HIDDEN IN PARIS: AN AUTHOR INTERVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

GIVEAWAY ENDED

HIDDEN IN PARIS

BY CORINE GANTZ

ABOUT THE BOOK:

“In a tale of friendship, self-discovery and love, three women running away from their lives become unlikely friends in a beautiful house in the heart of Paris.” 

Lost in France, a country she mistrusts, among French people she hardly understands, Annie has trouble venturing away from home since the death of her husband. And since home happens to be a small jewel of a house nestled in the heart of Paris, why would she ever want to? But when bankruptcy threatens her beloved house, her one anchor in life, Annie has no choice but to find renters, and quick.

Leave it to someone socially phobic to phrase a want ad in all the wrong ways.  With shimmering promises of ‘Starting over in Paris’ –– a concept she has no intention of applying to her own life––Annie attracts tenants with the kind of baggage that doesn’t fit in suitcases. A long-legged, cool-headed ex model (everything Annie is definitely not) on the run from her abusive husband, a frail young woman harboring a possible death wish, a mysterious French artist, and an infuriating blue-blooded French man soon threaten Annie’s way of life in ways she never anticipated. 

But when Annie finds herself reluctantly yet actively engaged in the rescue of her tenants, she discovers that she might just save herself in the process.

EXCERPT FROM HIDDEN IN PARIS:

Janvier
Chapter 1 

Ten years ago, back in the land of cheeseburgers and donuts, Annie didn’t give a thought to what she ingested. These days, Food with a capital letter; thinking about it, talking about it, preparing it and ultimately gaining an unacceptable number of kilos on it—at least unacceptable by Parisian standards—was pretty much the obsession. In fact, the day before she must have hit some kind of gustatory bottom when she bought the Bible du Beurre on an empty stomach. This was a cookbook solely devoted to butter, a bible to its ode no less. Last night, after putting the boys to bed, she had mustered the nerve to peer at the croissant recipe. Had she cringed when she discovered that those innocent-looking pastries she had wolfed down without the slightest suspicion over the last ten years were essentially composed of 99% butter? Absolutely. Had this stopped her from jumping straight into the preparation of her own croissant? Apparently not.

So maybe this was her therapy. Butter. She needed the butter, she reasoned, and wads of it. She needed the butter because she was grieving.

That is, of course, if what she felt was indeed grief, and not rage.

She preferred that it was grief and not rage that had made her gain thirty pounds and growing since the night of the accident....TO FINISH READING THIS EXCERPT FROM HIDDEN IN PARIS, VISIT CORINE GANTZ'S WEBSITE HERE!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Corine Gantz was born in France where she spent the first twenty years of her life.  She studied Contemporary Art at the Sorbonne and worked in advertising and marketing in Paris, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

She is the author of the popular blog Hidden in France where she uses her particular brand of humor to meditate on relationships, food, décor, and all things French. 

She lives near Los Angeles with her husband and two sons.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW:

1. Welcome, and thank you for agreeing to an interview for BOOKIN‘ WITH BINGO. Is there any personal information you would like to start out with today?

Thank you for the interview, Karen! Hidden in Paris is my first novel.  It’s the story of three American women who decide to start over by moving together in a beautiful house in the heart of Paris.  They are trying to avoid their problems but their new Parisian life brings quite the opposite, and the experience changes them in unexpected ways.

2.  Where did you get the inspiration or idea for this book?

Once upon a time I was a 22 year-old single French girl wildly driving my red mini cooper through the streets of Paris, and eagerly getting ahead in the advertising world. One year later I was 23, married to an American boy, speaking just a few words of broken English, feeling isolated and idiotic and maneuvering a giant Buick through the steep streets of San Francisco with fear in my gut. How did this happen?  And how did I even survive? I thought it would be interesting to put American characters in the reverse position: having to start over in Paris: the culture shock! the angst! but also the incredible opportunity for growth.  To start over in an entirely different culture, is a chance to reinvent oneself.

3. Do you see yourself in your characters? Which characters are easiest or more difficult to write?

I saw myself in each of my characters, even the men. But I am closest to Annie, her angry humor, her fiery temperament and that propensity to be mistaken about most things and almost all the time!

You know what is most difficult to write? The dialogues of a character who speaks with an accent. Because I’m French I should know how the French accent sounds, but really I don’t.

4. What books would you say have made the biggest impression on you, especially starting out? What are you currently reading?

I love classic American literature. I just finished reading a Tree Grows In Brooklyn and that novel will be hard to top. But I love modern stuff too. Anne Lamott, David Mitchell, Joan Didion and Margaret Atwood are some of my favorite authors.  Sadly what inspired me to write were not the great books but the bad ones.  I told myself that writing a book must not be all that hard since those bad books got published. I said I am often wrong and this would be a perfect example.

5. What is the next or current book/project you are working on?

I just embarked on the huge (and fattening) project of writing the cookbook of Hidden in Paris, which means recreating every recipe mentioned in the novel, writing it down, preparing it at home and then the hardest part:  photographing it.  As usual I’m doing everything myself, even the parts that should be left to the pros. Food photography is definitely an art I would like to master some day.

6. What is something about you that you would want people to know about you that we probably don’t know?

I’m still learning English.  For example I just found out (and only because my 12 year old finally pointed it out) that ‘where’ and ‘were’ are not pronounced the same way. “It’s cute,” he said. I guess my family finds it cute to let me embarrass myself.

7. Do you own an eReader of any kind and how do you feel about their impact on books, as well as you as an author?

I will be eternally grateful for these small marvels of technology because I sell many books thanks to them but I’m partial to the paper kind, especially well-loved and picked up at the library. I’m what the marketing industry calls ‘change adverse’.  I believe, hope, and pray that small, independently owned bookstores will soon make a big come back.

8. What is your advice to anyone, including young people, who want to be writers?

I’ll say don’t wait to have time ahead of you to start writing a book, because when the time comes (if it ever does) you will not have grown the ‘writing muscle’ that can only grow from daily practice. I mean, would you decide to climb Mount Everest without having trained for months? And believe me when I say that the white page can be to novel writing what Mount Everest is to climbing.  Start small and start now. Words have a funny way of turning into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs. And by the first paragraph know this fact: Just like you do not need to reach the top of the mountain to call yourself a climber, you do not need to finish a novel to call yourself a writer. The definition is not in the end product, but in the process. 

Thank you, Corine, for a wonderful interview and for spending time here at BOOKIN' WITH BINGO. I know my readers are going to be eager to get their hands on HIDDEN IN PARIS.  

Also, Corine wants readers to know about an exciting chance to receive a FREE COPY of the cookbook of HIDDEN IN PARIS (the e-version) to the readers of her blog. All you have to do is sign up on the blog to receive it.

Here is the link to the blog:

http://www.hiddeninfrance.typepad.com/

Also, here is a link to Corine's website:

http://www.corinegantz.com/home/welcome.html

And if you'd like to know how to purchase HIDDEN IN PARIS, go here:

http://www.corinegantz.com/home/buy_the_book.html

  

 GIVEAWAY

THANKS TO CORINE, I HAVE THREE

AUTOGRAPHED COPIES OF HER 

WONDERFUL BOOK, HIDDEN IN

PARIS, TO GIVE AWAY

 
--U.S. AND CANADIAN RESIDENTS ONLY
--NO P. O. BOXES
---INCLUDE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS
IN CASE YOU WIN!
--ALL COMMENTS MUST BE SEPARATE TO 
COUNT AS MORE THAN ONE!

HOW TO ENTER:

+1 ENTRY: COMMENT ON WHAT YOU THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT YOU READ ABOVE ABOUT HIDDEN IN PARIS THAT MADE YOU WANT TO WIN THIS BOOK, AND DON'T FORGET YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS

+1 ENTRY: COMMENT ON SOMETHING YOU WOULD WANT TO HAVE ASKED CORINE ABOUT AFTER READING THE INTERVIEW ABOVE

+1 MORE ENTRY:  BLOG AND/OR TWEET ABOUT THIS GIVEAWAY AND COME BACK HERE AND LEAVE ME YOUR LINK

+1 MORE ENTRY:  COMMENT ON SOMETHING YOU FIND INTERESTING AT CORINE GANTZ'S WEBSITE HERE

+1 MORE ENTRY: COMMENT ON ONE WAY THAT YOU FOLLOW MY BLOG. IF YOU FOLLOW MORE THAN ONE WAY, YOU MAY COMMENT SEPARATELY TO RECEIVE EXTRA ENTRIES

 
GIVEAWAY ENDS AT

6 PM, EST, OCTOBER 3

GOOD LUCK!