It feels very apropos to be writing this on the 3rd day of the new year, especially considering that I haven’t written in….well, not exactly a year, but it certainly feels that way. Those of you who have been friends and/or fans with me on Facebook know that 2011 was a b**** of a year. Launching a startup that grew way, way faster than anyone — least of all, me — anticipated. Big move from a small, one-bedroom apartment to a three-bedroom house with a yard, all because we spoil our two rescue dogs way, way too much. Oh, and speaking of, I discovered a yen for rescuing more dogs and ended the year having fostered not one, not two, but at one point up to 12 dogs in said 3-bedroom home. Which suddenly seemed awfully tiny.

Now, eight of those dogs were actually newborn Lab puppies. One of the rescue organizations I volunteer with pulled a stunning black Lab named Lucy from Dallas Animal Services, the municipal shelter known for its relatively high kill rate. (Only about 35% of animals ever make it out alive, although the city recently announced that it was working towards becoming a no-kill city, date TBD.) Lucy came healthy, happy, and toting 8 tiny, two-week-old puppies in her wake. We wrapped them up and settled them into our extra bathroom, which very soon became too small for the brood, and before we knew it, we had 8 very active, very messy puppies happily playing and destroying said bathroom.

A kind heart can be such a double-edged sword.

We’re back to a more manageable total of 6 dogs — our own two dogs, plus Lucy, two of her puppies, and a 4th foster named Cinnamon — but it’s still a very busy household. The remaining 6 puppies were successfully refostered, and I catch glimpses of them on Facebook, as their foster parents post beautiful, heartbreaking pictures of them growing up and looking more and more like little dogs.

So as you can see, it’s been a bit busy here.

When I’m not fostering mama dogs and their pups, I’ve been working. And working. And working. It came as no surprise to me when I fell ill with the flu last weekend. I’m more surprised that it took this long for months and months of little sleep, a poor diet, and virtually no exercise other than picking up after and walking all these dogs, for my body to finally cry Uncle and break down on me. It’s very easy to forget that one is nearing forty — nearer and nearer as I type this, too! — and isn’t quite as invincible as one was. If ever one was.

I’ve seen New Year’s resolutions fly fast and furiously on Facebook the last couple of days. Sometimes they’ve very specific – one friend wants to eat more cruciferous vegetables, another is trying a certain diet — and sometimes they’re more general, if no less important (“be kinder”). One of the things I so love about getting older — and so very French it is — is caring less and less about achieving some weird, unattainable perfection (difficult to maintain in such a self-help-crazy culture such as ours), and learning to embrace the messy reality and fuzzy logic of life. And on that note, my only resolution is thus: Create more. Consume less.

What’s yours?

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This has been a looooong time a-comin’, but at last I’ve done the deed.

I’m extremely proud to announce the launch of our newest endeavor: My Inner French Girl Radio. It’s a weekly call-in program broadcast live every Friday at 1:00 pm Central and hosted on BlogTalkRadio. Today will be the inaugural episode, with writer Jamie Cat Callan as our featured guest. Jamie is the author of French Women Don’t Sleep Alone and Bonjour, Happiness!, the latter of which was published in April of this year.

Did I mention that it’s a call-in show? So please do join our conversation, share your thoughts and take advantage of this opportunity to chat with one of the loveliest and most charming Franchophile writers on the Internet!

Click here to join us on the very first (and definitely NOT the last) of My Inner French Girl Radio.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be presenting my latest podcast: an interview with Dan Coyle, an American musician and songwriter currently touring Europe with his fiancee, Jessica. Dan just left Aix-en-Provence, where he spent quite a bit of time writing and recording new music; at the time of our interview, he was in the Netherlands.

Dan Coyle was a breeze to interview. He’s one of the friendliest, most easygoing folks I’ve had the pleasure to meet online, and I can’t wait to chat with him again when his album drops in the fall. (Hint hint, Dan!) His music is warm, graceful, and just a little bit wistful — the perfect soundtrack to these long, slow summer days. He’ll be releasing his newest album this fall, complete with a “Making of” DVD, but you can buy all of his previous albums on his website. And if you’re in Europe, be sure to catch one of his performances. You can find out more on his website, of course, but you can also catch him on Twitter, where he maintains a very active feed and where I actually had the pleasure of meeting him.

As loyal, longtime and long-suffering readers of My Inner French Girl know, I love me my podcasts. I’ve always loved interview shows like Terry Gross’ Fresh Air on NPR, or Charlie Rose’s eponymous TV show on PBS, and although I couldn’t ever hope to be anywhere close to that caliber, I’ve always thought that they had the coolest jobs in the world, 2nd only to maybe that of chief travel writer (is there such a thing?) for National Geographic or Islands Magazine. I would get to interview amazing artists, writers, musicians, and other creatives and get to explore a little bit of their genius, their spark of inspiration.

It’s been awhile since I’ve done one, but oh, I’m so glad I’m back. It’s one of my favorite things to do on MIFG, and I hope to do more very soon. Merci mille fois to Dan for the pleasure of his conversation and for taking the time out of what sounds like a super-busy schedule to chat with me.

Click here to listen to the podcast, or simply click on the track below.

Enjoy! And please do leave a comment and let me know what you think.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

A dear friend once told me about a blog (not sure if it exists anymore) called something like “Blogging without Apology.” It’s an endearing and, I daresay, empowering statement, the idea being that blogging should always be in the service of the writer rather than the audience. After all, blogs began largely as online personal journals, existing to chronicle their authors’ inner lives and exterior circumstances and how one impacts the other. Nowadays, of course, so many of them are an odd hybrid of the personal and the professional, with ad networks and corporate sponsorships and even the FCC weighing in with its rules governing how bloggers treat product samples (why aren’t magazines and newspapers held to the same standards, I wanna know).

But most authentic blogs — not the ones that are launched by folks who simply want to cash in on monetized blog craze, but the genuine articles, the ones that are created primarily because their writers can’t help but express themselves, and what better way than to have one’s very own electronic journal? — birthed nowadays still hold on to the promise that the deeply personal need never apologize for itself. That if there are big, big gaps in publication dates, it’s because, well, life is messy. Life is demanding. Life gets in the way of everything, even our very best intentions. Life couldn’t care less about deadlines, SEO, publication schedules, or monetization.

Of course, as I write this, I realize that this overly long introduction to this post serves almost like an apology itself. And perhaps it is, more as an apology to myself and my writing muse rather than to anyone else in particular. I launched this blog several years ago (2006!) as a way not only to find a creative outlet for my Francophilia but also to connect with fellow Francophiles, the ones who care more about literature and art and music rather than whether or not French Women Don’t Get Fat (although I love love love that book and secretly reread it every year).

It’s been a few years, of course, and this blog has taken an odd and sometimes unsatisfying route to the present. It’s been in the New York Times. It’s been neglected. It’s bloomed with book reviews and music reviews and even an interview with one of my modern heroes, Mariane Pearl. It’s allowed me to meet writers, my very favorite people in the entire world. It’s also been an ongoing experiment in the way in which creativity and commerce can both clash and connect — I’ve had ads on this site, including AdSense ads and even privately purchased ads, most of which have allowed me to buy the occasional cafe au lait (never more than a Small, natch).

Since then I’ve launched a different kind of creative outlet: a company that still struggles to find its footing, although growing in a way that I hadn’t anticipated. Like the blog that helped pave the way for it, the company is opening new doors and opportunities for me. It’s both exciting and frightening, and sometimes I just default to a kind of tunnel vision, where I simply look at the next deadline ahead and hope that I make it to pursue the next one. Is that how it is to build a company? Is that how it is to build a life?

I’m still trying to figure it all out. My writing has suffered, that’s for sure, and that’s probably why I’ve retreated once again to this, the blog that started it all. Writing — from the time I was about seven years old and learning my way around a noisy but deeply satisfying IBM Selectric in my stepdad’s home office — has always been my salvation and my refuge. Not writing gives me hives. Not writing raises my blood pressure. (Seriously.) Not writing makes me grind my teeth and night. Not writing makes me question everything: my raison d’etre, my choices in life, my career, even my daily task list. When you love the written word as profoundly and madly as I do, the absence of it can be positively terrifying.

And so I’m back. I’m back to save my soul and my sanity. I’m back because blogging in a corporate environment can really suck the wind out of you. I’m back because blogging for money, while great for the bottom line, can make you feel so out of balance that you get dizzy and need medication. (Did you  know there are a million treatments for bruxism, i.e., teeth grinding? And that none of them have thus far worked for me?)

In the absence of the written word, so many things can rush to fill in the void, but while they may lovingly and deceptively stroke the ego, they do absolutely nothing to nourish the soul. And when the soul is hungry and underfed and craving nutrition, it eventually finds a way to slap you to attention. The soul can be a bitch that way.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

It’s been awhile since I promoted a giveaway on My Inner French Girl, but with the holidays coming up (sheesh, can you believe it’s almost Thanksgiving?), I imagine there will be quite a flurry of activity as retailers make a mad dash for blogger love with their giveaway campaigns!

Well, thanks to the good folks over at Perfumania and their great PR reps at Middleberg Communications, I’m happy to launch a giveaway of  Kim Kardashian’s debut fragrance, Kim Kardashian for Women. It includes not only the lovely bottle of fragrance itself, but also a chic bag and a $40 gift card for the winner to use on Perfumania’s newly-designed website!

I have to admit, I have a bit of a girl-crush on good ol’ Kim and find myself frequently riveted — in spite of myself — whenever her family’s reality show pops up on my TV. Not because of the sex tape that propelled her to celebrity-stardom, and not because of her clearly ample assets — I leave that to the men in the crowd — but rather because of her drive, ambition and her steel inner core. You just know this girl works her generous bum off. How she manages to ignore the many, many haters and naysayers out there and just capitalize on whatever shred of talent she has, I’ll never know, but you have to give her lots of props for milking the attention and turning it into a massive empire.

And for those Kim fans among you (and I know that you’re out there, peeking out of the closet!), you’ll notice that I’ve scheduled the giveaway to end the evening before Kim’s appearance on The Celebrity Apprentice. I’ll be announcing the winner at 5:00 that Thursday evening, so if you win (or even if you don’t!), head on over to my favorite network on NBC to catch Ms. Kardashian dish on her entrepreneur skills with the Donald. It’ll be…interesting.

So, the rules of the road:

1. Only one (1) entry per person.
2. You must be a resident of the United States to enter, or at least have a U.S. address to which we can send the prize.
3. Entries must be received no later than 5:00 pm Central Time on Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2010. Entries received after that time will be disqualified.
4. To enter, simply submit a comment on this post letting us know when you like to wear perfume and why. Do you wear it to work only? Dates only? “Boom boom night” with your hubby only? Please try not to get too specific (I try to keep this blog PG-rated!), but feel free to share what moments in your life require a spritz or two. Incomplete entries will be disqualified, so make sure you add this to your comment!
5. Entries must include some kind of contact information, either an email address or a link to a Web site that has your email address. If I can’t figure out how to contact you, your entry will be disqualified.
6. The winner will be chosen at random from all qualified entries received and announced no later than Thursday evening, November 11, 2010, at 5:00 pm Central Time. I’ll be using the handy-dandy Random Sequence Generator to determine the winner.
7. Winner will be notified by email immediately after the drawing.
8. All contestants’ names and contact information will be used only for the purposes of this giveaway. I do not sell, barter or trade my email list. Ever. Ever. Ever.

Bonne chance!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

When was the last time you bought a book?

Not a book for work, or school, or even a cookbook, but a novel or a book just for self-education, whether it’s the latest John Grisham (he’s still writing novels, right?) or Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman (which is on my Amazon.com list to buy fer sher!). When was the last time you wandered into a clean, well-lighted bookshop, wandered aimlessly through the stacks, pulled a random book here and there, opened it to drink in its carefully written prose, and either put it back because it didn’t quite grab you or actually tucked it under your arm for actual purchase?

I think of this as I lament the exciting, sometimes frightening changes sweeping the publishing industry. I think of this not only as a reader who can’t imagine a day without having read at least one page of anything — not a web page, mind you, but a page of a magazine, book, or even a damn brochure — but also as a writer who has dreamed since she was seven and pecking happily away at a Fisher-Price typewriter (pale blue with darker blue trim) of someday writing an actual book. Not an e-book. That sounds less like a work of creativity and art and more like a cold promise of education, not emotion. The physical beauty and heft of a printed book, with its thick, hardbound cover and hand-cut pages — a writer can feel that her words have manifested themselves not simply as elements of a story but also as artifacts of history, art, literature, and everything else that gives life its many, many dimensions.

Even the venerable Poets & Writers, which I greedily devour whenever it appears in my mailbox (if I had the money, I would make it a monthly or even a biweekly, rather than its current quarterly schedule, but I know that’s a financial decision), has taken to offering up — however gingerly — the benefits of e-books.

• They allow authors otherwise unable to land a traditional publishing contract the opportunity to share their work with an audience in a relatively inexpensive and very efficient way.
• They allow readers to purchase books in a portable format, which is especially useful for someone like me who likes to carry anywhere from 3 and often more books on even the shortest trips. (When B. and I went to Singapore in 2008, I carried no fewer than three books, but returned with about 12. Seriously. Plus about a half-dozen magazines.
• They allow books to be distributed to a much wider audience, particularly given the bells and whistles that come with Internet-enabled e-book readers, which can hypertext links to related sites such as authors’ websites, similarly-themed books, and the like.
• I won’t go into the economics of e-books themselves, since they don’t seem to be much cheaper than physical books, thus negating any financial benefits. However, with the price of the Amazon Kindle slashed below $150, and aforementioned portability, the efficiency and space-saving factors alone mustn’t be ignored.

Still. Surely I’m not the only budding writer out here who still dreams about publishing a real book? What would it be like to be sitting next to someone on a plane bound for who-knows-where, and then realizing that they’re reading your book? That they spent their hard-earned money to read your story? That they thought it worthy of their precious time, especially when you consider how carefully many people choose their reading material on a plane? (I spend more time trying to decide which book s to take with me on a trip than I do on which clothes to pack!)

Seeing someone turn on their Kindle or Nook or iPad or whatever and watching your book cover digitally unfold on the screen couldn’t possibly compete with the thrill of seeing the person’s hands open your book, their eyes resting on your words, the pages rustling over the roar of the engines.

Booklovers longing for the golden era of publishing (when exactly was that?) are often accused of romanticizing the past and turning books into fetishes. I say, So freakin’ what? If you ever had a childhood like mine, or a childhood like millions of others around the world whose emotional lives were transformed — saved – by books, you would understand that the romance of books isn’t merely about their status as symbols of a civilization but also about their physical reality as cherished friends in the imaginations of all curious, longing, lonely, hungry little minds.

So herewith, my plan to save civilization, not simply for myself and my dream of publishing a book, but for children whose lives deserve more than ephemeral bits and bytes: I want to buy more books. Not just secondhand books, but at new bookstores and online shops, so that my money will go towards supporting publishing houses, editors, literary agents, and yes, the writers who make it all possible.  I’ve spent tens of thousands on food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and the occasional movie or two, but I’ve been shockingly skimping on what arguably satisfies me the most: books. Money is tight, as it always has been, and the debt isn’t disappearing as rapidly as they should be, but there will always be an excuse not to buy books, right? But if I thought of books as not simply a means of entertaining myself or even self-education but also an investment in my ambitions as a writer, then surely a few dollars every month towards the purchase of new books is worth every single penny?

Since we’re barely hanging on to middle-class respectability, we’re talking a mere 2 or 3 books a month, which will probably come to about $50 or so (less if I can find good paperbacks, although there’s nothing like a good hardback to really warm up a room, eh?). I’m looking at my expenses from the previous two weeks alone, and already I see a $20 expense for a manicure. Nothing wrong with pretty nails, but they’re nothing compared to the pleasures of a book.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you buy books anymore, or are they now luxuries rather than necessities, as I used to think of them? If you buy books, what do you buy? Some people will only buy nonfiction and borrow fiction, and vice-versa. Do you have the same rules about buying books?

Photo credit: “Craning for a book,” by gaspi*yg on Flickr.com.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I haven’t done a review in so long, beauty or otherwise, that I thought I’d flex those test-and-critique muscles again with some sweet-smelling new hair care products from UNITE, courtesy of their PR firm, EMCBowery.

First, a disclaimer: I have the toughest hair. Not tough, as in, “I could use it to help a handsome prince scramble up a tower,” but tough as in, “It literally takes two people — me and my husband — to disentangle it after washing it.” It’s just so bloody fine! B. will take one section and gingerly use his fingers to separate each and every nasty little tangle, while I tackle another one. Yes, hair styling is a big production in my house. Why do you think I don’t use products? I’ve no time.

I opened up the box containing the bottles of UNITE Moisturizing Shampoo and Moisturizing Conditioner in eager anticipation. I’m not dreaming of sleek, commercial-worthy tresses (although I did have random visions of standing in a wind tunnel, spotlight on me, my hair billowing in the breeze, just like in said commercials), but I wanted to believe that I’d finally found the magic potions that would dramatically disentangle my hair without requiring third party involvement. I wanted to step out of the shower and be able to run a comb gently through my dripping locks without stubborn resistance. I wanted to be just like that little girl in those Johnson & Johnson Baby Shampoo ads — No more tears!

You know where this is going, right?

First, the good news: the products smell gorgeous. My hair immediately absorbed — practically embraced – the creamy texture of both the shampoo and conditioner. The conditioner in particular is quite thick but not at all greasy; it deposited just the right amount of moisture to my hair without weighing it down. And for you natural beauty fans out there, there are more added benefits: according to the product information sheet, everything in UNITE’s hair care collection is free of parabens, sulfates, gluten, DEA, and MEA, and are 100% vegan.

Now, although I’m no longer vegan (I was throughout much of my 20s), I still believe in its philosophy, particularly when it comes to beauty products, and love that these “Eurotherapy” products (not sure what “Eurotherapy” means, since neither their website nor their press kit is clear as to the origin of the company) are animal-friendly.

The bad news? Well, I still needed my “styling team” (aka, me and B.) to disentangle my hair afterward, so I clearly need more powerhouses than these. If you have very fine, easily tangled hair like mine, you might want to try Frederic Fekkai’s Gloss products, which are the only ones I’ve found that are capable of taming my wild hair into submission.

Still, if you’re bored with your hair care regimen and want to try something new, check out UNITE‘s new, celebrity-endorsed collection. They’re beautifully fragranced, feel very indulgent and are supposed to be especially good for color-treated hair?

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

B. found this while walking the Dog. We’ve no clue what it is, or what its function could possibly be, but what really intrigues me is the Made in France etched into the side. Do you know what it might be?

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Congratulations to Chinese activist Liu Xiaobo for earning the 2010 Nobel Prize for Peace! Realpolitik diehards may argue with the choice by the Nobel Committee (based in Norway), claiming (rightfully so, I’m sure) that this will only bring the wrath of the Chinese government down harder on other Chinese human rights activists, but no one can doubt that the latter are already fully aware of the danger of their chosen vocations and are prepared to make sacrifices in the name of their cause. You don’t become a human rights activist thinking that it will be a stroll through Tiffany’s.

What is a stroll through Tiffany’s, though, is an easy manicure. (See how quickly I made that transition from one unrelated topic to another? Completely unplanned, but it worked.) Tired of chipped nail polish and high-maintenance maintenance, I’ve become very attached to the quick but still relaxing deluxe manicure that ends with a simple buff rather than polish application. It costs the same as a color manicure, but you walk out without having to stick your hands under those dangerous UV lamps or delicately pull your wallet out of your purse to pay the bill. I spend up to 15 hours a day on the computer, interrupting myself occasionally to throw a load of laundry in the wash or empty the dishwasher or take the dog out — in other words, my hands see a lot of action, so as much as I love the look of beautifully manicured nail (I’m now obsessed with the Chanel Khaki Rose, which Kathie Lee Gifford endorsed this morning on the Today Show, complete with a proud display of her perfectly polished nails), it’s just not practical for me.

If you’re interested, just hop on over to your neighborhood nail salon and ask for a manicure, no polish, just buff. It gives your nails that healthy, pink-ish glow with a bit of shine so that it almost looks as if you have a very, very sheer layer of clear polish, but without the awful chipping that can make it look really raggedy within a day or so.

And lastly, on yet another unrelated note, does anyone know (or know someone who knows) French writer Virginie Despentes? I’m dying to interview her for My Inner French Girl! Her recent book, King Kong Theory, was recently reviewed in Bust magazine (a must-read for creatives and independent-minded gals!), and while I await the arrival of my copy from Amazon.com, I’m desperate to chat with Ms. Despentes. If anyone knows how I can get a hold of her or her agent (I’ve yet to find a website), I would be much obliged. Merci mille fois!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Merci mille fois to Nancy Strauss and the good women at the WM Freelance Writers Connection for the kind opportunity to share with their readers some of my writing, blogging and business experiences! If you’re visiting My Inner French Girl from that site, bienvenue! And if you’re interested in reading the interview, head on over to Nancy and company’s site, which has amazing resources for writers and would-be writers.

By the way, Nancy currently lives in Spain, one of my favorite countries in the world, not the least because of its culture of art, food and leisure. It ranks right up there with France as one of the places in which I most want to retire. Someday!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.