1--What is the title of your latest release?
DIDN’T YOU USE TO BE QUEENIE B?
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
A disgraced celebrity chef, her striving protégé, and their path through the kitchen to redemption.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
Simply—I live in Connecticut. Though Rock Landing is fictional neighborhood in New Haven, it’s a city I know. My stories are mostly character-driven, so setting them into familiar places leaves me brain space to explore them rather than get sucked down the research-rabbit-hole of an unknow-to-me locale.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Queenie B in her heyday? Probably not. She was a lot of fun, if you’re into wild, drug-fueled debauchery, but her exploits ended up in the tabloids and she often ended up in rehab. Again. Regina, however? She’s a bit cantankerous, but yes. No one will ever say she wears her heart on her sleeve, but she’s got a big one. I’d love to have dinner with her…if she’s cooking.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Whether Queenie or Regina, the answer is the same—determined, ambitious, wary.
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
It’s something I re-learn with every book I write—I put way more of myself and my life into them than I mean to. Though I always draw from personal experience, my brain goes into the sort of writing-mode that pulls out really deep and personal things without me realizing. It doesn’t hit me until I get past the creation stage. With Queenie B, it wasn’t until my editor, and I were in final edit phases that I actually SAW what I’d written. That’s when all those subconscious events and emotions punched me in the gut. It’s happened before, but never so viscerally as it did this time around.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I edit as I draft. I don’t even write my ending until I’ve gone back to the beginning at least once, to get all my ducks in a row. What’s the point in writing an ending that, ultimately, won’t work if those ducks aren’t playing nicely?
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Pasta, in any form, with any kind of sauce. It doesn’t seem like an indulgence for most, but I’m diabetic, and a plate of pasta is that thing that gets my glucose levels soaring. I probably eat it more than I should.
9--Describe your writing space/office!
Yarn. Lots and lots of yarn. The third bedroom in my house is my office, and it used to display my book and sand collections. Little by little, my yarn obsession sent my book collection to the family room, and my sand collection to my brother. But it’s all organized and colorful, and it has the noise-cancelling capabilities necessary on those days my husband is working from home.
I weave, and I crochet. Add the two cats and I’m every stereotype of a writer there is.
10--Who is an author you admire?
I can’t think of any one author I admire, because I admire many. I admire those who keep writing through all of life’s triumphs and challenges, authors who never give in or give up. Whatever publishing path a writer ends up on, I honor the fact that the finished product is someone’s heart and soul. A dream made real.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
The Once and Future King by TH White. In my heart of hearts, I am a fantasy nerd, and have been since I picked up that book at the age of fourteen. Fantasy, literary, myth, and folklore—everything I love most about reading as well as writing.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.”
At this point, I’ve gotten “the call” ten times, counting the foreign-rights sales, and you’d think it might get mundane. It does not. I danced around the house and scared my cats the first time, second, fifth, and the tenth time. The publishers—and advances—have gotten bigger, but that joy? It never changes.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
My favorite genre is a good story, written well. Period. I am an equal opportunity reader.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
It’s a toss-up between The Princess Bride, and Billy Elliot.
…and Deadpool.
15--What is your favorite season?
Autumn. I live in New England; I think it’s mandatory. But I do love winter, too.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
Any way at all, as long as there’s cake.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
TV show: The Bear. It’s absolutely the best show on television.
(Note—I wrote Queenie B long before the show ever aired!)
Book: Cloud Cuckooland, by Anthony Doerr. After years of my #1 favorite book being #1, Cloud Cuckooland edged it out. Extraordinary book.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Italian. Any other answer to this question is wrong!
19--What do you do when you have free time?
I weave, crochet, and haunt the local thrift stores for treasures.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
I’m always writing something new. As I write this, I’ve just finished a manuscript currently titled ETHYL PEABODY’S ANTIQUES AND CHAINSAW REPAIR. A middle-aged woman stuck in the past, a set of thirty-year-old twins unable to grow up, and the starfish-shaped house—that may or may not be sentient—on the Connecticut coast that changes all their lives.
A Gripping Foodie Mystery Novel Featuring a Humorous Unlikely Friendship, Uncover the Secrets Behind the Disgraced Celebrity Chef's Vanishing Act
For everyone who loved The Bear! An utterly winning, crowd-pleaser of a novel about a disgraced celebrity chef, her striving protégé, and their path through the kitchen to redemption.
Regina Benuzzi is Queenie B—a culinary goddess with Michelin Star restaurants, a bestselling cookbook empire, and multimillion-dollar TV deals. It doesn’t hurt that she’s gorgeous and curvaceous, with cascading black hair and signature red lips.
She had it all. Until she didn’t.
After an epic fall from grace, Queenie B vanishes from the public eye, giving up everything: her husband, her son, and the fame that she’d fought to achieve. Her shows are in rerun, her restaurants still popular, but her disappearance remains a mystery to her legions of fans.
Local line cook Gale Carmichael also knows a thing or two about disaster. Newly sober and struggling, Gale’s future dreams don’t hold space for culinary stardom; only earning enough to get by. Broke at the end of the week, he finds himself at a local soup kitchen in one of the roughest parts of New Haven, Connecticut. But Gale quickly realizes that the food coming out of the kitchen is not your standard free meal—it is delicious and prepared with gourmet flair.
Gale doesn’t recognize Regina, the soup kitchen’s cranky proprietor, whose famous black mane is now streaked with gray. It’s been more than ten years since Queenie B vanished into her careful new existence. But she sees Gale’s talent and recognizes a brokenness in him that she knows all too well. The culinary genius in hiding takes him under her wing.
Teaching Gale, Regina’s passion to create is reignited, and they both glimpse a shot at the redemption that had always seemed out of reach. When Gale is chosen to compete on the hit cooking show, Cut!, it’s a turning point for them both.
It’s Gale’s time to shine. And that means Queenie B might just have to come out of hiding…
Women's Fiction Friendship | Literature and Fiction Literary [William Morrow, On Sale: April 15, 2025, Hardcover / e-Book , ISBN: 9780063393110 / eISBN: 9780063393141]
Terri-Lynne DeFino was born and raised in New Jersey, but escaped to the wilds of Connecticut where she still lives with her husband, and her cats. If you knock on her door, she’ll invite you in and feed you. That’s what Jersey Italian women do, because you can take the girl out of Jersey, but you can’t take the Jersey out of the girl.
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