Using all my limited skills with Imovie, I've improved the sound quality of the short film in which I am verbally harassed by a lady who looks like Carla Bruni, and I've posted the new version on YouTube. You should now be able to hear to the dialogue, even though it's not exactly deafening. Here's the link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KOPB8745Dw
A friend (a real one, whom I see in the flesh, not a virtual entity that I prod or poke or whatever) tells me that I am on Facebook, that I have a page and regularly post messages, reply to messages on my wall and get poked or prodded or whatever. But I don't, unless I signed up in my sleep or something. It's not moi. I haven't looked, but apparently the person "representing" me in Facebookworld is very nice and says good things about the books, so I don't want to emit too much negativity, but please be aware that if you want to write to me or poke me or whatever, you need to do so via this website's address, contact@stephenclarkewriter.com.
I'll be reading from my new novel, Dial M for Merde, at the Abbey Bookshop, rue de la Parcheminerie, 75005 Paris, at 8pm on Friday November 7. If it's not raining and there are no glaciers migrating down the street, the reading will be outside, otherwise it'll be indoors and there's so little space you might need to bring a trapeze so you can hang from the ceiling. I'll be signing books afterwards, or even before if you can't be bothered to hear me read what you're about to read for yourself.
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I have been asked to make the following declaration. Please be sure to watch this 30-second film before reading, or even opening, my new novel Dial M for Merde.
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I was in a Parisian park, getting ready to film my short message about Dial M for Merde, when an unknown woman came up and started bawling me out about the novel. Well, I say she was unknown, but I think she might have been very well known indeed ...
Have a look. We hadn't set up completely, so the sound on this clip isn't great. I'll try to improve it.
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A few events have been scheduled for when I come over to the UK to plug Dial M for Merde:
Monday 8 Sept, noon, literary lunch at Calcot Manor in the Cotswolds. It's a spa so you can go and have a massage if I get too boring.
Tuesday 9 Sept, 6pm, Borders bookshop in York. Tickets are £2 but are redeemable if you buy a book. One of mine, that is. I hope.
Wednesday 10 Sept, 7pm, Beaconsfield Library. Support your local library. Or even your non-local one if you want to come along from elsewhere.
Thursday 11 Sept, 6.30pm, Waterstone's in Cambridge. This seems to be the only event that has a finishing time – 8pm – maybe to reassure literature dons that they'll be back at high table in time for dinner.
Friday 12 Sept, 8pm, Emirates Stadium, London, a full reading of the novel performed by Hugh Grant, with U2 and Coldplay as support acts.
Spot the fake event.
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I haven't got my hands on the actual book yet, but I've seen the cover, which is fun (look out for the strategically placed snorkel), and I've just finished correcting the proofs – the last amendment being a legal disclaimer along the lines of "how dare anyone allege that this novel makes fun of the current French President". You can read all about it in the "Books" section of the website. Meanwhile, I'll be over in the UK to do some readings in the second week of September. The only firm date so far is the Witney Book Festival on the 6th. (Er, which, writing a week later, has just been called off. So that's not "firm" in the "firm" sense of the word "firm". Sad, I love book festivals.)
This seems to be my year of nominations – one of my travel articles about America has been nominated for a Visit USA Media Award. I'm not sure which one, but I suspect it's one of the road trips I did while researching Merde Happens, either the long drive along Carolina's aptly-named Outer Islands in search of fishermen who speak with Cornish accents, or the trek across Florida when I found a gun and had a car crash. Well, on second thoughts it's more likely to be the Carolina trip. Even though the car crash was fun, and everyone was much more laid-back and Floridian than they would have been in Paris. You can probably find both articles on the timesonline.co.uk website.
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Merde Happens has been shortlisted for the Melissa Nathan Award. It's an excellent award, set up in honour of the writer of the same name who died of cancer in 2006. She conceived the criteria for the prize herself, and wanted to reward writers who "combine in a novel the magical, life-enhancing moments of humour and love". I'd never thought of Paul West's emotional stumblings like this, but I am hugely pleased to be nominated for a prize for being "life-enhancing" – you can't ask for more from a novel. The funny thing is that I'm the only male nominee, chosen moreover by an all-female jury. It's like being the only bloke invited to a hen party – a great honour, but a little scary. More seriously, reading Melissa's criteria for the award struck a real chord. On the website (see the link below), she is quoted as saying that: "Sharing a sense of humour with someone, laughing out loud at a joke in a book – these are moments of pure connection." It's the thing that people most often say to me in their e-mails – how good it felt to laugh out loud at a book. And the laughs are what I remember most from my favourite books, like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams RIP). The award ceremony is on June 18, hosted by stand-up Jo Brand, who is apparently quite nice to men these days. So fingers, toes, kidneys and various other bits crossed ...
Just in case anyone out there is interested, I've now finished the next novel, and it's being typeset. It's a spoof thriller set in the south of France, where I spent a large part of the autumn, and it's called Dial M for Merde. Here's a short excerpt:
"Bonjour."
Well I did say it was short. The rest will be out in September.
I've been invited to the Comédie du Livre book festival in Montpellier, and will be signing books (I hope) at the Book In Bar stand. With any luck, the emphasis will be on the "bar" and the rosé will be flowing, though I can't guarantee that, so it might be a case of bring a book and a bottle (chilled, please. The bottle, that is. The book should be room temperature). I have also been asked to take part in a "round table" on the theme "The French Experience" (followed by a very long French subtitle) on the Sunday at 4pm at the Salle Molière. I hope to find out where that is before 4pm on Sunday June 1. Meanwhile, click here to see the full title of the debate:
http://comediedulivre.montpellier.fr/pages/?page=349&id_page=1196
I'll be talking and signing books at this weekend festival of Anglo-Dordognesque co-operation in Périgueux on April 4 and 5. Here's a link that might explain what I'm talking about:
I'll be signing books (my own, I hope) at the Paris Book Fair, on the Robert Laffont stand - G56 - on Sunday 16 March at 2pm. You can bring your English books along, too, of course, or anything you want signed so you can sell it on eBay.
Anyone who can understand German, or my mangled brand of it, which sounds like an illiterate Frenchman trying to speak Bavarian, might like to come along to my event at the Leipzig Book Festival. It's happening at Lehmanns Buchhandlung, at 20:15 Uhr, on the 12th of Marz.
The festival's bookshop bills it like this: "der Bestsellerautor und Franzosenversteher erklärt in witzigen, informativen und ernsthaft brauchbaren Lektionen, wie man die Weihen der französischen Lebensart erlangt."
I couldn't have put it better myself.
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You can see me freezing half to death on French TV during this hour-long interview, filmed just before Christmas, outdoors in a garden during an Arctic windstorm. (It's probably as a tribute to my survival skills that the website calls me "Docteur" in the attached photo.) I was wearing every piece of clothing I own, but the poor presenter was kitted out in a sexy tight leather jacket, suffering, as the French say, to be beautiful. It's an interview about the publication of God Save les Françaises, the translation of Merde Actually. You can see it here: http://limousin-poitou-charentes.france3.fr/emissions/30036019-fr.php
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On Friday January 18, I'll be doing a reading in London at a French bookshop called Au Fil des Mots, at 19 Bute Street, South Kensington, in the French ghetto near the V&A. I'll be reading from God Save les Françaises, the newly released translation of Merde Actually, and signing whatever people ask me to sign. Within reason, of course.
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I'll be talking about the pleasures of life amongst the French, and then signing books, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday 18-20 January at this year's France Show at Olympia, London. The talks will be from 11-11.30am, followed by signing from 12-2pm, on the Siblu stand, number B3. Here's how to get to the France Show: http://www.thefranceshow.com/find-us.aspx. Entrance to the event is £8.
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This is moi in my role as a roving reporter for a new French TV programme called Johnny Saucisson. It'll be on Canal + from 24-28 December at 6.15pm French time. I'm one of five Anglo-Americans who were sent out with film crews to "discover" France. Amongst other things, I met the French MPs' pétanque club (and beat them at their own game), talked to a Parisian health inspector who explained why it is good to live with bacteria, and interviewed members of the Académie Française who are putting together the official dictionary of the French language, and who have only got as far as the letter P. So officially, no French words beyond that actually exist. Zut alors.
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The French translation of Merde Actually is out! It's only taken them two and a bit years. Most of that was taken up designing the woman's shoes on the cover. Worth the wait, I'd say.