scene and the creative chefs who run it, and I love getting messages from y’all when you tell me that one of my blog posts helped you find your new favorite restaurant in town. 

Thank you. Love you so, so much! Muah! 

See Austin Food Crawls here: 

AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE | BOOKS-A-MILLION