petite anglaise

Reading the various reviews of “petite anglaise”, a few things have given me pause for thought.

One is that many readers are judging the book against everything I’ve previously written here, rather than on its merits as a book, full stop. This was inevitable. I do have a huge body of ‘work’ already out there. When I put together my book proposal - in haste - I had to make choices. Choices about which strands of my story I wanted to use. Choices about which material would appeal most to the publishers circling around me. Choices about who I wanted the book to appeal to most: my blog readers, or a wider audience? Or both?

I stand by my choices, but invariably some people would have preferred me to do everything differently. ‘I didn’t want to know about X.’ ‘I wish she’d written more about Y.’ I’m reminded of opinions aired in my comments box, along the lines of ‘I liked it better in the old days when you wrote more about Paris.’ There is something about the participative nature of blogging that gives readers a sense of ownership. Some feel entitled to tell me what they think I ought to write - as if a blog were like some sort of online ‘request show’. I reserve the right to politely disagree.

But I’ve realised there is no sense in worrying about not pleasing everyone. That would have been mission impossible: my book can’t be all things to all people. The quirk(e)y reviewer in the New Statesman wishes I’d shown more of my ‘disturbo’ side, whereas glimpses of the compulsive blogger in me made others deeply uncomfortable.

A charge levelled against the book (particularly on Amazon - a place I only go when I’m feeling masochistic) is that petite anglaise is too ‘mememe’, and that some of the secondary characters are rather one-dimensional. To the mememe charge, I’d say that when a story is narrated in the first person, you necessarily see events from a single perspective; you are only permitted a view inside one person’s head. Other characters, although they can explain themselves through their words and gestures, necessarily remain enigmatic to a greater or lesser degree. ‘Petite’ is a true story, taken from a personal blog and I didn’t have an ‘access all areas’ backstage pass into James’s or Mr Frog’s heads. If I had, many of the twists and turns of the story would have been robbed of the power to surprise and shock. As for my ’secondary characters’, they are real people whose identities and sensibilities I had to protect. I was telling my story, from my perspective and left many of their stories out of the final cut, robbing the reader of extra insights which would, no doubt, have rounded out their characters. But I didn’t feel I had the right to go further.

I learnt a lot while writing ‘petite’. I learnt that a book is finished when you simply can’t bear to look at it any more; not when it’s ‘perfect’. I learnt that once it is written, the author has to let it go, leave the marketing people to their jobs, let them package it, add their cover blurb, and send it out into the world to fend for itself. There no point in me agonising over whether ‘petite’ should be shelved next to the latest Jordan autobiography, or in the travel section next to Peter Mayle. Or neither. In the words of Vicomte de Valmont: it’s beyond my control.

The main thing the experience of writing a personal story and laying myself open to personal criticisms has taught me is that I don’t necessarily want to do it again. No matter how many lovely emails and comments I’ve received from people who have read the book compulsively, finished it in one sitting, laughed and cried and empathised along with me and felt sad when they reached the end, at 4 am, because they wanted more.

So there will be no petite anglaise II. There will be a novel, in which I can draw on my own experiences as much or as little as I wish, fill out the secondary characters to my heart’s content and take on board the constructive criticism I’ve received and try and do better. I’m proud of what I achieved and convinced I wrote the best book I possibly could at the time.

But I hope the best is yet to come.

Petite Anglaise garnered a couple more (rather tardy) reviews in the British press this weekend. The first was in The Independent, last Friday, and gave me cause to wonder whether I shouldn’t have reinvented Mr Frog as a non smoker or extolled the virtues of Lipton yellow tea in the interests of avoiding clichéd representations of the French.

The second, in the weekend edition of the FT, references Madame Bovary (on the métro to the childminder’s). I really liked this piece - the reviewer seemed to really “get” the book.

And of course I drew no small amount of satisfaction from remembering that my former employer not only subscribed to the FT, but displayed it prominently on the glass coffee table in reception…

I’d like to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who turned out (in the freezing cold) to listen to me read at WH Smiths last night. It was somewhat unnerving giving a reading in front of so many people (120! Wow!) but I ended up thoroughly enjoying myself and I’m eternally grateful to you all for laughing in the right places.

For those who couldn’t make it, I signed a sizeable stack of copies before I left and these may be procured from WH Smiths at your leisure (and possibly posted to you if you live elsewhere in France).

Sadly, my camera was on the blink and I’m gutted I forgot to ask The Boy to bring his and play the role of official snapper.

But I did happen to notice a few flashbulbs going off, so if you have photographic evidence you’re willing to share, I’d love to see it. You can mail snaps to the usual address, or add photos to my facebook page. I’ll pop anything I receive up on flickr and link to it from here.

And was it just my imagination, or did my accent start off BBC posh and gradually veer off in a northern direction?

Until last week, I was terrified at the prospect of giving a reading. Recording a blog post for Woman’s Hour was one thing (I’m going to keep on mentioning that for ages, yes, because I’m still reeling from the shock of saying “ring sting” on air), reading from petite anglaise was another thing entirely.

A few months ago, I happened to be in London on the very day that a Society of Authors seminar on “Giving a Reading” was held. I decided to sign up - thinking it would be interesting to check out their offices and meet a few people, if nothing else - and found myself in a room filled with twenty or so other authors. Some had penned fiction, others memoirs, history books or film scripts. Their ages ranged from twenty-five to eighty. We were united, however, by our collective fear of public speaking.

That day the speaker gave us lots of very good advice. Instead of reading one long passage (which might send your audience to sleep), you can pick several short ones, she suggested. That way you can give people a taste of different types of writing: some description, some dialogue, some action. Several amuse-bouche appetisers instead of one large entrée: a good way to whet people’s appetites. She also pointed out that if there’s a word or phrase you cringe at when reading aloud, or a sentence which simply doesn’t work when read out of its context, you can cross it out. It’s your book. You can do whatever you like.

There followed an excruciating hour where each participant read a short passage aloud and the rest of the group gave some constructive criticism about what could be done to improve things. There were those who swayed from side to side, those who buried their heads in their books, never daring to glance up. Those who mumbled, and those who read at fifty miles an hour in voices flattened by nerves to an expressionless monotone. I made the mistake of choosing a highly emotional passage - the book’s prologue - and lost my voice halfway through, soldiering on to the end in a stage whisper. The stunned silence at the end of my reading I put down to the fact that it must have been quite unsettling for my audience to see me reading on the verge of tears.

So when I gave my first public reading at York library, ten days ago, I’d given quite a lot of thought to how to avoid repeating that disastrous performance. I was stomach-churningly nervous - my ravaged cuticles and peeling bottom lip bore witness - but, having spent most of that day running from photo session to interview to photo session to TV studio, before leaping onto a train (Leeds-York) just an hour before my reading was due to start, I didn’t have too much time to dwell on my fear, let alone practise my spiel. I arrived at the library with only twenty minutes to spare, and allowed the organiser to pour me a large glass of wine (Arrogant Frog - an inspired choice) in an attempt to calm my nerves.

Once everyone had filed in and taken a seat, I gave a brief introduction then read four short passages from the light-hearted opening chapters of the book, introducing my love affair with all things French, the character of Mr Frog and the birth of the blog. It went pretty well, I thought, even if I found it tricky to raise my eyes from my book (the sight of my grandma, beaming on the front row, was a little off-putting). I even managed to get a few laughs - the scene where I meet Mr Frog was a lot of fun to read - and the consensus seemed to be that it had gone rather well. Once the questions from the floor had been dispensed with, I took out my special signing pen and had fun writing little messages in people’s books.

I did however decline my first ever request to sign a pair of white buttocks.

****

If you happen to be in Paris next Thursday (March 20th) and can make it to WH Smiths on rue de Rivoli at 7.30 pm, you will be able to see me give a repeat performance.

To enable the organisers to make adequate provision of alcoholic beverages, I urge you to sign up by sending an RSVP email. The event is free, and if you have already got a copy of the book, you are welcome to bring it along. If you’d like to purchase a book on the night, WH Smiths have ordered in copies of the proper UK hardback version especially (instead of the oversized export paperback some of you may have seen in Paris), which is much much lovelier, in my opinion.

Once I’ve got the reading bit out of the way (it will be mercifully short, as there are in excess of 80 people signed up, and therefore there will be no room for chairs) I will be free to answer questions, scribble inanely in books, drink wine and mingle until about 9.30pm. If you can’t make it to the first part, feel free to pop along afterwards.

See you there?

The first time I saw the schedule for my trip to the UK, one section in particular caught my attention. From 9.15 am to 1.00 pm on Wednesday I would be doing GNS interviews, back to back, whatever they might be.

At the time of writing this post, I realise I’m still none the wiser about what GNS actually stands for. Gruelling National Speak-a-thon, perhaps?

Imagine, if you will, a tiny studio at BBC Broadcasting House. I sit at a desk covered in some sort of material, which is less than ideal for setting down cardboard cups of coffee as the surface is treacherously uneven. In front of me sit a large microphone and a pair of headphones. Over the course of a few hours I am to speak to fifteen local radio stations who have booked ten minute slots of my time. Some will be live, others will be pre-recorded. By 1.00 pm I’m told I’ll have been beamed into the homes of three million listeners.

I’m not feeling particularly intimidated by the prospect. Probably because I’ve already had the pleasure of talking about suppositories on live national radio earlier that week and, that very morning, I briefly parked my buttocks on the couch of BBC Breakfast. Radio is like blogging: I talk, but I can’t see my listeners and they can’t see me. There is none of the fear of falling quite literally flat on my face as I creep into a TV studio, step over all the trailing wires, and take my seat next to the presenter while she talks live, on air. There’s nothing quite as paranoia-inducing as having to stick your hand up your skirt to feed a tiny microphone up inside when you are approximately 10 cm outside the range of a live camera.

By 10.30 am I’m crossing my legs and trying not to think about wanting to go to the toilet. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve uttered the words “sock suspenders” and appear to have a number of other pet phrases I trot out at regular intervals, which you will have heard if you were tuned into BBC radio Newcastle or Jersey or Cornwall. Mostly the presenters are kind, asking straightforward questions and seeming interested and friendly, despite the fact they are unlikely to have given Penguin’s press release more than a cursory glance. A couple of them actually quote sentences from the book, which I find impressive. And those that introduce me as petite anglais or petit anglaise - effectively transforming me into a shemale - are in the minority.

Then comes the unpleasant exception: a pre-recorded interview where I’m questioned by two clearly unsympathetic presenters, a man and a woman. The line of questioning is tough from the outset. ‘Wasn’t it completely insensitive of me to write about real people?’, they enquire. ‘What about Mr Frog’s feelings in all of this? And how do I think my daughter will feel when she reads it one day?’ Their tone and tack seem to indicate that they find the whole concept of blogging and memoir writing thoroughly distasteful.

I explain, patiently, that the book is dedicated to my daughter and her father, and that Mr Frog not only had to sign forms to say he was happy with the portrayal of his personal life but he actually enjoyed the finished product. Some parts more than others, obviously, and I had to make a few minor changes at his request. But overall I think he comes off well in the book. He’s a far more likeable character than the narrator, in my opinion, and is, arguably, the hero of the tale. As for Tadpole, I’m sure there will be moments in her teenage years when she will hate me for recounting her exploits or recording her sing. But will she squirm any more than I did when my parents got the baby photos out in front of guests? I’m willing to bet there will come a time when she’ll be pleased so much of her childhood has been preserved for posterity. In the same way that I now love the silent super8 films recorded by my granddad when I was little and wish that he’d made more.

By the end of the interview I feel as though my interrogators have thawed somewhat, and our chat ends on a pleasant note. The researcher comes back on the line and thanks me for my time, and for a few moments I can still hear the presenters wrapping up the interview with the usual ‘petite anglaise, published by Michael Joseph, is available in all good bookshops’.

But, when the recording is over, just before the line goes dead, I hear the woman say something to the man and my heart stops beating. It’s a word which was clearly not intended for my, now burning, ears. A word said so dismissively, so spitefully that it brings tears to my eyes. I whip the headphones off and stare at my Press officer (who has been sitting on a sofa in the corner throughout, also wearing headphones) in disbelief.

‘That presenter just called me a SLAPPER!’ I say, incredulously, unsure whether I’m about to laugh or cry. She looks horrified, but we don’t have time to talk as BBC Radio Ulster have just dialled in. Carrying on as though nothing were amiss requires every ounce of professionalism I possess, but somehow I manage to hold it together.

Next time we have a two-minute gap and our BBC contact man pops his head cheerily around the door, I recount what I heard earlier. He scurries off to investigate, then returns, armed with an apology and an explanation so far-fetched that I’m almost tempted to believe it.

They have their own brand of banter, the two presenters in question, you see. He always monopolises female guests, and talks to them in a different, slightly flirtier voice. And when he does so, once they are off the air, she’s in the habit of calling him a slapper. So it wasn’t directed at me; it wasn’t even about me. Allegedly.

Now, I have a friend I often refer to as ’slag’ to her face, with such an affectionate tone that it’s almost become a term of endearment.

But I can’t shake off the feeling that there was venom in the voice I overheard. I don’t think I believe that it was harmless banter. And although I shouldn’t care about the opinion of one ill-informed stranger, I find that I do.

The upshot of this is that, for me, the ‘S’ in GNS will forever be associated with the word ’slapper’. Which just leaves the small matter of the ‘G’ and ‘N’.

While I catch up on all the bits and pieces clogging up my inbox, I thought it might be worth pointing out that, having embarked on a whistle stop tour of a few London bookshops yesterday, signed copies of petite are now available from:

• Waterstone’s, Harrods
• Waterstone’s, 91 Oxford Street
• Waterstone’s, Garrick Street
• Waterstone’s, Trafalgar Square
• Blackwell’s, Charing Cross Road
• Selfridges
• Waterstone’s, 41 Oxford Street (Opposite Selfridges)
• Foyles, Charing Cross Road
• Foyles, St Pancras station

Signed copies are also available up North in:

• Little Apple bookshop, Petergate, York
• Waterstones, York
• Borders, York
• Waterstones, Albion Street, Leeds
• Borders, Briggate, Leeds

This picture was taken at the Foyles bookshop in St Pancras station at their official launch party, yesterday evening. I signed about 100 copies of the book in the time available before I had to check in for the last Eurostar, which meant forgoing the lovely canapés and declining a refill of champagne. (I think that’s called suffering for my art.)

It was lovely to hear that “petite” is one of their bestselling titles, and to see huge piles of my book prominently displayed in several different places around the shop.

If you are desperate to get your hands on a signed copy - and I’ve lost track of the number of people who have contacted me by email about this - and are not anywhere near London, Leeds or York then Philippa of Little Apple would be happy to arrange to post you a signed copy, while stocks last.

Appeal for help!

If anyone is able to grab the sound file from the BBC Radio Five Live interview with Victoria Derbyshire yesterday (Thursday 6 March, 2 hours and 14 minutes in) I’d be really grateful. Can’t work out how to do this using garageband…

Similarly the interview which starts about 35 minutes into today (Friday 6th)’s edition of the Tubridy show on RTE (quite long, quite personal, I get called a “bitch” at one point!) - I’d love to have a copy for posterity, as the listen again function is only there for a short time…

These are now all on the book press page.

More later…

Got to my hotel in London at 12.30 am last night, and am just about to throw on my clothes and head down to BBC Breakfast. If anyone is able to record my slot and pop it onto YouTube, I would be eternally grateful. (Thankfully I’m up near the end, just before 9 am. There had been talk of an earlier slot too, but the gods were smiling on me and some important news took precedent, earning me a couple of hours of extra lie-in).

If you have a radio on, there is a chance you might hear me today as I’m doing a ton of short, sharp local radio slots between 10am and 1pm. I doubt they could possibly rival my experience at BBC Radio York yesterday, where the previous guests had been a basketful of chuckling ferrets. (I kid you not.)

I’ll also be chatting to Victoria Derbyshire on Radio Five Live - somewhere in the region of 10.30-11.00 am. update: this is now happening today, Thursday 6 March.

Tune in (before I fade away).

When the nice lady from Woman’s Hour suggested I do a very short reading from the very first post on this blog, I’d forgotten it contained the phrases “par voie anale” and “ring sting”.

“What on earth is my mother going to say?” I gasped, wondering whether my (lovely) Penguin PR and her assistant (known, for one week only, as “petite’s bitches”) should stage some sort of an intervention.

You can listen again here (I was first up on the show, so it won’t take you long). Something appears to have gone wrong with the subtitling of the accompanying article, mind. There is no record deal in the works that I know of.

Am now making liberal use of the free wi-fi on my train to Leeds, and trying to rein in my excitement about meeting Harry Gration in the flesh later this evening. Also reading the Guardian Unlimited review.

Update: Look North is now scheduled to be pre-recorded tomorrow to air in the evening while I’m giving my book reading.

News programmes are tricky to predict, obviously, as breaking news items take precedence. Which is why I’m still waiting for proper confirmation about:

• BBC breakfast - Wednesday morning
• Radio Five Live (Victoria Derbyshire) - Wednesday morning
• Five News with Natasha Kaplinksy - Wednesday evening

Fingers crossed!

You can find me here, here and also podcasting (with accompanying slideshow in which a shopping trolley plays a starring role?!) here.

I do hope no one is reading one in my carriage on the Eurostar today.

This week has been oh so quiet.

I mean, yes, there were hundreds of emails flying back and forth, and I did have a couple of magazine pieces to finish off, but the fact that my book seems to be in many UK bookshops now (what do release dates actually mean and does anyone pay attention to them?) left me strangely unmoved.

I think it’s worth mentioning here (at the risk of attracting criticism that I am all about the hard sell) that although I don’t endorse any particular bookshop over another, Amazon do have “petite” as a deal of the week this week, meaning that it has a whopping 55% off. If you were planning to buy it, this seems like a good time to snap it up.

I also wanted to give you a heads up about some of the places you may be able to catch me next week, when I embark on a four day whirlwind book pimping trip in London, Leeds and York.

• You Magazine, in this Sunday’s Mail - an interview and book extract.
• This Sunday’s Observer (travel section) and online there should be some sort of associated web content. You’ll see…
• Monday morning, Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4.
• If I don’t miss my train (schedule is horrendously tight) I’ll also be on BBC Radio Leeds around 3.30pm and then interviewed on BBC Look North news programme around 6.30pm. (I’m from York, in case you are wondering about the choice of towns. There is a logic to this…)

There’s much more in the pipeline, and I’ll try and update the blog and press page as much as possible while I’m sitting on trains next Monday and Tuesday. For the TV bits, if you are in possession of the kind of technology that enables you to record snippets of TV and post them to YouTube, it might be fun to share some of the upcoming TV appearances (more info to follow) with my non Yorkshire/UK public.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to make a final DESPERATE PLEA to anyone reading this who lives within striking distance of York Library. I’m doing a small, low-key reading/book signing on Tuesday evening (info here) and this is a ticketed event. So far it looks as though I’ll be reading to a small group comprising mostly family members and fielding questions from my grandma. Help!

Today I will be mostly taking deliveries of (indecent amounts of) champagne, ice (60 kilos thereof, destined for the bathtub), and assisting my caterer, the lovely Meg, with the assembly of some very complicated-looking canapés.

Because I had to celebrate this book coming out thing just a little bit, didn’t I? So I’m throwing a little party.

update: My very first review! Ooh!

NB:  The Paris signing on 20 March is not a ticketed event but, in order to give WH Smiths an idea of numbers for room layout and enable them to stock up on sensible amounts of wine, it is recommended you sign up here.

I’ll be writing some blog posts for Amazon.co.uk over the coming weeks, and you’ll find the first one - the story behind the Sunday Times red dress photo shoot (much less glamorous than it may have looked) - here.

A big thank you to those readers who sent me emails to tell me you found a copy in your local supermarket, or your pre-ordered copy thudded onto your doormat on Saturday morning… It felt very odd, this weekend, imagining all those eyes on my book…

Once you have read it, I’d love to hear your feedback. One of the weirdest things about writing a book, for me, has been having to work on the manuscript for many months in isolation, offline, without any feedback from my ‘regulars’. When you’ve got used to writing blog posts, pressing “publish” and getting the first comment within five minutes, this feels very odd indeed.

My facebook page is be a good place to leave your review, or you might consider writing one here.

I’m saddened by some of the ugly reviews already received on the Amazon page. Not because I imagine everyone will love it. Of course I don’t. Petite Anglaise may not be everyone’s cup of tea, and I can handle that. But I have reason to believe some of these reviewers haven’t actually read the book. One, in particular, repeats almost verbatim an unpleasant comment left on the Sunday Times website and, given the person hated the extracts, I find it hard to imagine she rushed out to procure herself a copy of the book and read it so quickly. Hardly constructive criticism, that.

Ah well. Trolls will be trolls.

Ooh.

A little bird has just told me that “petite” is on sale in France RIGHT THIS MINUTE in the following bookshops:

• W H Smith, Paris
• Red Wheelbarrow, Paris
• Galignani, Paris
• Brentanos, Paris
• Gibert Jeune, Paris
• Shakespeare & Cie, Paris
• Decitre, Lyon
• Mollat, Bordeaux
• Kleber, Strasbourg

I’m feeling a little faint.

Just a little heads up to say that if you happen to buy a copy of the Sunday Times this weekend, you are likely to find a shivering, goose-pimpled petite in a sheer red dress posing on a Paris roof terrace lurking somewhere inside the news review section…

This is not an article written by me, but a serialisation of the book. Which means that the extracts were not selected by me, and are taken somewhat out of their context, knitted together to make a (more or less) coherent whole. So while it’s great exposure, and I’m grateful to the ST for supporting “petite”, I think the portrayal of me may be a little skewed.

Part two of the serialisation will be in next Sunday’s edition.

I’m not sure Tadpole really comprehends how I came to be there:

I’ve created a facebook page, where I’ll be posting press links, book covers and book tour news, and where readers can leave reviews/comments. If you want to become a “fan” on facebook, the page is here. You may enjoy scrolling through to see if you can guess which one of my current “fans” is my future husband.

Photo ©Alistair Miller

The Dutch version of petite anglaise, published by Cargo, goes on sale today in The Netherlands and Belgium.

Leafing through my copy, I must say I like the way the translator has kept ‘Mr Frog’ and ‘Tadpole’ in English with a little explanatory note on the first page. The cover blurb appears to shave a year off my age (no bad thing for a lady) and, using the little German I can remember (not a great deal considering I studied the language, alongside French, to degree level), I was able to limp through a page or two before I lost patience.

If you speak Dutch and would like to get hold of a copy, it should be available in all good bookshops and can also be ordered online - morgen in huis - here.

You can find the bits and bobs written in the Dutch press here.

To “win” a signed copy (I have a spare!), leave a comment in Dutch in the box below (with a valid email address) and I will pick a name out of a hat in a week’s time.

I’m sure it’s normal, a matter of days before a piece of me goes on sale in bookshops, to fall prey to the jitters.

So far, those who have read “petite” all said complimentary things. Admittedly these were people who were supposed to be on my side - agent, publisher, friends, family - but I’m also beginning to hear feedback from interviewers/reviewers and people in the book trade who’ve seen an advance copy. It’s surreal when they say they liked it. I’m never sure how to respond. I suppose I should say ‘thank you?’, although my first impulse is to say ‘really? Are you sure? Why?’

I think I’ve had to read and re-read my own manuscript so many times in the course of the publication process that objectivity went out of the window long ago.

However my jitters have nothing to do with Joe Public reading “petite”. My nervousness is centred on what one particular person will think of it. Of my work. Of me.

You probably think it’s odd that The Boy, of all people, hasn’t yet read it yet. To be fair, it’s not out of indifference on his part, it’s due to a combination of me not wanting him to read it until it was fully finished/copy edited/proofed/corrected and him saying he preferred to wait until it was printed in its final form, with its cover on. I suspect both of us were putting off the inevitable. But now that I have a whole carton full of hardbacks sitting on the floor at the foot of my bed the inevitable can be put off no more.

‘Nice paper,’ he said when he got home from work and I handed him a copy. ‘And look, they’ve embossed the writing, it stands out more than it did on that proof copy you showed me before…’ He paused, looked at me intently. ‘So, I’m allowed to read it now, am I? Finally?’

‘Yes,’ I said, chewing my lip. ‘But, um, not when I’m actually here. I mean, I couldn’t stand it if you were reading it next to me, giving me sidelong glances. It would be excruciating.’

Since we’ve spent every evening together since, and he works all day, he hasn’t had chance to open it yet. (The métro to work is exclusively reserved for the ritual of Libération.)

Why am I so nervous? Well, frankly I doubt the book I’ve written is really his cup of tea. His favourite authors are people like Álvaro Mutis and Borges, at opposite end of the lowbrow/highbrow spectrum. Then there is the language barrier, which means he will understand the gist of the story, but he’s the first to admit that he’s unlikely to fully appreciate my style or voice, and nuances of meaning will be lost on him.

Top of my worry list, however, is the ‘Too Much Information’ factor. Which is why one of my favourite masochistic pastimes, at the moment, is imagining The Boy’s internal dialogue as he turns the pages.

‘Ah yes, she can be annoying like that,’ he thinks to himself, a lightbulb flickering on above his head. ‘So it’s not just with me, then…’

or

‘Oh, she used that line on me once!’

or

‘Ew, that bit was corny…’

I decided to ask him to read it when I’m a safe distance away, in England in early March, busy with promotion and too distracted to think about Him Reading My Book. This means, of course, that I’m deferring the inevitable for another whole month.

And when the deed is done, if he doesn’t like it, what then? Would I prefer him to be honest, and explain why? Or should he lie through his teeth if he wants to continue sharing my bed?

The Boy and I were able to focus some energy this weekend on finalising a series of simple banners to promote the upcoming publication of “petite anglaise”. Or should I say, The Boy did the work, while I regularly plied him with coffee, junk food and sexual favours in return for his hard graft.

You can see an example in the sidebar to your right. I rather like it.

Just in case you’ve been in Outer Mongolia for the past few months, the UK version of “petite” will be on sale from 6 March in various territories which the outdated term ‘commonwealth’ still refers to in the world of publishing, including South Africa, Australia and English language bookshops throughout Europe.

If you would like to adopt a banner, I’ve created two pages where you can view them and copy the code you will need to paste into your blog template. The only difference being that the first links to the book page on Amazon UK when clicked, the second to Amazon France.

Having lost the best part of the day fiddling with these, I suppose I’d better take myself off and do some writing now…

It’s a surreal experience reading my book translated into American.

I mean, I knew that you people over the Atlantic say diaper instead of nappy, stroller instead of pushchair, sidewalk instead of pavement and elevator instead of lift, but until I started reading the copy edits for the US manuscript, I hadn’t really noticed all the other spelling variations, or the slightly different punctuation rules for speech.

The copy editor has been scarily meticulous, converting metric measurements back into Imperial, subsituting millions of s’s for z’s and assiduously removing the unwanted u’s from colour, flavour, or humour. There are double l’s which have become single, ph’s which have become f’s (drafty? really?), fringes which have morphed into bangs (ahem)…

And who knew that Incey Wincey spider is actually sung ‘Itsy Bitsy spider’ in American? If you ever watched UK children’s TV programme ‘Paperplay’, you’ll fully understand why I had an epiphany when I read that part.

So far, there is one thing I intend to dig in my heels about, and that is the proposed use of the word ‘mommy’. Every instance of ‘mummy’ gets a resounding STET from me. I mean, I can relate to making the manuscript comprehensible to the American masses, but I dare to hope that ‘mummy’ will be understood without modification. Because putting that word in Tadpole’s mouth is Just Plain Wrong.

Taking a random American tome from my bookshelf - American Psycho, as it happens, and I wish I hadn’t opened it to the page where the rat features - I scanned the pages this evening to see whether it too had been translated for an English audience. I have to say, it looked pretty American to me - I spotted a ‘gotten’ within the first thirty seconds, a ‘newsstand’ and a ‘busboy’. (I also realised how dated that book now is. Someone calls a restaurant on a portaphone…)

So why is it that British people prefer to read American books exactly as their authors intended, but books written in British English need to undergo an intensive word substitution exercise to make them fit for American consumption?

While you ponder that question, I’ll just get back to puzzling over why ‘plonked’ has been changed to ‘plunked’…

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.

In between having a final look at the revised proofs for “petite” and fielding emails about things related to the publication/publicity of the same in various territories I’m mostly playing around with lots of ideas related to book two at the moment.

The contracts I signed back in October last year referred to book two simply as “untitled work, 80-100,000 words, fiction or non fiction”. My agent had explained when we first met that it was common for publishers to sign a new writer up for two books, and that this would be a good option to take as long as I didn’t find the prospect too daunting. I did find it daunting, terribly so, but I was also very conscious that I wanted to be seen as more than just “petite anglaise”, so I bit the bullet. There followed many months where I did my very best to bury my head in the sand and put “untitled” out of my mind completely. The December 2008 deadline seemed an awfully long way away, and I had more pressing matters to attend to, such as writing book one.

Luckily the germ of an idea was born while I was working on my memoir, and began quietly taking shape in my mind while I was occupied doing other things. So when I sat down to start defining book two in September, I realised I was in possession of a fairly clear idea of the overarching story and that I had an awful lot I wanted to say. I can’t tell you how relieved I felt when I started noting down scores of possible scenes and wore my pencil down to a stub.

So, here I am, after several months of editing and proofing (and holidays), back in the writing saddle again. Back to counting words obsessively and calculating how much they represent as a fraction of the Whole Thing. Back to printing out the work so far so that I can see that the stack of papers is slowly growing thicker, and looking more manuscript-like. Back to scribbling fragments of sentences in my notebook and on post it notes when I think of something I desperately want to use somehow.

In some ways it’s easier because I’ve done it once before. I know what normal is, for me. I know that there will be days when I’ll spew out a thousand words, others where I’ll manage only half that amount, and others still where I’ll find myself obsessively re-writing a previous section, losing all track of time and agonising over a single sentence for half an hour or more. I know that there will be phrases that float to the front of my mind and make me laugh out loud with glee when I think of them, but that these may or may not seem good by the time I get to the final draft, and may not even make the final cut.

What I don’t have, as yet, is a title for book two, 80-100,000 words, fiction.

So in the interests of making the little yellow folder on my desktop seem a non-threatening place, I’ve given it the working title of “motherfucker”, or “MF”, for short. My sincere apologies if this language offends anyone, but personally, it brings a smile to my lips every time I see it. I should hasten to add that this title shouldn’t be taken as an indication that I intend to encroach on OneTrack territory. Not at all. I’m quite happy to leave the sex writing to the sexperts. The only clue to be gleaned from this title, if any, is that the protagonist may just be a mother.

This codename makes me smile because it calls to mind an exchange I had with The Boy a couple of weeks after we first met. We were talking about our respective families, and it transpired that his mother and I had several things in common. A shared Christian name. A shared profession. Single parenthood.

“Motherfucker,” I said with a snigger, without giving any explanation whatsoever.

The Boy frowned at first, unsure of just what he had done to deserve such an insult, but then in a blinding flash he suddenly grasped my meaning. Oddly, before I pointed it out to him, he hadn’t joined the dots himself; hadn’t realised that he appeared to have selected a mate who rather resembled his mother.

He retorted by calling me his MILF, a term which required a degree of explanation, given that I am something of a porn philistine.

I’m not sure exactly what I expected when invited to take afternoon tea at The Wolseley with the non fiction “tzar” from a well known UK bookseller’s.

Clotted cream, scones and gleaming silverwear, certainly. Champagne was an unexpected, but not unwelcome surprise. Banter peppered with references to various celebutards and their ghostwritten “auto”biographies seemed par for the course.

This is delightful, I thought to myself, scanning the room with interest. You can’t take the Heat reader out of this girl, no matter how posh a frock she’s donned for the occasion.

But a lengthy discussion about why most women seem blissfully unaware of their correct cup size and persist in wearing ill-fitting bras for life? Whatever I did expect, it certainly wasn’t three women and one man putting their heads together to puzzle over why the soutien gorge (why gorge incidentally? French reader?) can be sized double D or double A, but you never clap eyes on a BB or a CC?

As I clattered down the steps into Green Park station to catch yet another Eurostar, clutching our leftover cakes in their immaculate cardboard box, I smiled to myself.

It just goes to show that one never can be fully prepared for meetings.

I just received the final version of the US cover, designed by Bo Lundberg - front panel above, full wraparound version below (publication set for summer 2008 - Spiegel & Grau). The Boy quite rightly pointed out that there are echoes of these opening credits.

If someone had told me just over a year ago that I’d be depicted wearing high heels - and possibly in the altogether, although it’s difficult to ascertain for sure - leaning against the Eiffel Tower on the front of a book (let alone MY book), I wouldn’t have believed it for a minute.

Comme quoi, life really can be stranger than fiction.

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Once upon a time, a very puzzled petite anglaise found an email from a certain Raymond Delauney in her inbox. It nestled in amongst all manner of bona fide correspondence from literary agents and publishers (a surreal situation, in itself) and I blush to admit that I sent a curt answer to the first one, taking it at face value, even though Raymond referred to me as “Kid” and it included such gems as: “I’ll get you a book deal, sunshine, but I’ll need a slice of the pie. You’re a good looking cookie and pretty smart too. I’ve seen your type before and I know exactly how to handle artistic types…” After the second email, however, the penny dropped and I decided that one of my virtual friends was pulling my leg - see this post - and did my best to unmask the scamster (to no avail).

Imagine my amusement when “Raymond” contacted me to ask whether I might give permission for our email exchange to be used in his book - a collection of spoof emails sent to individuals around the world…

I haven’t read it - my free copy is in the post - but the concept amuses me no end, and reminds me of another book I stumbled across recently, ‘Delete this at your peril’ by Bob Servant, a collection of emails between a (fictional) retired builder from Dundee and the spammers he attempted to lead up the garden path.

Seems like a new genre is emerging. Email Anthologies. Whatever next? Books of MSN transcripts?

Proofreading is terminally dull.

Not only is it dull, but the process manages to instil in me all manner of doubt about whether any of the sentences I have written are actually any good at all.

My mother, who kindly volunteered to proofread my book in parallel on account of her eagle eyes and innate pedanticism (probably not a real word) telephones once a day so that we can amalgamate our corrections onto one manuscript. While I am extremely grateful for her help - she spotted a clanger I had missed which made me howl with embarrassment yesterday - it is an excruciating process which reminds me of when she used to re-read my English essays when I was a not very sweet - in fact mostly surly - sixteen.

“I’m a bit concerned about the phrase ‘clapped eyes on’ in paragraph five on page 35,” she says. “Isn’t that a bit too slangy and colloquial?”

“Er, I don’t think so,” I say, trying not to sound too sulky and defensive, “and the people who have read it already, like the nice bookseller who emailed me on facebook the other day to say she’d read one of those advance copies of the almost-finished-but-not really-copy edited-yet book said that she really liked the conversational tone. So I think it’s a good thing. Probably.”

“Oh, right,” says mother doubtfully. “Well, if you’re sure.”

I’m not sure. I couldn’t be less sure. In fact I no longer know what to think. I remember once having to write “gone away” on an enormous pile of post which had stacked up for some complete stranger at my student digs over the summer holidays. By envelope number forty-three, I stopped and began chewing the end of my Biro. I was suddenly no longer convinced that “gone” was really a word at all, and if it was, could that really be the correct spelling? If you write a word over and over again or think about it for too long, it inevitably starts seeming wrong, I find. I do believe I had to fetch a dictionary and verify the past participle of “to go” before I was able to continue.

All of which is a long-winded way of telling you that this week I am mostly forcing myself to re-read the manuscript very very slowly, taking regular breaks in the interests of sanity preservation, and having not infrequent crises of confidence.

The proof copy came in the post today… A paperback version of the manuscript, which is not quite the final version as it was printed prior to the copy edits. On the back there is all sorts of marketing blurb. But it almost looks like the real thing…

Disclaimer: the enlarged state of my pupils is not solely due to the excitement of receiving the proof copy, I also visited the optician this morning for an eye exam.

On a whim, this morning, I typed “petite anglaise” into Amazon.co.uk and look what I found…

Seeing it gave me an enormous jolt. I think only now am I starting to believe this is really happening…

Publication is currently set for late February 2008 in the UK, to follow in the US and Canada in the summer of 2008. For full information on all book related stuff, you can sign up for the mailing list here:

This is a dedicated mailing list to which only I, as administrator, can send email updates, so you will not be inundated with junk mail if you opt in. I will use this list to send a monthly update email with info about publication dates elsewhere in Europe, places where articles are set to appear, and so forth…

Now, while I get stuck into the copy edits, something tells me my comments box is about to be deluged with opinions about the cover…

I have it on good authority that about 480 copies of this wonderful compendium of funnies from the British blogosphere (including my own rather smutty entry) have now been sold, with the proceeds going to Comic Relief.

But wouldn’t it be so much more fun if we could say 500?

Go on. You know you want to!

And yes, I do like to wear my “you’re fired” t-shirt as pyjamas.

So, I made the 20H on TF1 today.

Tadpole cried all the way through it (because I dared to put my finger to my lips and say “shhh”) so I didn’t actually hear a great deal the first time around. I just moaned “oh god, why did I have to be having a bad skin day?” over and over again. And rocked back and forth in the foetal position on my (now very famous) scarlet bed.

I just can’t believe they cut the part where I was accosted by a harmonica playing madman in the bar, or the wonderful sequence in which I bought a nice, ripe melon from the fruit and veg store. Or the very staged scene where I pretended to tidy Tadpole’s bedroom. But all in all, not bad. And yes, my lovely editor is French too, even though she works for Penguin in England…

NB The cover image you can see at the end is the picture I used for the front page of my book proposal - it’s an illustration by the super talented Lucy Pepper.

Big thanks to my good friend Rhino75 who worked the YouTube magic in close collaboration with the one and only Miss Kitty.

——————————————————————

Version française rapide pour les visiteurs français:

Au lit avec petite

Et oui, finalement j’ai passé au 20H de TF1 aujourd’hui.

Tadpole (ma fille) a pleuré pendant tout le long (parce que j’ai osé lui dire “chut!”, la main sur les lèvres) et donc je n’ai pas entendu grande chose au premier visionnage. Je me suis simplement contentée de répéter “mais pourquoi je devais avoir une si mauvaise peau ce jour-là?” plusieurs fois, avant de me mettre dans la position foetale sur mon lit écarlate désormais célèbre.

Je n’arrive pas à croire qu’ils ont coupé la séquence où j’ai été pris en ôtage par un fou jouant son harmonica dans le bar (il voulait vraiment me voler la vedette ce monsieur, il fallait le voir); ainsi que la scène où j’ai acheté un melon bien mûr au vendeur de fruits et légumes. Ou encore le passage (truqué) où j’ai rangé des jouets dans la chambre de ma fille. Mais en gros, pas si mal. Et oui, en effet, mon éditrice Katy est une française, travaillant pour Penguin à Londres…

NB L’image de la fin est la couverture de la proposition de livre que j’ai préparé l’été dernier, avec une image conçue par la très talentueuse Lucy Pepper.

Would any of my kind readers be willing to record the Journal Télévisé de 20H on TF1 on Saturday and Sunday and let me have a copy? A film crew are on their way - how much shall we bet that I am asked to stand chatting in the kitchen while making a cup of tea? - and I will no doubt end up being one of those end fillers that provide light entertainment after all the serious presidential election talk. But I’m not 100% sure which day it will be broadcast.

Clearly if anyone is savvy enough to pop the segment on YouTube, that would be even better, so I can link to it here.

I’ll just go back to my quaking now. I hate cameras. I hate video cameras even more. And obviously it’s in French. Eeek.

Sometimes, on the nights when Mr Frog would come home late from work, I would pounce, ravenous for conversation after several hours of pacing the apartment alone like a caged animal while baby Tadpole slept. I would talk and talk and talk until he protested, hands on ears, saying “my head is fool”.

(He meant full. Distinguishing between certain English vowels can be very tough for a French person).

Right now my head is so full with book that I’m having a tough time freeing it up to blog. I’m working on draft two, and there are days when I’m intimidated by how much more there is write/tweak/fiddle with before July. I’ve imposed an early May deadline on myself for delivery of the next draft, but have had a steady stream of lovely visitors lately, with more to come. The good news about the tribunal also brought lots of French journalists out of the woodwork, another distraction which I need to ruthlessly nip in the bud if I’m to concentrate on what is most important to me.

So this week I intend to keep my head down and stay very, very focused. I hope you will excuse me if that means things are a little quiet around here.

On Saturday I hopped onto a Eurostar bound for London town, my destination being the fifth floor bar of Waterstones Piccadilly, where I was meeting a group of people I’d recently got to know in cyberspace. Not just bloggers like me this time, but also published writers, or writers in the process of getting published, all of whom happen to have blogs. We met on a forum, gaily bounced messages back and forth for a couple of months, and then, finally, decided to meet face to face.

Once we’d finished ripping apart the bad literary jokes in the drinks menu (”Tequila Mockingbird” anyone? Some wine from the “Grape’s of Wrath” section?) we got down to the nitty gritty: moaning about authors having little say over jackets (far less input than, say, the buyers at Tesco), talking about how we cope with solitude, the art of procrastination (just why is it that when you find yourself doing the thing you thought you always wanted - i.e. writing for a living - suddenly, scrubbing the inside of the oven seems like the most enticing job in the world?), self-doubt and the highs and lows of the editing process (best editorial feedback story I heard began with the immortal words: “well, it’s just about salvageable”).

I came away feeling prepared for the worst (the horror stories live up to their name), but above all thinking what a nice and reassuringly normal bunch of people they all were. Not intimidating at all, the more experienced among them very willing to share their experiences and wisdom with the novices like myself.

The people whose blogs are completely divorced from their subject matter were fascinated by how I coped with using personal experiences in my writing. “But any negative criticism your book gets, you’ll feel like it is directed at you as a person!” one woman said, looking horrified on my behalf. I know. I think about this a lot, and I’m steeling myself, mentally, for this eventuality. On the other hand, I know that in order to write about events, I inevitably take one step away from them. Who tells a story without embellishing it slightly, all the better to provoke laughter or tears? Nobody can remember entire sentences word for word, so every conversation in a memoir is an artificial construction. Memories are coloured and tainted by what we know, with hindsight, came afterwards.

Later that day, a friend asked me whether I was still in touch with Jim in Rennes and I explained that no, I found it impossible. I’ve spent a fair amount of time writing about him lately, and to do so I found I needed to think of him as a fictional character. Talking on the phone, exchanging emails would have burst my fiction bubble, so I simply didn’t do it. Maybe I’ll resume contact with him one day, when this is all over. Who knows. Luckily I don’t feel this way when I write about Tadpole or Mr Frog, as that would be problematic, to say the least…

I haven’t talked much about my work in progress here, out of some sort of uncharacteristically superstitious feeling that I might jinx it, or wake up and realise the whole thing was actually just a rather pleasant dream. But here’s the deal: I’m working on chapter 25 of 30, hoping to finish the first draft by the end of this month, after which I’ll start the editing and re-writing process, with some input from my editor at Penguin, my agent, my mum, and most probably a few friends whose judgement I value and trust. I haven’t seen a cover yet, and the publication date is hovering uncertainly somewhere between January and April 2008 right now (which could make Christmas 2007 very interesting indeed).

All in all, I think I will be glad when this thing is written, so I can move onto new (most likely fictional) territory and take a much bigger step away from my own life. But as far as “petite anglaise” is concerned, as long as I derive pleasure from recording the everyday, the Tadpole stories, the navel-gazing, this blog will continue to be a part of my life, and my identity.

doodle courtesy of, and © Andre Jordan.