Showcase: The Not So Secret Emails Of Coco Pinchard by Robert Bryndza

Where Bridget Jones left off... Coco Pinchard picks up.

Coco was never a single thirty-something. She married young, had a son, and put her dream to be a writer on hold.

Now her first novel is published. Husband Daniel has greyed nicely into a silver fox, and son Rosencrantz is grown up. It should be time to enjoy life.

That is until the annual family Christmas with her hideous mother-in-law Ethel, and Coco opens her gift from Daniel. It’s not the jewellery she chose, but an iPhone. This marks the start of Daniel’s mid-life crisis and she catches him in bed with a younger woman.

The iPhone becomes a confessional of sorts, through emails to her friends Chris, an ageing trustafarian and Marika a slightly alcoholic schoolteacher.

Then she meets the hunky Adam and she’s back in the world of dating as a single forty something...

Read the emails which tell the hilarious tale of Coco picking up the pieces, in this fun, feel good Romantic Comedy.

About the author: Robert Bryndza is a British born author and playwrite, currently living in Slovakia. He originally trained as an actor, but was bitten by the writing bug when his play Branko & Branka: The Croatian Magic Sensation was a hit at the 2007 Edinburgh Festival. 

He was a finalist in the 2010 BBC Drama Writers Academy and has published two novels, The Not So Secret Emails Of Coco Pinchard and Bitch Hollywood (co- written with Ján Bryndza). The latter was inspired by the year Robert and Ján spent living and working in Los Angeles.

Robert is currently working on a sequel to The Not So Secret Emails Of Coco Pinchard. In his free time he's learning to speak Slovak and writes a blog; A British Guy In Slovakia at www.teambryndzabooks.com He's also about to get a new puppy - which seems more exciting than anything else!

Q.  What inspires your writing?

A. People. I love to people watch. It is easy as a writer to be stuck indoors working from home, but I find getting out and doing stuff, anything gives me ideas. I also get a great deal of inspiration from going to the theatre. 

Q.  What is your favorite thing about being an author?

A. Writing the first draft, sitting in the armchair with my computer, a good cup of coffee and my puppy lying on my feet and knowing I have the day stretching out in front of me with limitless possibilities.

Q.  What is the toughest part of being an author?

A. The re-writing! It's hard, albeit rewarding work, but as drafts go by they often seem to get worse before they get better. You have to get your head down and write it out.

Q.  If you could not be author, what would you do/be?

A. A Gardener. When me and my partner Ján got our first place in London, it was a tiny flat in a Victorian Conversion. A Victorian Conversion involves a Landlord taking a beautiful old three-storey house and carving it up into flats. Our flat was on the second floor and we bizarrely had custody of a little square of concrete yard out the back. It was nothing, but we tidied it up and grew flowers, giant sunflowers, tomatoes, and lavender in buckets and pots and turned it into the most amazing little garden. Every morning I used to love going there and watering and weeding and admiring it all.

Q.  What would the story of your life be entitled?

A. I Did It!

Thinking as a writer, it would initially be a book called I Did It! then adapted into a stage musical I Did It! The Musical. A successful film would follow, and of course there would be a soundtrack album Songs From And Inspired by I Did It!

Q.  What is your favorite book of all time?

A. Wuthering Heights. It was on my school syllabus when I was sixteen and initially I read it grudgingly, hating what I thought was every stupid boring sentence. Then as my exams approached and the paper was going to be on Wuthering Heights I made myself read it again. My parents and sister had gone away for the weekend, and I was at home alone for the first time ever. I settled down on a foggy Saturday and read it constantly through to Sunday morning. It was a revelation. I had never been drawn in and consumed by a book before.

Q.  Which character from ANY book are you most like?

A. I used to worry I was a lot like Adrian Mole! He is a brilliant comedy creation from author Sue Townsend, and I love the Adrian Mole books but as I moved through my twenties I started to panic I was turning out a bit like him. He always wanted to be a writer but never quite got down to writing a book and would wallow in his own insecurity. He saw all his peers moving on with the careers they dreamed of. So when I was 25 I quit my job and told myself I was going to write. Three weeks later I was writing material for a comedy theatre show in London.

Q.  What character from all of your book are you most like?

A. Filip in Bitch Hollywood. He really captured my feelings about living in Los Angeles. I have never been anywhere where I felt more like I had landed from another planet!

Q.  What is your favorite season?

A. Spring - I just can't wait for everything to come alive and the weather to improve. Where I live in Slovakia, spring starts with a bang, almost like clockwork at the end of March. There can be a foot of snow on a Monday and come Friday its vanished and daffodils can be poking through the grass and blossom on the trees. 

Q.  What inspired your book cover?  Or what is your favorite book cover and why?

A. My cover designer! I tried, unsuccessfully to communicate my ideas to a couple of designers, but to be honest I didn't have a clue. I was in a bookshop in Bratislava, saw the most wonderful cover, and tracked down the designer through Facebook. She went away with my manuscript and came back with the cover I never knew I wanted. I think the markings of a great cover designer are that they tell a story with the cover image.

Q.  Tell me something funny that happened while on a book tour or while promoting your book.

A. I have trade print deals in Slovakia for my English language books, and my first book to be published there was Mrcha Hollywood, (the Slovak language version of Bitch Hollywood) written with my partner Ján Bryndza. There was a big media buzz around the launch in February this year. On the day, we were at our first promotional interview on breakfast TV in Bratislava when our Publicity Manager - who was only six months pregnant - went into labour! She had been feeling bad but thought it was the soup she'd eaten the night before. She was rushed to hospital and had the baby and we had to carry on with the rest of the day’s publicity and then host our own book launch. It was both funny and terrifying.

Q.  Are you working on something new?

A.  Yes I'm writing a sequel to my first book The Not So Secret Emails Of Coco Pinchard. 

Q.  Anything you want to say to followers of this blog or those that are just stopping by?

A. Thank you for hosting me for this interview, and thanks to all the readers out there who buy and talk about my books. You are the ones who pay my rent and spur me on to write more!

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