1. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I am Swiss, born in 1972 in Marseilles (France, but from Swiss parents). When I was 1.5 years old I moved back with my parents from Marseilles to Geneva. I spend my childhood and teen years there. At 19 years old I went to Sydney to study for 2 years. I then came back to Switzerland and studied economics and finance at the university of Geneva. I then joined a Swiss bank in Geneva and 25 years old I moved to Jakarta to work for an English brokerage house, as a stockbroker. After 2 years in Jakarta I moved back to Geneva to join a leading brokerage house headquartered in Hong Kong. I ended up being in charge of the Swiss office of this firm but in 2003 I decided to quit finance and to open a contemporary art gallery in Hong Kong. My parents are art lovers and they always brought me, since I was a kid, to museums, galleries and artist studios throughout Europe. I started to collect art in my late teens. So it was easy for me to decide to follow this passion for art when I quite banking. In Hong Kong, at that time, I was the only gallery representing renowned Western artists such as AES+F, Dale Frank, Erwin Olaf, Stephan Balkenhol, Yohsitaka Amano, ... In 2010 I opened a branch of my gallery, Art Statements, in Tokyo.
2. Describe your book ‘A Taste for Intensity’ in 30 words or less.
It is a novel about the complexity of relationships, about the notion of resilience -how to make sense of a trauma-, about hope and about being in charge of our destiny.
3. What was the hardest part of writing your book?
There were two main issues. One technical and one emotional. First I am not a native English speaker. So writing a novel in English with the pretension of writing a literary fiction piece was a real challenge. Then even though it is a novel, many events and emotions are based on actual events. Characters are fictional but remembering taumatic events to transcribe a wide spread of emotions back in the book was not an easy exercise.
4. What books have had the greatest influence on you?
The books that had the greatest influence on my may not have necessarily inspired me for A Taste for Intensity. Among the authors that inspired me for my novel are Balzac's The Lily of the Valley for the first and elated part of the story), Alexandre Dumas Fils' The Lady of the Camellias for the characters of Hector and Elizabeth, Homer's The Iliad (for the character of Hector), Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath for the character of Elizabeth Bennet and Boris Cyrulnik's The Ugly Ducklings for the concept of resilience, etc.
5. Briefly share with us what you do to market your book?
Bronco Publishing is working hard with a US based PR company to get as much exposure and reviews in traditional media outlets in the US, UK and a bit of everywhere else. I am personally active on authors or readers sites like Goodreads, Uthonomy, Watpad, Shelfari, facebook... As I am based in Hong Kong, we will also launch the book the at the end of October. So we try to create impacts in different locations, through different angles to hopefully eventually create a lot of interest for the book.
6. How do you spend your time when you are not writing?
I am an art dealer running a contemporary art gallery. So I am very busy promoting the artists I represent in setting up exhibitions at Art Statements' spaces in Hong Kong and Tokyo, in museums, foundations or Biennale worldwide and to attend international art fairs.
7. What are you working on next?
I have already the next novel in my mind. It will be about the feminization of men and we will follow - inspired by Voltaire-s Candid- 2 men and a woman in a quest through different hot spot of the planets. They will go through crazy adventures, as Candide did, and will learn a lot about themselves, about the world, about life and about humanity in this trip. It will be very rock n' roll.
