•November 30, 2022•
By Jim Baumann
NP Guest Writer

As the saying goes, the bridge from dream to reality is hard work.
I’m here to tell you sometimes it’s not enough.
I had a dream recently in which I came up with what I thought would be the perfect title for a book and, based on it, wrote a Chinese cookbook that landed on The New York Times Best Sellers list.
I woke up the next morning and thought to myself, “You love Chinese food, but you can’t cook anything more than a passable chicken fried rice. What an idiotic idea.”
Still, I loved the title of the book. So I emailed Rick Kaempfer and David Stern, the publishers of the book based on my column (the perfect stocking stuffer!) and gave them my pitch.
“I love it,” David wrote back. “Remember, pot is now legal in Illinois. Wide market.”
I should have known at that point that my idea would have to be packaged with edibles to sell — or make sense.
The title I pitched to them: “WontonLust: An Illustrated Exploration of Eggcorns, Mondegreens and Malapropisms.”     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.