petite anglaise

A four page interview of which I understand only the words “Bridget Jones”, “Sex and the City” and “chicklit-ster” (growl) has just come out in the Christmas edition of Dutch weekly magazine HP/De Tijd.

If anyone out there can read Dutch and would like to translate the quotes and/or give me the gist, I’d be really interested to be able to read (some of) it, as it was the first book related interview I ever gave. If you send me an email or put up a comment I can send you the full pdf.

Dutch speakers may also be interested to know that the book will be on sale in Holland and Belgium, published by De Bezige Bij (busy bee!), in the last week of January/first week of February 2008.

For those of you who can’t read it, I give you the wardrobe malfunction from page 4 for your amusement.

Incidentally, I do know how to translate the title. It’s not “slim, sexy and drugged” but rather “smart, sexy and busy”…

There’s a reason I do what I do, and don’t, say, design banner ads for a living. But I’m putting my fingers in an awful lot of pies at the moment: writing pitches, writing articles, dreaming up ideas for videocasts, podcasts…

So very much to do, so little time to write book two.

And then it occurred to me, in a blinding flash, that my readers might enjoy lending a hand. A few thousand minds have to be better than one. And when you see what I’ve come up with, you’ll realise you won’t exactly be hard pushed to do better.

So, the brief is that The Boy (whose considerable skills are not limited to the bedroom and kitchen) will make me several banners. One for use on the Penguin network (probably quite straightforward); several for use here and for readers to adopt, if they so wish. They will be relatively simple: a phrase, giving way to another phrase, possibly a third, then a picture and info about the book release date.

My first effort (taken from the book’s subtitle) is:

In Paris
In Love
In Trouble

my second was:

From blog…
…to book
petite anglaise

and my third:

When you write about your life…
does it alter its course?

I came up with a few more, all shot down by my dear friend and mentor, Meg, who suggested the following:

petite anglaise
take her to bed
in hardback

Hmm.

I would be terribly grateful for any suggestions. Scribble them on a postcard, or type them in the comments box below. Any suggestions I actually use will get a copy of the book signed by me and doodled on by Tadpole.