Anna David!!

I know that it has been a while since my last posting, but believe me, it was worth the wait. Anna David, author of the book Party Girl and famous sex and relationship advice giver, gave me an interview!! Can you believe it! Neither could I. I'm so grateful she took the time. Anyhow, I thought I'd share with you what she shared with me. Take a look:

The Sexy Wife: How did you get started in sex and relationship advice giving?

Anna David: I was a journalist toiling mainly for entertainment magazines when the sex columnist for New York magazine, Amy Sohn, emailed me and asked me if I'd be interested in writing a piece with her where we traded cities (I was in LA, she was in NY) and love lives for a week and wrote about it. She sold the piece to Playboy and all I really had to do was show up, get up to some crazy misadventures and then detail them. Because they ended up shooting us for the magazine (not nude, but certainly in some risque poses) and we also sold the rights to the piece (it was made into a reality show pilot for TBS), the piece got a lot of attention and, before I knew it, I was suddenly someone who wrote sex and relationship pieces. I took over Anka Radovich's column at Razor magazine and did that every month until the magazine folded. By the time that Attack of the Show came along and asked me to come on and answer sex and relationship questions with the show's co-host Olivia Munn, I'd also written first person pieces about my dating life for Movieline and The LA Times. Attack of the Show was just a one-day job originally but they were in the process of revamping the show and they liked what I did so In Your Pants became a regular segment.

The Sexy Wife: What inspired you to write your book?

Anna David: I'd been clean and sober for about five years and I knew that I wanted to write something about addiction and recovery that wasn't pedantic or preachy. Since I was more than familiar with the way the typical recovery memoir went -- bad addiction, the bottom, moment of clarity, recovery -- I knew that I tended to get really bored in those books as soon as the character got sober. So I decided I wanted to do something that was honest and unflinching but was also funny. When I got sober, my first job was working at Premiere magazine writing a column called Party Girl, which seemed rather ironic. While that column was basically just event coverage, It occurred to me that a good set up for a novel would be to give a newly sober girl a column called Party Girl where she'd have to detail all of her adventures, so she'd thus have to create a persona based on who she used to be.

The Sexy Wife: What advice to you have for an aspiring sex and relationship expert?

Anna David: If you're not going to get a masters in psychology or pursue some other kind of certification (there's a school in San Francisco that offers a program in sexology), I'd recommend that you start pitching relationship magazines. Try some regional ones or websites and get your clips together before you contact the more mainstream ones. While pursuing an advanced degree is the best way to get credibility, writing about sex and relationships is probably second best.

To learn more about Anna David, check out her blog at http://annalytical-annalytical.blogspot.com/ or her website, www.annadavid.com