Welcome to my Web site and thanks for visiting. I’m anxious to tell you all about my latest book, Cooking My Way Through Life with Kids and Books. When a friend suggested we write a cookbook together, I realized my life has fallen into four distinct food periods: I was raised in a conservative household where the food tone was set by my Anglophile father—roast beef, lots of lamb, potatoes and vegetables, though my mom made terrific salads. But we never had fried chicken—you’d have had to pick it up with your fingers—and we rarely had fish. My parents entertained often, and I learned to cook and entertain—and clean up at an early age, for which I bless my mom. She let me makes messes in the kitchen. Then I married a Jewish man and moved to Texas, both of which introduced me to new and wonderful cuisines that I treasure to this day. We adopted four children, so I began teaching them to cook. But I rarely adjusted the menus to kids’ tastes, though they had some favorites. When the oldest was 12 and the youngest six, my husband left, and I call the years of single parenthood “The Casserole Years.” And today I live alone, love to cook and experiment, and entertain often. Yes, I’m a writer, but food is my second interest and I would love to do more food writing. My friend? She finally confessed her mother didn’t cook, she herself took her kids out to eat, and she had come to the kitchen late in life. It was, she said, my book—and it truly is, a collection of stories from my life and all the recipes I’ve cooked and enjoyed over the years. “The autobiographical aspect rings true to the point of poignancy. Alter’s affinities for the arts-and-letters scene, the home-and-family commitments and that borderland where academic concerns merge with business savvy—all color her appreciation of cooking in surprising ways . . . .Alter champions such earthy delicacies as Shepherd’s Pie and Salmon Croquettes. A personalized Sloppy Joe concoction descends for an ostensibly more high falutin’ delicacy called Wine Casserole.”—Mike Price, Fort Worth Business Press “This is a homey book that made me hungry for similar times in my own past and present; made me think about the many ways good food and cooking bring our families together; and made me smile at the many tender moments when Alter’s pleasure in her life and her work comes so clearly through on the page.”—Novelist Susan Albert Wittig in online newsletter Story Circle Network.

I’ve been a writer since I was ten or twelve and distinctly remember submitting a story to Seventeen when I was about that age. But my first book, After Pa Was Shot, a young-adult novel, was published in 1978, and since then I’ve written fiction and nonfiction for young adults, adults, and even second graders. Give me a topic and I’ll write about it, but my main focus for years was women of the American West, which novels about Jessie Benton Frémont, Elizabeth Armstrong Custer, and Lucille Mulhall, the first woman roper. I have had awards from the National Cowboy Museum and Hall of Fame, the Texas Institute of Letters, and Western Writers of America, Inc., including their Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement. I belong to Sisters in Crime, the Guppies subgroup of Sisters in Crime, and the Texas Institute of Letters. Now retired, I’m turning my attention to food writing and mysteries. I’ve read mysteries all my life, and I want to write cozies. Two are complete—Skeleton in a Dead Space and No Neighborhood for Old Ladies—and are in the hands of an agent. I am about a third into the third one, a new series I’m calling The Blue Plate Café books, about a small-town country café. And I’m having fun with it. Also working on a nonfiction project that it’s too soon to talk about.