HELP CAROL NAME HER NEXT NOVEL

“This Year’s Model“, Carol Alt’s first novel, has garnered much praise since its publication this summer. In fact, one of the nation’s largest retail chains has chosen it as one of their 2009 important books-of-the-year, which is quite an honor. (We’ll let you know which store once the book hits their shelves. They don’t want us to spoil the surprise!)

“I try to invest any project with which I’m associated with a certain amount of social responsibility. In the case of “This Year’s Model”, my goal was to give young girls (and their families) a more realistic picture of what really goes on behind the scenes in a model’s life.

“It seems as if the image that’s being promoted by certain TV shows nowadays is that fashion models are constantly at each other’s throats. Some new girls who are just starting out may end up sharing apartments or hotel rooms, to save money. But seriously, can you imagine if a half dozen girls were thrown together and spent their entire day fighting with their roommates, or thinking and talking about nothing but sabotaging each other’s careers?! That may make for entertaining television, but it surely isn’t real life.

“In reality, if a modeling agency represents several girls who have arrived from out of town and have no place to stay, the agency will arrange for them to share a place. Knowing full well that these girls are in close proximity, the agency certainly isn’t going to send two or three of them to the same “go-see” (audition, in modeling jargon) at or near the same time. That really would be a recipe for disaster. Most of the time, the girls have no idea what the others are going up for. But if you believe what you see on TV, they’re all watching each others’ moves, just waiting to pounce and thriving on jealous rages. It’s ridiculous!

“Now, what probably will surprise most people is how things work for girls who have been scouted by an agency. Let’s say a potential model is discovered in Russia, for example. The agency will front the money to fly her to New York, put her up in a hotel, and also give her an advance so she can get set up - phone, food, clothes, etc. Well, guess what: The agency isn’t doing that out of the goodness of its heart. Not only will they expect to be repaid for the “loan” (which is what it is), but they’ll find very clever ways to add fees on top of the actual costs. If and when the Russian girl books her first jobs, the agency will pay itself back out of her earnings. It can amount to several thousand dollars, especially in the beginning of a career. That can come as quite a shock sometimes. What is an even bigger shock is if a girl does not book any jobs, she will still owe that money to the agency…!

“Then there are the photos for the model’s portfolio. Let’s just say, I find them useless. A professional modeling agent can size up a girl’s potential in the blink of an eye. That’s what he or she is trained to do,” says Carol. But, let’s say he sees a girl who he thinks is on the cusp – not quite perfect, but a ‘possibility’. The agent will set up a shoot to get some photos for the girl’s portfolio. He will send her to a studio with a photographer, hair and makeup. The session may cost $2-3000 but in reality, the photographer might only be charging a couple of hundred dollars and let’s say the makeup artist and hair stylist total up to another couple of hundred—but the girl is paying $2-3000! Where does the rest of the money go? Kickbacks!!! If the agency hired them on your behalf, they will get half of this upfront money for their “trouble” - and in the end, they may not even take this girl!! That kind of thing has always existed in the modeling industry. And yes, it’s underhanded and sneaky. Of course, as in any industry, there are the ethical professionals and these other types.

“Now, this naive girl thinks she has a professional portfolio - one everybody will respect - so she starts shopping herself around (armed with those very expensive photos) to other agencies. Another agency may decide to give her a try, but they will want to use their own photographer who shoots all of their girls. So now this poor kid has to decide whether or not to take the risk and spend another couple of thousand dollars just to please this new agency!

“This brings up another point I’d like to make: Modeling success or failure does not rest on a woman’s beauty. There are so many other factors that go into creating a successful model – height, bone structure, a certain look, an attitude – and all are necessary commodities, yes. But there are loads of absolutely beautiful women who never made it as models, while lots of offbeat looks have soared to the top of the heap. That’s why a modeling agent with a good eye for talent can look past perceived faults and find the gem that lies beneath - again, even without photos.”

But we digress. Or…do we?

“In my book”, Carol continues, “Melody Ann Croft (the heroine) works in Manhattan, but commutes to her home in the suburbs every night. She works, she goes home. This is closer to a normal scenario for a working model.

“I tried to show a more realistic picture of what really goes on, so that young girls and their families can understand what they’re up against. I really feel that any girl who thinks that she may want to model (and her parents, too) should read this book and not rely on the modeling shows on TV for their information.”

Carol is already well on her way to completing the second book in what is intended to be a trilogy, featuring the main character she created as the “star” of “This Year’s Model”, Melody Ann Croft.

“I need a title for this next novel. If anyone out there has a good idea, by all means I’d love to see it. You can send it to me via the comment box below this article. Obviously”, Carol laughs, “I can’t give you much help in terms of inspiration, since I don’t want to give any plot points away, so use your imaginations.”

ALSO…..

Another exciting event is taking place right now in conjunction with the publishing of this book. Carol says, “We are searching for the model who will appear on the cover jacket of my new book – even someone who might not have the opportunity to come to New York or L.A. can try out. Backed by Lord & Taylor and Avon Books, a search is being initiated in an effort to help out a novice model. It’s all being done via the internet.

“Send in your photos (make sure your face is clearly seen and that they are not too ‘model-y’. We need a clear shot of the face!) It doesn’t matter where you live. We expect to have our cover girl by mid-November.”

GO TO WWW.HARPERCOLLINS.COM, ‘SEARCH’ DETAILS ARE THERE…..

A DIET FOR YOUR HEALTH, NOT JUST FOR YOUR WEIGHT

“I wasn’t born skinny”, Carol says. “In fact, no one in my family is particularly thin. But when I decided to become a fashion model, everyone I met drummed into my head that I was too heavy. Even though I’m tall, I’m not large-boned – I wear a size 7-1/2 shoe and my ring size is a 4! – meaning I can never blame extra pounds on “heavy bones”. So, I started dieting very, very early in my career.

“I must have tried every fad diet in the book – I was constantly dieting and the end result was, oh, yes - I was thin enough, but I was also becoming ill! I had colds and the flu all the time; my respiratory system was a mess; and I seemed to be allergic to everything. Hell! I was even allergic to myself! And I was really becoming sick and tired of being…sick and tired.”

It wasn’t until Carol turned to a raw diet and a lifestyle to go with it that her health improved. She hasn’t had any kind of respiratory or allergy problems since and she was in her mid-30s when she began this regimen. Her “discovery” of the raw diet was the result of a series of serendipitous events.

“I had a friend who had a friend and that young woman had been diagnosed at the age of 22 with cancer. The doctors wanted to remove just about everything that made her a female, from her entire reproductive system to her lymph nodes. In fact, she had been misdiagnosed as a teen when this first began, so her health had deteriorated terribly by the time the cancer diagnosis occurred.

Her boyfriend – and I really take my hat off to this man! – bucked all convention and battled with everyone to try to find her a cure. Meanwhile, everyone else, doctors included, was telling him he was killing her; she only had a couple of weeks left to have the surgery, etc. Instead of listening to them, he took her to another doctor that he had researched. Six months later, his girlfriend was pronounced cancer-free.

So, he called me up one day and said, ‘Carol, you’re the most health-minded person I know and you’re going to want to meet this doctor.’ Little did he know that I was going through my own problems: My weight was ballooning, my skin looked terrible, I was developing fine lines and wrinkles, and I just generally felt awful. I was no longer projecting youth and health, and energy, and I could see my career slipping through my fingers like grains of sand! Still, when he brought this idea to me, I literally was rolling my eyes, thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah. But he wouldn’t give up, so I finally told him to give me this doctor’s number – because I really just wanted to get him off the phone!

Truthfully, though, when we hung up, this little voice inside was saying to me, ‘You’ve been looking for something to help you. How could you be so stupid and too proud to try whatever comes your way? At least look at it, at least educate yourself about whatever it is.’

Well, fortunately, I remembered the doctor’s number (you see? I hadn’t even written it down when my friend gave it to me!), so I called and left him a message. When he called me back – and this I found very interesting – he did not say the usual ‘What can I do for you?’ or ‘What’s wrong with you?’. He said, ‘What do you eat?’! So, I answered this, this and this. He said ‘Oh, my god!’ and started laughing, but it was a very sad kind of laugh. ‘With what you’re eating, I’m surprised you don’t have this, this and this kind of problem’, he said. He listed sinus infections, colds and flues every few weeks, allergies, weight gain, being tired and moody, plus skin problems. Well, I also had a rash on my leg that I couldn’t get rid of and several doctors had been unable to diagnose it. The rash was spreading to other parts of my body.

The doctor finally said, ‘I want you to go eat this weekend’. ‘Eat? I’m a model. I have to stay thin!’, I told him. No – he wanted me to eat specific foods: Raw vegetables, cold-pressed oils, evaporated sea salt, seared fish, fresh fruits – with no restrictions on the amount. All I could think was, ‘This man wants me to eat. This is the most freeing moment of my life!’

That weekend, I followed his instructions and almost immediately began to feel better. That was 12 years ago and I’ve been following this regime ever since. No more colds, no more respiratory infections, no more skin problems, no more anything that bothered me before. Of course, my weight adjusted itself, too, and that hasn’t been a problem since that time, either.”

Carol is still astounded by the people who resist advice that is so easy to follow and makes so much sense. “When I talk to someone with breast cancer, who refuses to give up chicken, or someone with terrible allergies, who refuses to give up wheat products, I tell them, ‘Look, you can take a pill, but that pill is going to bother your liver, or cause some other problem, while your symptoms continue to get worse. Why don’t you just get to the source of all of these problems – the foods you consume and the various ways that food is prepared.’ After all, preservatives, pasteurization, etc., aren’t added to foods to help the person eating them; they’re put there to help the company that sells the food!”

As an example, Carol cites milk. For thousands of years, man drank raw milk and thrived. But then, quite rapidly in the overall scheme of things, big cities replaced small towns and farmers could no longer get their raw milk to the consumer quickly enough to prevent it from spoiling. Thus the need for pasteurization was born. That does not mean, however, that raw milk (which, of course, is still available many places) suddenly became bad for you. It just wasn’t financially feasible to market it in the good old way.

That same principal can be applied to any and all fresh (“raw”) foods. Getting it from the farm to the distributor to you cannot be done quickly enough to prevent it from going bad. That is, when you’re talking about mass production for millions of people. Yet, Carol reminds us, “Whenever I’m in Paris, for example, I eat whatever everyone else is eating and I actually lose weight. Europeans handle their foods differently than we do here in the United States. The taste alone will show you how much better their methods are than what we’re doing to our foods.

Speaking of the taste of food, I understand that a lot of people are turned off by what they think “raw” foods are going to taste like. Let me tell you…I’m not a vegan, so I do eat all kinds of fish, meats, unpasteurized raw milk cheeses, sprouted breads – in other words, a wide variety of foods. But for me, the natural flavor of a food, which has not been killed by cooking or processing it, is amazing. The flavor of a raw tomato, for example, is unbelievable – sweet, juicy, delicious, all by itself! Compare that to a cooked tomato that requires all kinds of “additions” to make it palatable and you’ll know what I mean. On top of that, raw tomatoes are alkaline, so they don’t cause acid indigestion or canker sores.

Of course, a great thing about raw “cooking” is the use of spices, which are uncooked themselves, and which can really work beautifully to bring new and wonderful flavors to all of the raw foods you’ll be consuming. Cumin, thyme, garlic, onion, sea salt, all kinds of peppers, ginger – the list is endless and so are the possibilities…!

One other point: I, myself, don’t cook much. I know how – I just don’t have the time. I order many, many food items online and have them delivered, including the milk! I even order entire meals – a whole week’s worth – from a company on the other side of the country! It’s so easy. But no matter how you get it, raw foods are available everywhere to everyone, in every conceivable price range. So, there are no good excuses not to try this out, either cold turkey or little by little. I have never felt better in my life!”

Carol Alt’s popular book, “Eating In The Raw“, can be found at the following on-line location:
http://www.amazon.com/Eating-Raw-Beginners-Healthier-Raw-Food/dp/140005284X

And this will take you to Carol’s other book, “The Raw 50“:
http://www.amazon.com/Raw-50-Amazing-Breakfasts-Lifestyle/dp/0307351742/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221695729&sr=1-1