5 questions with author Candace Bushnell

For those of us whose hearts broke when Carrie Bradshaw walked down the aisle and pranced around an overtly exoticised Abu Dhabi, and for those of us who silently sighed at the loss of the wonderfully witty, unabashedly raunchy and satirical musings that was Sex and the City, the book—Killing Monica is classic Candace Bushnell.

The coming of age of a 40something woman in novel form—there's power play, celebrity, divorce, glamour, sex, drama and most of all, fun. Pandy "PJ" Wallis is a celebrated writer whose novels about a woman named Monica, lead to a series of blockbuster films starring SondraBeth Schnauwzer. Comparisons between the Carrie-Candace-SJP and the Monica-PJ-SBS triangle rage on—great press, denied allegations, let's move on to Candace Bushnell, who tells Vogue all about her latest creation and how she combats sexism.

What sparked Killing Monica?

Philip Roth's Zuckerman Unbound. It's this hysterical book about a writer who has to deal with the hatred that comes his way after his book is published. I thought that was a great premise. That’s how I decided to write this really funny absurd screwball comedy about a 40something writer who has created this character Monica, who goes on to become her own Frankenstein's monster. So it began with wanting to write about the creative impulse and how it manifests itself in real life.

If SATC was the single woman's coming of age, would you say Killing Monica is the middle-aged woman's coming of age?

It totally is. I wanted to capture the experience of being a middle-aged woman in today's world. I think the 40s is about reinvention—It could be because of a recent divorce or because your kids have left home or because your 20 and 30something persona just doesn't fit anymore! There's something exciting about getting older. With each stage you leave behind something and you open yourself up to new possibilities.

  

Killing Monica is also about a woman writer wanting to get rid of the labels attached to her writing and move from popular to literary. Is this something you relate to?

Women writers get labelled a lot more than men. And those labels are usually pejorative. It's a cultural thing where we don't value women's work as much as we value men's work. If a man's name is on it, it's somehow more important. It's frustrating for women writers everywhere. Even literary writers! I think I relate to wanting to own your experiences as a person as opposed to being a gender.

How do you deal with this brand of everyday sexism?

I yell and put my foot down. It's a new thing for me. Just saying it as it is. I have to tell you, it's quite fun. But I do think it has a lot to do with being 56. It could also be because I'm a post-menopausal woman and don't have all those hormones anymore, so I just don't care. I cannot put up with it anymore.

Every second book written by a woman on sex and relationships is blurbed the next Candace Bushnell. How do you feel about these versions of you?

Writing is my life and I knew I was going to be doing this since I was an 8-year-old. So it's super important to me. The more women writing, the better. And it is quite flattering as well. But I hate it when people are described as this person’s the next fill-in-the-blanks. Why can’t they just be themselves? Why do they have to be the next or new anything? Why can't we treat writers like individuals?

Candace Bushnell's Killing Monica (Hachette) released on June 26