WFF: Camilla, please tell us a little about yourself.

CV: I'm almost 33 years old, I work as an editor for Harlequin Mondadori and I've always loved books. I like reading them and writing stories. What else? Well, I think that's all.

WFF: Why did you decide to write 'Qualcosa Bolle in Città', the first chicklit in Italian and the first book published by Harlequin Mondadori written by an Italian writer?
Have you always wanted to be a writer?

CV: Qualcosa bolle in città is the first Italian Red Dress Ink novel, not the first Italian chicklit in general, I've been told. I began to write it for fun.
Red Dress Ink author Sarah Mlynowski was in Italy to promote her first novel, we talked about how interesting it would be to have a RDI novel set in Italy and about Italian life, so I decided to try and write it. But it wasn't simple to get the permission to be be published by Harlequin Enterprises. At last, I've got it.
Yes, I've always wanted to be a writer, and I've been writing since I was very young.
But I dont' like calling myself a writer. Not yet. Writing is a long trip, a voyage.
I've just bought the ticket.

WFF: How hard was it for you to juggle a full-time job while writing a novel?
Any hints as to how others can do it?

CV: I dont' think there can be a recipe for it, sometimes discipline helps: a few pages or lines every day, just to keep in touch with the story. But there's a moment when it's the story itself that asks to be written. And it doesn't matter where you wanted to go, you have to follow it. As regard my full-time job, well... writing and reading have always been my passions. You always have time for your passions.

WFF: I know that Harlequin Mondadori came up with an intriguing and original book publicity campaign. Can you tell us something about it?

CV: The book offered an unlimited series of trade-marks for a co-marketing campaign. They chose one, and organized a book-signing in Rome on the White Night, last September, distributed specimens with the first chapter of the book... It isn't the first time that Harlequin Mondadori have used co-marketing to promote a Red Dress Ink book. They aren't advertisement books , because the co-marketing campaign comes after the books have been written. That's why they do it with some books and not with others, I suppose.

WFF: Qualcosa Bolle in Città is such a charming book. It is at one and the same time very Italian -- any young Italian woman can identify with the protagonist, Sabrina -- and yet the book is also universal. Sabrina's problems with her family, her boyfriend, her friends, her job, are immediately recognizable by any young woman living and working on her own in the city. Do you feel that chicklit's themes are universal?

CV: Chiklit themes are universal because we are thirty-something living somewhere in the West World. But Universality should be a feature of literature, anyway. The problem with chiklit is that in ten or twenty years, or even in a shorter time, it won't be interesting anymore. It's for here and now.

WFF: Are you working on your next novel? What will it be about?

CV: Actually, I'm not. I'm writing short stories, but I don't know if they will ever be published. As regards novels... who knows?

WFF: You know your character, Sabrina, best. Where will Sabrina be in ten years' time? Will she be happily married with kids or will she still be single? Or maybe divorced? Will she become a high-flying career woman or have a low-level job in the suburbs? What do you think will become of her?

CV: She will be living somewhere with a view of the sea, will have children and won't stop being herself.

WFF - Thanks for your time and we look forward to reading the next Camilla Vittorini novel.

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