Yes, another newsletter. I hope you can read it. For some reason, mail systems think my newsletters might be spam, even though I have never made any promises of enhanced masculine prowess. Meanwhile, somehow, the nerds at Twitter have figured out how to send messages containing all sorts of obscenities to millions of recipients, without getting them blocked. That's one reason why I joined the tweeters, and can occasionally be found joining in the spamming as @sclarkewriter.
I do want this newsletter to live up to its name, though, so here is some news.
Earlier in August, I published a short, 30-odd page, update to 1000 Years of Annoying the French. The book itself really ought to be updatable in real time. Several times a year there will be a classic case of Gaul-baiting, either deliberate or not, that deserves to be added to the list. In my recent update, called Annoying the French Encore, there are some peaches, my favourite being the insults that went flying about when David Cameron walked out of that euro-summit last winter. I don't want to discourage anyone from reading Annoying the French Encore, but the comparison made by one Parisian politician was a classic. Cameron's attitude to Europe was, the culprit suggested, that of a man who comes to a wife-swapping party without wanting to share his wife. Brilliant image, n'est-ce pas? I wouldn't dare putting it in a novel for fear of being accused of stooping to stereotypes.
And talking of novels, I am looking forward, unusually for me, to the 13th of next month. I am very superstitious, and can usually be found on the 13th of any month wearing my lucky Serge Gainsbourg boxer shorts (these are shorts bearing an image of the smoking seducer rather than an old pair that actually belonged to him), but will relish the arrival of that unlucky-for-some number next time around, because it is the official publication date of my new novel, The Merde Factor.
It's a Paul West novel, and it is dedicated to everyone who has asked me over the past three years "when is Paul coming back?" It is hugely gratifying for an author to get messages like that.
I enjoyed writing 1000 Years of Annoying the French and Paris Revealed a lot, but I was keen to get back to Paul. Ever since Dial M for Merde, I'd been saving up lots of ideas for him, and have packed them all into the new story. Paul returns to credit-crunched Paris, has to live in the kind of apartment that went out of fashion when painters realized you don't have to starve to be a great artist, tries to get a job as a French civil servant (which is a bit like trying to become a dodo) and agrees to help his disaster-stricken American friend Jake win a poetry competition, which, to continue with the bird analogy if I may, is like helping a dodo win a flying race. All this while being harassed, and possibly stalked, by his gorgeous but dangerous ex-girlfriend Alexa. There is consequently a lot more merde in the book than usual. I hope you'll give it a read.
Travel news, meanwhile – all being well, in September, I will be talking, signing and reading at the Livres sur les Quais festival in Morges Switzerland from the 7th to the 9th, in Gdansk, Warsaw and Liece, Poland from 12-15th, WH Smith Paris on the 24th, Waterstones Brighton on the 26th, and Richmond Yorkshire on Saturday 29th. I hope to see some of you at one of these places, preferably toting a copy of The Merde Factor that you want signed.
And here endeth the news (assuming that it actually beginneth).
A bientôt,
Stephen Clarke
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