frenchmanucure.jpgTake a hefty pinch of e-book…

Add a dash of beautification…

Combine a whole lotta fabulousness in the form of gorgeous girl, Veronika Veren - whad’ya get?

A rather fantastical e-book French Manucure written by the vay cool French belle Miss Veronika Veren of course!

Veronika has a rather cute-as-a-button interview with both me and the author girl Lisa Clark over at her site right now, read this, then read that!

Ohh-la-la!

Veronika, tell us about yourself and your blog…
Hello Pink Ladies reading this!
I am Veronika Veren, a 17 years old teenage girl living in France and I’m running a blog called Veronika Asks where you can find author interviews and book reviews on many different subjects (including pink Chick Lit with fabulous summer reads!). The website was created in June 2006 (Yay, first anniversary two weeks ago!) and now it’s a blog that I hope will celebrate more anniversaries! I also wrote an eSitcom book called FRENCH MANUCURE that I invite all Pink Ladies to discover.

Except all that, I’m a very ordinary girl who loves pizzas and fashion.

It’s Beauty*Licious month here at Pink-world which is why we LOVE French Manucure - tell us all! What’s a esitcom? What’s it about? Where can we get it?
Happy Beauty*Licious month! FRENCH MANUCURE (yep, we write it like that in France, Manucure) is an eSitcom that I wrote.

An eSitcom book is like a real sitcom, a situation comedy with plenty of colorful characters, but it’s a book, and precisely an eBook that you can read on your screen! It’s divided into four seasons that contain around twenty-five episodes each. And an episode is about forty pages long. So you can download the story episode by episode or wait and get the full season!

It’s about four french teenage girls living in the French Riviera, in Nice, and taken all together, they form the Cinderella Gang. There is Victoria Varley, the narrator “Realistic Cinderella”, Bénédicte Leroy the “Hippie Romantic Cinderella”, Madeleine Sorel the “Gothic Cinderella” and Charlotte Dubois the “Perfect Cinderella” fashion expert. So we can follow them in their daily life, at school, where you will find more tasty characters, Cinderellas, and very important : Princes Charming, family (Madeleine has six brothers and sisters, Victoria’s mother is a psychologist who can’t get rid of her job habits when at home…) and of course meet them every Wednesday at Nice Diva, the beauty salon owned by Charlotte’s parents, when girls organize their French Manucure Club.

I must say that I looooove sitcoms and when I’m thinking about a story, I always see it that way. So, why not? I thought that writing it episode by episode (instead of a big book) was a good idea and the eBook format was perfect and Tadam! the eSitcom book was born. So you can download it on Lulu.com, a fabulous website that enables you to self-publish your books.

What made you self-publish - how did you go about it?
I always wanted to write and I have several (pink, yellow and green :) folders full of stories, tales and short novels. I sent some of my works to publishing house and got several big flashy NO’s back. Or didn’t get an answer at all. So I decided to get to grips with it myself.

Publishing houses have many books to edit, design, promote, so I would do it myself, because I don’t really like the idea that people in a publishing house can decide if your work is worth reading or not. I don’t say they do their work badly, not at all, but they have so many manuscripts to read and review that they sometimes can let go some good things by. So, in my case, readers will decide if my book is worth reading or not!

How did I go about it? Well, I wrote it, left it aside some weeks and then re read it and edited it, because you read it with fresh eyes and see many things you didn’t notice first. Then, I had to compile it into a PDF eBook, design a cover and sell it on Lulu.com. And now, I’m promoting it, sending it for review (and fortunately, they are very good so far!). A friend of mine jokes that I am mini-publishing house by myself, and well, that’s true!

And that’s when I started sending it for review and requesting interviews that I discovered that eBooks aren’t really popular among reviewer and interviewer. They have a tendency to think that if that’s an eBook and that if you published it yourself (shame on you!), that means that you’re a loser and that your book isn’t worth opening. And I must admit it really bugged me. I read several very good eBooks and really admire people who do that because they are brave enough to do it, and if they do that, that’s because they can handle it, not because their work is very bad. That’s because publishing houses didn’t give them a chance, and they’re taking it by themselves!

I think that it’s really great that websites like Pink World give us the chance to talk about it and promote our books, because believe me, there aren’t many websites who do that. I mean, where is the problem? Now we can listen to music on the Net, watch TV on the Net, why are these people so reluctant about eBooks? They complain that they aren’t used to it, but believe me, if JK Rowling decided to release “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” only in eBook format, everybody would buy it without problem! I don’t say that paper books have to disappear, not at all, I’m one of the first to curl up in bed with a great paper book, but eBooks are a good opportunity for young writers. So I created the EAC, the Ebooks Authors Club, that will promote eBooks and defend eBooks on the Net and I invite eBook authors and eBook supporters to join.

Tell us all about your writing process - do you have any writing rituals?
Wow, that’s difficult to have rituals when ideas are bursting into your head day and night! Really. I can see or I hear something and already, I have an idea related to FRENCH MANUCURE, I think that I could write this or that…so I have plenty of Post-its. I write every idea down on a post-it and I keep them in a big folder. And when I outlined (can’t write without an outline, if I don’t have one I will be able to talk and talk and talk…and one episode would be longer than the Lord of the Rings) it all, I take all those post-its and that helps me a lot!

You also host a very cool website - Veronika Asks - tel us about it!
Sooooo, it’s a blog about books, authors and readers! It’s called Veronika Asks because I always have plenty of questions to ask authors, publishers and illustrators about their work and their lives. I set it up because I’m a real bookworm, I spent my entire childhood the nose in a book. And because I always wanted to know where do authors take their ideas from, how do they write…and instead of asking it for myself writing a letter to an author, why not help other readers discover it as well? Must admit that last year the website was very pink and girly (and I still loooove pink and girly stuff, for sure!) but now you can find more genres, like Mystery, Kids, Thrillers, Esoteric, Fantasy… I can interview well-known authors like Barbara Taylor Bradford who accepted my request as well as authors whose debut novel will be out in a month or a year. Everybody can come visit me and have a cool time talking!

What’s your all time favourite read?
Ouch. Only one? It would be a mix between Harry Potter and Carol Higgins Clark! I love fantasy, with fabulous creatures, unicorns, magic, elves but also detective stories and mysteries. When I was younger it used to be a huge book full of tales and short stories for children that contained 365 stories, one for every evening, and I still have it! But I am also a “guide girl”, I love reading guides, girly advices, how to’s…and Chick Lit. It really makes you feel like a million bucks! :) Which authors do you admire? Frankly, I am a Harry Potter fan. I think that JK Rowling did a great job creating a whole new world and being so dead-on. This book is really on my top list, and I’m very happy that JK Rowling has such a great success now, she fought and she won. And then Barbara Cartland. I’m not really a fan of her novels, even if I read some, but I really admire the woman. She wrote so many of them (over 600!) and she never disappointed her readers. And she did many other (and very useful) things beside her writing and that’s what dazzles me, she could achieve great things and write so much!

Respect.

What’s next for Veronika?
Well, next, in two weeks, you will discover FRENCH MANUCURE episodes two and three! Some nervous break-downs, unexpected twists, family tricks, plenty of new characters and a funny sleepover (in french, a pyjama party)! And then I’m working on a full-length novel, a funny comedy. A sitcom full-length! And Veronika Asks will go on and be filled with new interviews, new reviews and new giveaways!

So stay tuned!

Thanks for having me, dear Lola, and letting me talk about eBooks, Veronika Asks and FRENCH MANUCURE, I really appreciate that there are open-minded websites such as your pinkalicious Pink World ! Long life to your bedazzling website!

Readers, give eBooks a chance, they deserve it! And don’t forget, think pink! ;)

Visit Veronika at: http://veronikaasks.blogspot.com and buy her ebooks at: www.lulu.com