I’ve sent off five query letters so far. That’s the goal. Five a day. Until I’ve reached some mysterious maximum and exhausted my sanity.

True fact: submitting queries to agents makes me agitated. Butterflies in my stomach, for real. No idea why. I was able to fly to LA and pitch to various High-Level executives, and I felt cool as a breeze, a leaf in the stream, a Zen mantis poised to eat a hummingbird. But putting together a query letter? Sending it out? I feel like it’s the first day of school or something.

Why is this? Hell if I know. Maybe it suggests some fear of being silently judged? I do feel like, were I able to sit down in front of these people I could pitch it really well — pitching to people is interesting, because you can feel the way the conversation moves, you can intuit and adjust. The query letter is an alienating process. I don’t know that it could be done differently; I don’t blame anybody. But some element of this makes me feel like I’m sticking my hand in a dark box and wriggling my fingers around.

What’s in the box?

Aye, there’s the rub-a-dub-dub.

Could be a handful of gold coins.

Might be a pile of gopher diarrhea (and if you’ve ever seen gopher diarrhea, it’s… uhh, berrylicious).

Or, maybe it’s a box of angry earwigs.

In fact, it’s probably a box of angry earwigs.

Anyway. I’ll talk more about the query process one day, maybe next week, and tell you how I’m approaching it. Meanwhile, to distract myself from the query-flies that are nesting in my bowels–

Another recipe!

Screw you. Deal with it.

I told you that I’d give you a sauce recipe, so here it is, damnit.

This is the best sauce you will ever ease into your gluttonous maw. That’s probably a lie. But it is very good and will be the Chuck’s Made-Up Tomato Sauce that I will stick with for a while.

This is what you do. Oven to 400F. Into a roasting pan, put the following objects:

• 1 – 1 1/2 lb. of tomatoes, whatever type you so desire
• two small carrots, peeled, then chopped in broach inch-long pieces
• one or two sweet onions (depends on size), chopped big
• one small bulb of fennel (chopped; if the bulb is big, halve it, use that)
• four cloves of garlic (each chopped into three or four pieces)
• a smattering of dry Italian seasonings (y’know, oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary)
• one donkey skull (meat still on it)

You may want to leave out the donkey skull. Your call, coward.

Roast the unmerciful fuck out of it for one hour. Maybe more. You want the tomatoes to shrivel and start to blacken. The roasting pan should look like some kind of vegetable swamp, too. Your house will smell like one of God’s own orgasms, by the way. You can thank me later.

When that’s done, get out your crockpot.

Upend your vegetable swamp broth into the crockpot.

You’re going to add some more stuff into this. Add in:

• 1 cup of a dry red wine (you can go for Merlot or Cabernet, but if you’re awesome? Shiraz)
• eight pieces of bacon (I do four crispy, and four soft-and-fatty)
• (“Soft and Fatty” was my nickname at Space Camp. “Hey, Soft and Fatty,” the other kids would say. “Stick this rocket booster in your O-Ring!” And they’d laugh and laugh.)
• a couple-few TBs of the bacon fat (“the drippings,” another name for “syphilis”)
• 1 TB of sugar
• Pinch of salt
• Dash of crack-black pepper
• A dusting of sage

Let that cook down for 6-8 hours on low.

When you’ve reached Maximum Goodness, you’ll want to season to taste. Maybe more salt. Maybe more seasonings. You can keep adding sugar, one tsp at a time until you’ve cut the acid (keep in mind, though, that the carrots are adding extra sugar in there).

Then, immersion blender it. I do it so some chunky bits (“Chunky Bits” was my nickname in the Coast Guard) are left behind, but you can do smooth as you’d like.

That’s it. If you’re a little uncertain about the bacon, be sure to still add in a little butter. Animal fats, for the win. Not fake butter, either. The real deal.

There you go. Sauce for you, and for me, a distraction from the agita of writing and submitting query letters. Peace out, writerheads and foodfaces.