…Bookfan Mary recommends Cutting Loose as great summer reading! Read the review here!
…Cutting Loose get a full page spread courtesy of lovely friend and editor-in-chief Paris Mansouri, in GORGEOUS Isola Magazine’s premier issue (sadly not available online, but will scan soon, check back)!
…Am starring in my very first book club meeting next Tuesday – eeek, I can’t wait! Will report back with the good, the bad, and the pics. Again, watch this space!
And in non-Cutting Loose but equally fun news,
…Still in love with Cristiano Ronaldo, love possibly growing with every passing day leading up to the UEFA Champions League finals that I have been forced to watch (though not too punishing when Cristiano is on)…
…Queen Rania places 43rd on Glamour’s 50 Most Glamorous of 2009 (a bit premature as far as definitive lists go, methinks, since we haven’t even hit the mid-year mark yet)…
… Bought an Acer Apire One, am HEAD OVER HEELS in love with this teeny tiny three pound, $300 baby!
…Where has Kindle been all my life?? No, I haven’t bought the little machine – though considering how much I move around, maybe I should – I’m just flabbergasted by this post by JA Konrath today delving into the ease of posting your work for sale on Amazon, directly, without going through your publisher, both to help you gain a following and earn a little Manolo money too??? (or these days, help out with the rent…)
I’ve been toying around with the idea of writing novellas (25-50K words) going into each one of my past characters’ lives and what happened to them after the published story ended, sort of like, what if Ali were to run into Miguel again, five years after they met in Cuba? What’s he up to these days? What’s she up to? Is she in a relationship? Would it survive an encounter with Miguel?…
So why don’t we have a little poll – our first ever on nadinedajani.com! If you’re too shy to comment, maybe you won’t be too shy with clicking your mouse!
Though I hate to admit it, I’m a creature of habit. The “latte factor” (the theory that there a fortune lying hidden in our little, daily, needless expenses) annoys me to no end. Yes, if you tally up what I spend a month on cappuccinos ($90) and multiplied it by 12, ($1,080), or what I spend a month on magazines ($24) and extrapolated that for a year ($288), I would probably find that I have more disposable income than I thought.
But, what kind of a life would I have if I was deprived of my daily cappuccino-sipping-in-front-of-nytimes.com ritual? Or Glamour’s monthly Dos and Don’ts page, and InStyle’s insipid recycled celeb style (actually - it’s probably time I kicked my InStyle addiction)? A crappy life, if a slightly richer one.
Another ritual I’ve developed (and also robs me of a few deliciously-spent $$$s) is waiting impatiently for my favorite writers to come out with their latest releases, which usually happens over the summer (only Emily Giffin has broken with tradition… maybe little Harriet and the twins ran her haggard last year - her next book isn’t coming out until spring 2010).
This summer these authors did not disappoint. Here are some of the books on my must-buy list:
…and though these don’t have a cover yet, word on the street is that Marian Keyes’ next one, called The Brightest Star in the Sky is imminent, as is Sophie Kinsella’s Twenties Girl.
Of course, there’s another major release coming out this summer… the mass paperback edition of Cutting Loose in a mere two weeks! Happy summer reading!
Every once in a while, I like checking out the “popular search terms” function of my Statcounter application to see how people are finding this blog.
Apparantly, “Queen Rania Fashion”, “Lebanese designers” and “Michelle Obama biceps” are right up there with “Nadine Dajani” and waaaaaay ahead of “Cuba” or “writing tips” which surprised me. I guess I’ll be blogging lots more about fashion : )
But today, there was one entry in the popular search terms compilation which was quite disturbing.
Who knew that typing in “panties” (as in, “getting your panties in a bunch”) and “Arab women” together, as in, “arab women in panties”, would kindly direct you to this site?
I don’t care who you are and what you’ve done (or haven’t done) but chances are there are a couple of places on this semi-green Earth that you know very well. Intimately, some might say.
Go ahead and think about some of your favorite movies or books. I’m willing to bet that more than one entry on your list belies a certain infatuation with a certain place on behalf of the artist. Think New York in Sex and the City.
One of my favorite books of all time (that I continuously rant about) is The Blue Castle, by L.M. Montgomery. It’s set in a tiny Austen-esque Canadian provincial town where the locals are small-minded, nosey snobs. But this tale is no ode to bucking the country life for the city: Valancy goes from living in a tiny town to a cabin in the Ontario woods, and the story is peppered with descriptions of wildflowers and sloping trees, snow banks and mist.
Not my usual cup of tea.
But it works. And beautifully too (just check out the Amazon reviews). You get a sense that LM Montgomery has a special fondness for the wilds of northern Ontario, out of all places, and she coveys that admiration brilliantly.
Yesterday, I sat down to write a poignant break up scene. It was late, and what I really wanted to do was go to bed, but I’d just spent two hours watching Law and Order so if I didn’t get a couple of pages down I would have felt pretty shitty about my output.
I set about planning the scene. All I knew about it was that a couple was going to break up, so I started thinking (and yawning) – where do two people who are barely speaking to each other anymore, who can hardly stand each other’s company, go to break up?
The first thought that swept into my mind was: restaurant!
One person (the hopeful one) invites the other (the one who’s about to put the kibosh on the relationship) to go out for a meal, and then BAM! It’s over. The imaginary demon of laziness perched over my left shoulder had spoken. Restaurant. Hadn’t I gotten dumped - and done the dumping - over dumplings before?
But then I heard it - or felt it, rather, because it wasn’t the angelic voice of a muse eating grapes and imparting nuggets of wisdom from a chaise longue in the far corner of the room - it was more like an annoying woodpecker drilling the side of my scull.
“You can so do better than that,” It said, annoyingly.
“Why should I? A restaurant is fine. Haven’t you ever been dumped at a restaurant? Shut up.” I countered.
But it wouldn’t (shut up) so I made a list. A very lame one, with such uninspired entries as “amusement park”, “Connecticut”, “college campus”, and “mall” (I’m not kidding). But somewhere between “college campus” and “mall”, magic happened.
For no discernable reason at all, the word “Maine” popped into my head. Specifically Ogunquit, Maine, and artsy beach town I drove to with my then-boyfriend in between graduating from University and starting my first real job because the opening at the company was immediate and wouldn’t wait until I got back from the summer in Europe, as had been the plan.
And though Ogunquit was no Turin, Italy, it was artsy and quaint, and it had a beach (glacial though the mid-June waters were), and it was a much better background against which to end a long-standing and valued relationship than some random restaurant.
I stayed up well into the night finishing that chapter, something I’m not sure I could have endured had I stuck with my original, lazy choice.
So there you have it – make really lame lists. You might be surprised at what comes up.
… Bought an Acer Apire One, am HEAD OVER HEELS in love with this teeny tiny three pound, $300 baby!
