A View To a Thrill

Book project 1 updating : to all the people who helped me with the writing on my book on Fleming & the 007 saga , some details regarding publication .
Manuscript won't pass the quorum of Readers before Autumn now .
Should have been earlier but troubles with a so-called internal contact in the Publishing House delayed the whole operation .
Which actually may not be such a bad thing after all , since there's not quite much as a James Bond actuality these days ... Till the beginning of shooting of Bond23 this Autumn that is !

To entertain you , here are some variations on proposed covers dear friend of mine Stephane Tron created for the project . May he be eternaly thanked for those great designs of his .
Those are merely sort of concept art so far . Ideas just thrown in ( I've always found Nature Morte type of covers more striking than a casual illustration , how good they may be ) .

As a side point ,must confess I've been recently approached by a French publisher to write another book on the Bond saga - this time the Cinematographic one - to tie in with next year's 50th Anniversary hoopla ... But after initial positive contacts last month , a defeaning silence followed when I dared mentionning costs of Photographic material if book wasn't okayed by Eon / Danjaq - laughs ...

To see more of Stéphane's incredible Fan arts visit his own site at http://007art.free.fr/

New French Carte Blanche Competition

Trying to entice potential Summer readers to discover the new Jeffery Deaver's James Bond adventure , Flammarion launches today a brand new competition - so simple to win even Austin Powers could enter !

You just have to answer three basic questions - so easy to find out when you take the time to surf onto the French promo website ...

And if you're lucky enough you could even win a brand new complete DvD box of Eon all 22 James Bond movies .

So what are you still doing there ?

A bit late but still ...France got its own Carte Blanche

Each new Ian Fleming Publication James Bond novel is nowaday marketed like a Hollywood blockbuster .
With Press preview , Press launches and multi medias promotion campaign .

Such was of course the case of Carte Blanche , the latest Continuation novel ( although I guess this term isn't really favoured anymore by the IFP people...) penned by American Thrillers auteur Jeffery Deaver .

Promotion started last Summer - with an invitation to discover the new writer in London .
The operation was very hush hush - so secret indeed that no France medias ever reported the event...Despite frantic attempts by yours truly to try to raise the interest around that litterary reboot of Ian Fleming's most famous creation .

Cut to late May a year later , with the Press presentation of the new book set in London Saint Pancras very chic Champagne Bar , reputedly longest bar of Europe ( people will do everything these days to get into the Guiness Book of Records I guess... ) .

Having been kindly invited by the P.R people of Hodder & Stoughton and the Colman Gety agency , I was nonetheless forced to pass the invitation to a friend of mine based in the UK - for practical reason . Impossible to get an affordable EuroStar ticket for London less than a week before proposed departure date . Sigh .
Thanks to the superb Journalistic skills of the aforementionned friend ( none other than Simon Gardner, John Gardner's son ), we were able to present French James Bond fans with some exclusive photo reports of the whole day ( mucho gratias indeed , Mr Gardner Jr ! ) .

The book was due to be in store the very next day in England - May the 26th to be precise . As in most of the World - the English-speaking one , that is .
But the French publisher - Flammarion - has already selected another publication date of its own : a week later , June the 1rst .

At first I thought they had delayed publication because of internal problems ( getting the French translation right - which they almost managed . There are still some minor errors regarding military ranks and stuff ) but the reason was much more simple : Flammarion's own publication calendar was organised in a different time setting way - and they simply couldn't have proposed the French version of Carte Blanche by May the 26 as with the rest of the World .

So once again, people might say the French have done everything to be pointed at again but I can assure you that was merely due to a different publication calendar setting .

Last but not least : Flammarion issued a brand new French promo website to tie-in with the release - to which content I participated in some capacity.
http://www.007carteblanche.fr/

P.S : now that I have read the full novel I can safely state it is indeed a vast improvement upon the last one penned by Sebastian Faulks . Strangely enough I kept having the image of Daniel Craig while reading it . Oh , and don't be afraid by the publicity ' Re-boot ' stint . Re-boot it may be as was then labelled the ' Licence Renewed ' John Gardner first novel in 81 .
In short : Fans won't jump to the roof while reading the litterary 21rst Century adventures of Mr Bond .
Pfewww . Thank God for that !
On another hand , must sadly report the botched job done by Flammarion's translaters - who obviously didn't know scratch from the world of Fleming when they decided to tackle the job of translating Jeffery Deaver's work into French . Military inaccuracies , basic mispelling , and sometimes...complete misunderstanding of classic lines ( come on , who in the 21rst century cannot translate correctly ' shaken and stirred ' I ask you ? ) .
Which is rather sad for it anihilates most of the interest sustained by this great story .
Coincidently , Flammarion decided to try to ' re launch ' the title by mid July - following disappointingly low sales in the past month .
Heck, like I told'em ' you do not launch a Bond book with a zero promotion budget . ' ( which they did , unfortunately ) .

If you want to win a French edition of Carte Blanche - or a complete set of Eon 007 movies on DvD ! - , try the competition in the ' Concours ' part of the website

Carte Blanche : the French Promo site that never was

It is rather well-known I'm considered as some kind of French specialist as far as 007 business is concerned .

Bearing in mind that two years ago , the French PR bureau in charge of Sebastian Faulk's DEVIL MAY CARE promo had shamelessly « borrowed » huge chuncks of the www.jamesbond-fr.com bio section , without first asking us ( things were promptly repared after a tonic mail from yours truly ) , we decided this time to directly propose the French Publishing House in charge of issuing Jeffery Deaver's Carte Blanche in French language some ideas of our own for the creation ( and administration ) of a brand new French site .

To achieve this effect , the main Web designer of jamesbond-fr.com worked round the clock to propose an original aproach – due to match my precise instructions .
Which were ' no girl with flaming gun in hand , no roaring car , no explosion and no nudity ' .

In short : a clean approach – to favor both 007 fans and new potential readers as well .

Our Web designer perfectly understood the point and rose to the challenge .

We had consequently by mid March some pages to show to the French Publisher .

And then Fate torpedoed us in the guise of someone I met on FaceBook – arguing he was himself working in that very same Publishing House .
We had several common friends I trusted , so I accept him amongst my FB relatives , and then naturally asked him to forward the CB promo website proposition to the right person .

It then seems a much more trustee and faster way to get in touch with the right persons , don't you think ?

WRONG !

Cut to one month later ( April ) and roughly thirty mails later : we still hadn't heard back from the French Publishing House PR bureau .
I had a nagging feeling in my stomach and began to reconsider the validity of using that FaceBook ' Friend ' as a go-between .

Comes May – a rather busy month for me with its annual Cannes International Film Festival .
By then, I had finally heard again from the mysterious FB guy , who even had the nerves to ask me where I was staying during the Festival ( assuring he was going to appear there by the second week ) . Never saw him there .

Back in Paris by mid May , I was now officially seriously worried .

It was obvious our proposed French Promo site project couldn't be used anymore – we simply didn't have enough time left before the French launch ( June the 1rst ) to do a proper job as we thought earlier back in March .

I decided then to fluke the unofficial approach and simply try to directly contact the PR bureau .

I had been fortunately in touch earlier with one of the two translators hired to do the French version of Carte Blanche , and that person kindly pointed me – minutes after receiving my email – to the Attachée de Presse put in charge of the French promotion .

Turned out she NEVER received our own project , was sincerely sorry to learn we had put time and labour to try to submit that , and was , of course , interested at once by a proposed collaboration .

Heck, after all, www.jamesbond-fr.com is the biggest 007 French site in term of connections per day , quite simply ...

So here we are .
Do enjoy two of the proposed French Carte Blanche website pages we worked on three months ago ...
And which , mysteriously , never managed to reach the P.B Bureau in time to be officially considered .

Lesson to be learn : beware your FaceBook friends .
You may think it's Daniel Craig answering you but it could also be some nerd frantically typing from his bedroom ...

Carte Blanche... A la Carte !

We are glad to report we'll be working in advisory capacity with the P.R agency in charge of the French Carte Blanche promo campaign .
French release date of the book will be June the first ( due to a peculiar Flammarion publishing calendar , title couldn't be announced on May the 26th as with the international editions ) .

The French cover will be – in all modesty – one of the best looking of the whole bunch with a silver Ian Fleming Publication 007 logo impressed on the Carte Blanche motive ( several variations were proposed till that one was finally agreed by all parties and decided upon ) .

No gadget tie-ins this year ( such as the mini Devil May Care booklet which was inserted as a freebie in various French newspapers ) but a massive huge poster campaign in Train Stations and Metro .

The name's Armstrong... Vic Armstrong ...

Received today copy of Robert Sellers's Vic Armstrong biography " The True Adventures of the World's Greatest StuntMan " .

The CV of that guy would make any decent Film fan blemish with awe ( Some fan - namely Steven Spielberg himself - signed the introduction of the book ... ) .

Am about to devour it by the night .

More details tomorrow...

" No well dressed man should be without one..."

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