{alltv} 'Sex' author pens 'Summer' tale

NEW YORK -- Candace Bushnell, bestselling author of Sex and the City and alter-ego behind the book's main character, Carrie Bradshaw, is back with a new novel about Carrie's first summer in Manhattan at age 17.

Summer and the City is Bushnell's second foray into the world of young adult literature. In April 2010 she published The Carrie Diaries, about Carrie's childhood growing up in Connecticut. The book was a New York Times bestseller and was translated into 34 languages.

Bushnell was inspired by her own experience as a country girl who moved to the big city in developing Carrie's character. The original Sex and the City novel was turned into a hit HBO series of the same name as well as two movies. The most recent film, Sex and the City 2, was a critical flop however there are rumours circulating that there might be a third instalment on the way.

"I think my own story would be about four times the length of Summer and the City," Bushnell tells me when I met up with her in New York.

Bushnell's voice is saturated with confidence, so typical of New Yorkers. She's nursing an injury after falling off a horse and is still using a cane for support.

The new novel takes the reader through the eyes of a young woman marvelling at the buffet of opportunities that New York City in the 1970s had to offer. Bushnell describes the effervescence and the joys of these years when the city was still populated by artists and wasn't all about money.

Carrie spends the summer in NY taking writing courses and meets Samantha -- one of the four principle characters in the Sex and the City book and TV series -- who gives Carrie a place to stay.

Carrie falls in love with an older man who is a famous New York playwright. She loses her virginity to him, develops a unique clothing style shopping in vintage boutiques, writes her first script and meets Miranda, who is another part of the famous Sex and the City foursome.

The book also describes Carrie's adventures during the famous 1977 New York blackout as well as at SoHo loft parties. She meets Charlotte, the final piece of the fab four, in the last scene of the book.

Meeting Charlotte at the end of the story leaves the reader wondering if there will be a third book, possibly about Carrie's life in her 20s.

"We haven't decided yet, it's up to my editor," Bushnell says. "But I think so because there's so much stories to draw from those characters in that time."

Bushnell remembers '70s New York with impressive precision.

"Because I lived it!" she exclaims. "I'm 52. I didn't need to do research; it all came back to me naturally. I just started writing and it flowed."

Carrie's story is somewhat similar to Bushnell's real life. Bushnell was born in Connecticut and moved to New York at 19 with the dream of becoming an author. She lived in a $300 apartment she could barely afford. She was hired by the New York Observer in 1994 to write a sex column called Sex and the City. Her columns became a book in 1995 and in 1996 the HBO series began.

Just like Carrie, Bushnell immediately made New York her playground.

"For some reason, it was easy for me to socialize," she says. "On the street, people would walk up to me and we'd become friends. It was a dangerous time in New York, but there was this feeling people were bound by the difficulties of living in the city."

Bushnell saved some of the clothing she wore in the '70s which became the inspiration for some of Carrie's outfits in the book.

"I was wearing leather pants five sizes too big. I had the craziest vinyl clothes, jumpsuits, plastic dresses, and I was wearing scrubs because they were so cheap.

"Today young people expect a lot. We didn't really expect much, we just wanted to survive and get a little recognition. People were really creative, throwing fashion shows and photo exhibitions in their apartments. It wasn't about making a ton of money. Only bankers had money."

Summer and the City is Bushnell's seventh book and she just got contracted for two more young adult novels, the plots of which haven't been announced. She is also in the middle of writing an adult novel called The Two Mrs. Stones.

"It's gonna be about a love triangle," she says. "I want it to be a tragic story. One of the characters has to die. It's got to happen."

Summer and the City hits bookstores Tuesday.