Paige Nick – Author, Blogger and Columnist for the Sunday Times

Chosen Charity – The Bookery in Roeland St, it’s part of the Equal Education Foundation. These guys are incredible super heroes. They build and stock libraries in previously disadvantaged schools.


2010 was the year … my world exploded. No seriously, I mean it. You know how you’re trucking along quietly, watching the telly and minding your own business, and then suddenly everything all happens at once and you end up with three birthday parties, an anniversary and a funeral all on the same weekend? Well that’s kind of what happened to me.

This year I had my first novel published by Penguin Books. It’s a romantic comedy called A Million Miles from Normal.

It’s about a South African girl who manages to lose both her job and her fiancé in a massively humiliating public display and is forced to leave South Africa. She decides to move to New York City where she hopes to make it big, to prove to everyone back home that she’s not a complete disaster, although the only apartment she can find is a shoebox sized rat trap. And the only job she can get is at a really dodgy ad agency with a crazy man for a boss and a drug addicted alcoholic for an art director. Sounds dire, I know, but it’s actually a comedy, promise.

Anyway so after the book launch and all the craziness that involved, my blog kind of exploded all over me and went mad, and then I started with the Sunday Times Column in the Lifestyle section. Which is really about life, love and living in the city.

If I were to spend New Year’s in the Northern Cape town of Kakamas, I would pack the following…Isn’t it very hot there? Kaka-off hot, I think. In that case I would definitely take sun screen and a hat. Also a pile of books. Because no matter how far away from home you are, you’re never lonely or alone if you’ve got a book. And if it’s not being too greedy, can I take a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label with me, too?

Nobody knows that… I’m writing this in my pyjamas.

Compare all, TVs, books and apartments, on PriceCheck