These gorgeous paperbacks arrived today at bookstores everywhere!
Monthly Archives: November 2013
Goodreads Choice Awards Round Two!
The Second Round of voting for the Goodreads 2013 Choice Awards begins today!
Big thanks to everyone who voted for Chanel Bonfire in the Debute Author category AND everyone who wrote Chanel into the Memoir category!
Please take a minute to go vote in both categories in Round Two! Thank you!
The link will take you there:
The Wyndham
The Wyndham, 42 West 58th Street
The Wyndham, located on 58th Street in Manhattan, directly behind The Plaza, was a small hotel (200 rooms) in which we lived for a short while after returning to the States from London and before moving to the Howard Johnson’s in Danbury. I know, I know… from La Mamounia in Marrakech to The Ritz in Paris to the London Hilton to the Howard Johnson’s?! The mind reels.
Anyway, while the Howard Johnson’s distilled, for me, the hotel experience to its essence, the Wyndham was probably the perfect example of the median hotel experience.
It was practical: maid service, clean, good linens, plenty of towels, and room service with acceptable food. In addition many of the rooms also had kitchenettes for those on an extended stay.
It was convenient: on 58th street directly behind The Plaza between 5th and 6th Avenues, it was half a block from Bergdorf’s and the Paris movie theater and around the corner from Carnegie Hall and the Russian Tea Room.
It was cheap compared to its neighbors.
And it was also glamourous: not a flashy kind of glamour but and old fashioned, “people in the know,” un-wasteful kind of glamour. It was known as the actor’s hotel and many famous ones who had the money to stay elsewhere stayed there because the owners, John and Susan Mados (who also lived there) made it feel like home. Hume Cronin, Jessica Tandy, Stacy Keach, Anthony Quinn, John Cassavetes, and Lawrence Olivier all called it home for the duration of a play on Broadway or a movie shoot or longer. It was like a small European hotel in the heart of New York. Sadly, it closed in 2005.
Howard Johnson’s
The Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge in Danbury Connecticut
In the 1960s and 70s Howard Johnson’s was America’s largest chain of restuarants with over a thousand locations. Begun as a drugstore and soda fountain in Massachusetts in the early 1920s, Howard Johnson’s reinvented ice cream (their 28 Flavor –all high in butterfat–became famous) and hospitality. And as the country and the highway system boomed after World War Two, Howard Johnson’s standardized roadside accomodations providing comfort and a sense of continuity for millions. For me, Howard Johnson’s distilled the essential qualities that make a hotel (whether it is the Ritz, the Hilton or the Plaza) good beds, clean towels and room service or at least a cafe.
When we moved back to the States from London, we stayed briefly in New York and then, while Mother and our fairy ex-stepfather Oliver patched things up again and looked for a house in Connecticut, we live for a few months at the Howard Johnson’s in Danbury — a small town in northern Fairfield County about an hour and a half north of the city. America was a strange place for Robbie and Me (especially once we were off the island of Manhattan) but HoJo’s with good linen, maids and a restaurant loaded with ice cream made us feel at home. And, they had the world’s first, positively addictive, video game, “Pong” which we played for hours on end.
The Hotel Ritz
Hotel Ritz, Paris
It was at the bar at the Hotel Ritz that Mother conducted the “business” that brought our ex-stepfather back into our lives for a time while we were living in London. I don’t know if it was the Ritz Bar, the Bar Vendome or the Bar Hemingway over Rainbows (a signature cocktail) Blood Marys (said to be invented here for Hemingway) or Champagne (although my step-father did favor a Gibson) but whatever they drank in whichever bar overlooking the Place Vendome, it was a success and she brought our now fairy ex-stepfather back to the Hotel Sydney Opera to take us away to the Inter-Continental.
The Ritz was a favorite hotel of Oliver’s and run at this time by Charles Ritz the son of the hotel’s founder Cesar Ritz, the legendary Swiss hotelier whose name is still synonymous with glamour and luxury almost a hundred years after his death.
Goodreads Choice Awards 2013
We interrupt Hotel Week Pt. 2 to say that CHANEL BONFIRE has been nominated for the 2013 Goodreads Choice Awards in the Debut Author category!
I am very honored and grateful for this acknowledgement and if you’re a Goodreads member, I’d like to ask for you vote. The Opening Round of voting runs from November 4th – 9th.
The link will take you there:
https://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-books-2013
And while you’re there, sign up for the Chanel Bonfire Goodreads Giveaway and get a chance to win a free paperback copy of the book for yourself or to give to someone you love! The paperback will be published on November 12, 2013 and I’m giving 5 copies away so sign up now!
Thank you! Tomorrow we will return with stories of the The Ritz in Paris and later in the week, the one, the only, the fabulous Howard Johnson’s! Stay tuned.
The Inter-Continental Hotel, Paris
The Westin Paris-Vendome built as the Hotel Continental in 1878 and known to us in the 70s as the Inter-Continental.
My daughter Grace on the same balcony overlooking the Tuileries that Robbie and I shared.
When our fairy ex-stepfather materialized at the Hotel Sydney Opera to rescue us from the horrors of two star accomodations, the Inter-Continental is where he took us. Opened in April of 1878 as the Hotel Continental it occupied a full block at the intersection of the rue de Rivoli and the rue de Castiglione over looking the Tuileries Gardens. It was the largest and most luxurious hotel in Paris for decades. Renamed the Inter-Continental in 1969, It became the Westin Paris in 2005 and the Westin Paris – Vendome in 2010. It was for Grace and I, as it had been for Robbie and I a wonderful and enchanting place in which to flop on the beds, drink Coca Colas and race across the street to the gardens.
The Mamounia
La Mamounia
The Mamounia Hotel in Marrakech, Morocco or La Mamounia as it’s commonly known sits at the heart of the old section of the city facing the Atlas Mountains.
We stayed here while our step-father was scounting locations for a new resort in Morocco. It was a wonderful, mystical-feeling place in which a couple of young girls could have a lot of adventures. Mother and Oliver’s version of the trip had it’s own kind of magic but sadly it’s own very grown-up kind of sorrow.
A wonderful series of photos and history of the hotel can be found on The New York Social Diary at the link: http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/node/1909017