It's official - Dial M for Merde is a crime novel. It's just got its first review on a crime fiction website. This is very satisfying, because the crime writing community is very choosy about who(m) it accepts inside its heavily guarded, CCTV'd portals.
Here's a link for an interview I did while I was in York to give a talk and read from Dial M for Merde. A journalist from the Yorkshire Post, Sarah Walters, asks some nice, probing questions about my books, life in France, and how I've survived for so long amongst the Parisians ...
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/outloud/Dial-M-for-Merde-.4486709.jp
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This is from the Bookseller magazine, the book trade's specialist publication.
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From 16-20 April, I was in Poland doing interviews and events. I always feel comfortable in countries where they produce beer, and did my best to do justice to the local liquid culture. Here's a photo taken during a question-answer session, before any beer had been consumed. Although I obviously didn't notice that I was giving my talk to a row of empty chairs.
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This chatroom session in French lasted an hour, but took the poor people at the website hours to clean up because I didn't use accents - I did it as a joke, being a Brit, and then felt guilty because they took the immense trouble to get them all right.
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A discussion show on France 24 TV about the new French laws against smoking in cafés and restaurants. I was invited as a neutral, though I must admit that it is a source of never-ending delight to see people going outside to smoke at lunchtime instead of staying indoors to add a smoky taste to my crême brûlée. The pro-smokers were saying that it is the end of freedom in France, that it's just like the Nazi occupation, etc. One of the speakers was a café owner who has refused to ban smoking in his café, although he himself is a non-smoker. What a country. If you want to watch the debate, here's the link:
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Yes, I speak French. This is an interview for the French release of God Save les Françaises, the translation of Merde Actually. Here's the link : http://www.france24.com/france24Public/fr/archives/debats/20071121-entretien-sephen-clarke-journaliste-ecrivain.html
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A two-minute film for the Meet the Author website. OK, the director said, talk to me about your book for 120 seconds without hesitation, repetition or deviation. I'm afraid I broke the rules, as you will see ...
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Here's the "photo" of Paul West that I created for the back cover of my original self-published version of A Year in the Merde. The face is a model from a clothing catalogue with (the secret ingredient) Hugh Grant's eyes pasted on top. )
The bestsellers at Brentano's, an American bookshop in Paris, in June 2004. My original edition of "A Year" was at number one. These were all books that I'd delivered myself in a shopping trolley, so I literally felt how momentous this was. And Paul West, more popular than Bill Clinton, the most charismatic president since Kennedy, a man with the might of the world publishing industry behind him? I was beginning to think that my little book might be a hit.
Here are some UK bestseller lists for August 2007. Look at the right-hand chart, the top ten comedy books. All of them are Simpsons movie offshoots, except one – Talk to the Snail. Me in the same chart as my role model Homer Simpson, a moment to savour.
The first article in the British national press: