Friday, March 7, 2014

WHAT THE EXPERTS SAY: Eva Fejos, Author

Eva Fejos, Author
BANGKOK TRANSIT
and 12 other best-sellers
Hungarian best-selling author, Eva Fejos, inspired readers with her first book BANGKOK TRANSIT “to take your life into your own hands.” It reached the best-seller’s list one month after publication, and is available in English. A writer of “women’s fiction” Fejos features “brave women” as her heroes. Since she published BANGKOK TRANSIT in Hungarian in 2008, she has written 12 other best-sellers.

In addition to becoming a full-time author, Fejos served as an award-winning journalist. She loves to travel—although she favors her hometown of Budapest—and has visited all sites featured in her books. Of interest, she likes to buy flip-flops and riding books. 

Don't miss the excerpt following her interview.

Q: Who should read BANGKOK TRANSIT? Do you consider it “women’s fiction?” If so, how does “women’s fiction” differ from “romance?”

Eva Fejos: Ever since my teens, I’ve wanted to write about something that also interests me as a reader. This is how I arrived at so-called ‘women’s fiction’. My heroines are brave women, who are as everyday people as us, but they can change their life. My readers are mostly women (but it was really surprising for me when I discovered that approximately 15-20 percent of my readers are men in Hungary). I often get feedback from my readers, that after they read a book written by me, they could make big decisions easier. They got power and strength from my characters and from the story. BANGKOK TRANSIT isn’t really a love story, despite the fact that it has storylines that connect to love. And as in our lives, the relationships are important for my heroes, too. My heroines are looking for themselves in the novel – and a love is a bonus for them, as it is in our lives…

Q: You feature multiple characters in BANGKOK TRANSIT. How do you convince readers to care about them?

Eva Fejos: My mother told me while reading BANGKOK TRANSIT that I built up too many characters. I really can’t imagine novel-writing any other way. I’m entertained by the plot’s parallel storylines and when the situation calls for it, I can ‘transplant myself’ from the mind of one character to the next. The sharp transitions and jumps manage themselves somehow, usually at the right places. Since I don’t plan the scenario ahead of time, but rather, allow the story to whisk me along as it runs its natural course, allowing my characters to shape their own lives, I never know ahead of time where and how the storylines will intermingle. But sooner or later they meet, and often I too am surprised by how they connect.

Q:  How important is the setting of Bangkok to telling your story? Could it take place in any city? 

Eva Fejos: No, definitely not. I have novels where locations are only interesting settings or backdrops, but in BANGKOK TRANSIT the city is almost a character itself. This story could not have taken place anywhere else.

Q: Do you write to deliver a message as well as to entertain? If so, what message do you want readers to receive?

Eva Fejos: When I write, I don’t send messages to anyone. I’m the only one I want to please; I want to appeal to my own taste. But I know that despite this, somehow I send an important message by my novels to readers: make the important decisions in your life! Somehow my readers could ‘read’ this message from my stories: they told me that my novels help them in decision-making. For example, one of my readers decided to change her life after she had read The Mexican. She told herself: if The Mexican’s heroine, Zsofi, was able to make a life-changing decision (that she didn’t regret), than she had to follow her own dreams, too! My reader’s childhood dream was to work in London as a classy bar’s manager. She moved there and started to follow her childhood dreams. Now she is the manager of a bar in a luxury hotel, and she is very happy.

Q: What inspires you to write and why? What first attracted you to women’s fiction?

Eva Fejos: I have always been a bookworm. I wrote my first novel when I was a teenager, and since then I have written so many novels. I didn’t know for a long time that I’m a ‘women’s fiction writer’, I just wrote what I wanted to read as a reader. I write what I feel like writing. This gives me pleasure and hopefully offers the same to my readers.

Q: How relevant is the concept of “villain” and “heroes” to BANGKOK TRANSIT? What makes a good villain?

Eva Fejos: BANGKOK TRANSIT is about the everyday people who are looking for their own way in life, seeking their happiness. There is one contradictory character in it (David), but I wouldn’t say he is a villain – he makes mistakes, but he learns something about life and love in the end of the story.

Q:  You have written 12 other best-seller novels. Are they in the same genre as BANGKOK TRANSIT?  Can you tell us a little about them? Are they available outside of Eastern Europe? Which one is your favorite?

Eva Fejos: Since I’m now managing my own publishing house, I know that these novels can be categorized under the genre called ‘women’s fiction.’ My favorite is always that book that I’m working on. Now it’s ‘Because We Must Love Each Other’, the novel that I’m going to publish in the summer. But I like BANGKOK TRANSIT very much. And I like my latest, Vacation in Naples, which takes place in Naples, Italy. This will be out in English sometime in the summer.

I have novels that divide my readers, like my novella, Dalma. Either they love it or they hate it. Dalma is a strange, outcast girl. Her father is Cuban and her mother is Hungarian. She was ridiculed in school because of her Cuban descent (yes, unfortunately these things happen in Hungary), and this introverted girl relates her story with stinging humor. She tells about the years when her mother found a new husband; when her half-brother was born; when the Gypsy boy she was in love with changed schools and Dalma, who had a hard time coming to terms with this, skipped school for a few weeks just to think and ponder life… The novella’s tone is very humorous, but it deals with rather serious issues. It is written in first person singular, and it was a topic I was so obsessed with that I finished it in a few weeks. I think this story touched a nerve with many of my readers. This is one of my favorite books.

Q: You write for international readers. Do you write anything special to assure that multiple nationalities will appreciate your stories?

Eva Fejos: I write mostly as a cosmopolite and write cosmopolitan novels, and I believe that I can help women not only in Hungary with my books, but also in many other countries of the world. My books, I think, entertain and help my readers unwind from their own lives for a few hours, and that is very important, and, as I told you, my novels somehow make decision-making easier for my readers. The heroes of my novels give the strength to my readers to make that choice, and the feedback I receive is proof of that.   

Q:  What’s next? Will you continue to write more novels?

Eva Fejos: Yes, of course. My upcoming novel, I Waited One Hundred Nights is with my editor right now, it will be out in Hungarian in April. Now I’m writing my summer novel’s last chapters (Because We Must Love Each Other).

Q:  Tell us about Eva Fejos. What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

Eva Fejos: I like traveling, to chat with my partner, to gaze at Lake Balaton, or to sit on our terrace and admire the stunning views of my beautiful hometown, Budapest. I like jogging, buying flip-flops and riding boots, and I like reading. And of course, I enjoy strolling on the bank of the Danube with my dog, Rumli.

About Eva Fejos

Eva Fejos is a Hungarian writer and journalist. She worked in one of the largest Hungarian women’s magazines, Nők Lapja (Women’s Journal), as a journalist from 2001 until 2012. She was the recipient of both the Award for Quality Journalism and the Award for Excellence. She is tremendously fond of traveling. Her many experiences give a personal touch to her exciting, propelling, and exotic novels. Fejos's first Hungarian best-seller book, BANGKOK TRANSIT, reached the top of the best-seller list within one month of its publication.

Following the initial publication of this novel in 2008, she has gone on to write twelve other best-sellers, making her a publishing phenomena in Hungary. According to the many accounts given by her readers, the author's books are "therapeutic journeys," full of flesh and blood characters who never give up on their dreams. Many readers have been inspired to change the course of their own lives after reading her books. "Take your life into your own hands" is one of the important messages the author wishes to convey.
She:
- has had 13 best-selling novels published in Hungary so far.
- BANGKOK TRANSIT is her first best-seller, published in 2008.
- has won several awards as a journalist, and thanks to one of her articles, the legislation pertaining to human egg donation was modified, allowing couples in need to acquire donor eggs more easily.  
- likes novels that have several storylines running parallel.
- visited all the places she’s written about. 
- founded her own publishing company (Erawan Publishing) in Hungary last year, where she publishes her own books, and foreign books, that are hand-picked by her, too. 
- Her books published in Hungary thus far are:
Till Death Do Us Part (Holtodiglan)
Bangkok Transit
Hotel Bali
Chicks (Csajok)
Strawberries for Breakfast (Eper reggelire)
The Mexican (A mexikói)
Cuba Libre
Dalma
Hello, London
Christmas in New York (Karácsony New Yorkban)
Caribbean Summer (Karibi nyár)
Bangkok, I Love You (Szeretlek, Bangkok)
Starting Now – the new edition of Till Death Do Us Part (Most kezdődik)
Vacation in Naples – the English version will be published in summer, 2014 (Nápolyi vakáció)

To be published in spring of 2014: I Waited One Hundred Nights (Száz éjjel vártam) - Hungarian

To be published in summer of 2014: Because We Must Love Each Others (Mert nekünk szeretnünk kell egymást) - Hungarian

Bangkok: a sizzling, all-embracing, exotic city where the past and the present become intertwined. It’s a place where anything can happen… and anything really does happen. The paths of seven people cross in this metropolis.  Seven seekers, for whom this city might be a final destination. Or perhaps it is only the start of a new journey? A successful businessman; a celebrated supermodel; a man who is forever the outsider; a young mother who suddenly loses everything; a talented surgeon, who could not give the woman he loved all that she desired; a brothel’s madam; and a charming young woman adopted at birth. Why these seven? Why did they come to Bangkok now, at the same time? Do chance encounters truly exist?     
BANGKOK TRANSIT is a Central European best-seller. The author, Eva Fejos, a Hungarian writer and journalist, is a regular contributor to women’s magazines and is often herself a featured personality. Bangkok Transit was her first best-seller, which sold more than 100,000 copies and is still selling. Following the initial publication of this novel in 2008, she went on to write twelve other best-sellers, thus becoming a publishing phenomena in Hungary According to accounts given by her readers, the author’s books are “therapeutic journeys,” full of flesh and blood characters who never give up on their dreams. Many readers have been inspired to change the course of their own lives after reading her books. “Take your life into your own hands,” is one of the important messages the author wishes to convey.  
Try it for yourself, and let Eva Fejos whisk you off on one of her whirlwind journeys... that might lead deep into your own heart.

Excerpt

            “Are you nuts?” asked her husband, when she last spoke to him on the phone a few days earlier. “Why are you going back? Instead of starting a new life, you’re living in the past?”
            His voice was angry, impassioned. Her husband – more like her ex-husband nowadays – didn’t understand her anymore, even though they used to have such an amazing relationship… before. But Anne knew that there was no longer anything binding them together.
            “I have to go back so I can… end this and move on,” she said, and she hoped he didn’t notice her voice choking up. She didn’t want him upset too. “You can’t possibly understand this,” she added.
            “No, I can’t. You’re just torturing yourself. Anne, I beg you, please come back to the present!”
            “I can’t. Not right now. I have to go there. For months I’ve felt that I can’t take it anymore and that this is the only thing that can help me.”
            “Do you want… do you feel like spending New Year’s Eve with me?” he asked after a long silence.
            “No. It’s really nice of you, but there’s nothing to celebrate.”
            “I didn’t want to celebrate. I just wanted to see you, to be together, and talk… whatever you’d like,” he said softly. Then, after a long, blaring silence, he added, “You know it’s not easy for me either. That I…”
            “No!” her voice was tense. “Please don’t continue. Please… I’m going. I’m not doing New Year’s Eve. I’m packing up and flying away.”
            “When are you coming back?”
            “I don’t know yet.”
            “Where will you be staying?”
            “The same place. The Ambassador. Then… later… I don’t know. Somewhere around there. You know…”
            “Anne, instead of letting your wound to heal, you keep ripping open the scab. I honestly don’t understand you.”
            “Happy New Year,” she said, and hung up.
            She felt nothing more than cold, painful emptiness. But she didn’t cry then. Only when she pulled out her brand new, lightweight suitcase and started packing her clothes did the tears begin to fall.

Yes, she knew how the elevator worked. Yes, she knows which floor it’s on. Yes, she also knows what time breakfast ends and that there is a buffet dinner in the restaurant each evening. Yes, she’s familiar with the bar. She could hardly wait to get away from the receptionist. So she could finally be alone. There was a different story whirling in her head already.
            Last time (last time? no, that was a different person living a different life) they had listened with interest to all the pampering options the hotel had to offer. They had barely dropped their luggage before they headed down for a swim. The sun was still shining, and there were only a few others by the pool. Her husband dove in while they waved to him from the deck. Her husband splashed them playfully, and they giggled loudly.
            Now, she stood there in the room, ready to face her memories. She put on her bathing suit and headed down to the pool.

Links

Purchase sites: Bangkok Transit (English version):


Author’s Sites




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