Kate Heyhoe, the very first person who contributed a story to Five More Minutes With, is a talented food writer and a dear personal friend. In the past several months, disillusioned by the state of publishing (as so many of us old timers who’ve published books, started Web sites, and written newspaper and magazine articles for a living are), she’s trying her hand at an entirely new career.

At her studio in the woods of the Hill Country outside of Austin, Texas, she crafts “Dreams of the Dead” skulls–miniature to full-size skulls spun from sugar–and sells them on her Web site. The site is glorious, complete with a slide show of the skulls available for purchase from $20 to $300 depending on size and complexity.

Kate and I stay in touch, and she reports her new business is doing quite well.

In fact, a few weeks ago, she e-mailed to tell me, “I’ve already got two galleries in Austin that have agreed to sell my skulls. One of them is the Mexic-Arte Museum, the other Authenticity Gallery. Please revisit InsideMySkull.com to see the newest skulls. Some are near human-size nightlights.”

In mid-September, she e-mailed, “Authenticity Gallery sold my first skull today — it was a mini, but any sale validates my work.”

Kate and I still marvel, and chuckle, that it took the crisis in the publishing world to push us both simultaneously toward new and, in some ways similar, creative career paths.

Congrats, Kate, and brava!

Kate Heyhoe makes sugar skulls of all sizes–from mini to human-size nightlights