I have news
If you used to ask me what I wanted to be, the answer (okay, after my flight attendant phase) was: writer. And more specifically: children's book writer. Every day after school, I would dive into my room where I would fly away behind the typewriter (yay, I am still from the stone age) in my self-conceived adventures.
Life ran its course. Other loves came. Although I studied Dutch, I jumped just as easily to General Literature and Film and Television Studies. I worked in TV, magazines and now online for seven years. But it itched and gnawed. There had to be that children's book.
So when an appointment with my sweetheart fell through (he was going to interview Hillary Clinton so he's forgiven, quite a good reason to cancel an appointment) I sank down on a terrace, ordered a glass of Chardonnay (yes sorry, I like creamy and full) and flipped open the laptop. It was there that Cleo and Bast, the cat protagonists in my book) saw life. I kept the first chapter on my desktop but otherwise didn't do much with it.
Until I thought it would be nice if my own daughters could do another book review on it. So with shaky knees I sent it to Overamstel publishers. Whether they liked it. Terrified, I thought. But they were just as enthusiastic about Cleo and Bast as I was. So there I went. Writing. Finally doing what I had thought of as an eight-year-old.
The book is about two cats in a five-star hotel where I string together all the silly fashion stories I have experienced, with a fat sauce of fiction. It's for girls and mothers. I think it's a book where, as a fashion-loving mother, you actually enjoy reading it aloud. It's for people who love fashion, who want to peek at what it's really like in a five-star hotel, for people who love cats and for people who love pretty illustrations. Because my dear friend Harriet found me the perfect illustrator whom I have come to love intensely. I email her a chapter and she comes back with illustrations that are even better than I dare to dream.
She lives in Greece but how I do it, I do it. At the launch on 3 October, she should be there.
Anyway. I SO wanted to share this with you. And if you like it, you can pre-order my book NOW. Then, as I write the final chapters, I know I will make you happy.
