Lau­ra Dowrich-Phillips

The back ve­ran­dah of the restau­rant is wet, signs of the rain that fell ear­li­er in the day. In the fore­ground, an av­o­ca­do tree, laden to the hilt, sags over the bal­cony, its boun­ty en­tic­ing­ly with­in reach. In the back­ground, the North­ern Range looks like a lush car­pet, har­bour­ing birds of all species that draws cu­ri­ous tourists with long lens.

On a Sun­day evening, this is the per­fect place to re­lax. For Wendy Fitzwilliam it is the per­fect place to en­joy a cup of tea, a sanc­tu­ary to spend some qui­et time with her son Ailan An­drew Pan­ton.

The lit­tle man, who en­joys chamomile tea with hon­ey, is the love of Fitzwilliam's life. It is out of that love that the for­mer Miss Uni­verse has penned her first book, a mem­oir en­ti­tled Let­ters to Ailan. The 300-page book is, as the ti­tle im­plies, di­rect­ed to­ward Fitzwilliam's son and chron­i­cles all the events in his moth­er's life from the day he was con­ceived, up un­til De­cem­ber last year.

It cov­ers the now in­fa­mous an­nounce­ment of her preg­nan­cy and the coun­try's re­ac­tion to her de­ci­sion to have a child out of wed­lock, the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of her re­la­tion­ship with Ja­maican busi­ness­man David Pan­ton, Ailan's fa­ther, his birth and every­thing else in be­tween. The book re­veals as­pects of Fitzwilliam that she has on­ly shown to her in­ner cir­cle of friends, un­til now. Lex­i­con Trinidad is the pub­lish­er for Let­ters to Ailan, which will be launched on Oc­to­ber 4, Fitzwilliam's birth­day, and she is very ner­vous and ex­cit­ed about the pub­lic's re­sponse to her life laid bare. "I don't think it will be the kind of book to be in­dif­fer­ent about. I used my­self to talk about things pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive. It's a love sto­ry, my undy­ing love for my son. I think peo­ple will get it; I live it, it's not just a sto­ry, it's not fic­tion," she said.

While she can't de­ny the en­ter­tain­ment val­ue of the book's con­tent, Fitzwilliam hopes read­ers will go be­yond that to un­der­stand the oth­er themes, name­ly that of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween men and women and fe­male em­pow­er­ment.

Since the furor she cre­at­ed when she an­nounced her preg­nan­cy at a Guardian In Ed­u­ca­tion tour be­fore the stu­dents of the all-girl Cor­pus Christi RC school, Fitzwilliam has kept a rel­a­tive­ly low-keyed but busy life, main­tain­ing her day job at eTecK where she is the Vice Pres­i­dent, In­vest­ment Pro­mo­tion, and at­tend­ing so­cial func­tions. The book will no doubt raise some of the old ar­gu­ments that dogged her back in 2006, but she be­lieves so­ci­ety is far more so­phis­ti­cat­ed now. The idea for the book was plant­ed when she found out she was preg­nant, and for Fitzwilliam who loves to jour­nal every­thing in her life, writ­ing came easy. "I did a lot of my writ­ing in the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing while I was breast­feed­ing," she re­called.

In fact, she has been do­ing a lot of writ­ing since com­plet­ing the book, es­pe­cial­ly on her Face­book fan page and her Web site, which will be un­veiled at the book launch. For a woman who still writes let­ters and sends hand­writ­ten notes to peo­ple, ven­tur­ing in­to cy­ber­space is a big deal. "I've al­ways been slow on the draw in that re­gard. I like to write, I still write hand­writ­ten notes to every­one. The In­ter­net is very mat­ter of fact, it's all about the in­stant and now, I like hand­writ­ten let­ters be­cause you see the emo­tion. I pay at­ten­tion to those kinds of de­tails.

"Face­book is high­ly ad­dic­tive. I haven't had the op­por­tu­ni­ty be­fore to in­ter­face with my fans, the feed­back is in­stan­ta­neous and it's a good gauge to get in­for­ma­tion and peo­ple's re­ac­tions. I have 18,000 fans; I didn't know I had so many fans. I am en­joy­ing it, I get on at least once a week and an­swer ques­tions," said Fitzwilliam, who is us­ing the pop­u­lar so­cial net­work­ing site to pro­mote her book.

She is cur­rent­ly run­ning a Let­ters to Wendy com­pe­ti­tion where fans can win a chance to at­tend the book launch by sub­mit­ting a video stat­ing why they want to meet her at the book launch. The video ad­judged win­ner will be the one that re­ceives the most votes.

Lo­cal en­tries have been trick­ling in, she said, but al­ready she has been re­ceiv­ing re­quests from Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos for a sim­i­lar com­pe­ti­tion. Let­ters to Ailan will launch in those ter­ri­to­ries as well as the Unit­ed States.

Fitzwilliam's Web site will cap­i­talise on the buzz cre­at­ed by her mem­oir and al­low fans to see oth­er as­pects of her life. It will fea­ture sto­ries from her many trav­els as well as her phil­an­thropic work around the world such as in An­go­la where she trav­elled in June to as­sist the Red Cross in rais­ing the aware­ness of so­cial is­sues and high­light pos­i­tive work be­ing done. "I al­ways main­tain high vis­i­bil­i­ty on the African con­ti­nent. I have had an en­dorse­ment with skin­care line Clear Essence for about nine years. The ads air pri­mar­i­ly on CNN In­ter­na­tion­al, which many Africans watch to see what's go­ing on around the world. That's some­thing I would like to high­light, the work, the fun Wendy, what I do, the trav­el, just present var­i­ous sides of Wendy."

It has been 11 years since Fitzwilliam sang the Miss Uni­verse crown on­to her head, but her pop­u­lar­i­ty has nev­er seemed to wane. She is still in­vit­ed to events all over the world, some­times over more re­cent Miss Uni­verse win­ners or those who live in close prox­im­i­ty to said events, and as a Face­book fan page at­tests, many peo­ple still adore her. "It's a lit­tle bit un­usu­al," she said of her undy­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty. "I think that I was the first Miss Uni­verse to win at the cusp of the In­ter­net and com­mu­ni­ca­tions ex­plo­sion. The world lived my year with me in re­al time and al­so, it was a per­fect storm, I was the first black woman in 20 years to win and I got a lot of press. It al­so has to do with who I am, we are fun-lov­ing, hap­py peo­ple, it's a com­bi­na­tion of things."