'Sex and the City' author talks 'Mr. Big'

Sex was on everybody's mind as 52 people buzzed in their seats.

Sex and the City, to be exact.

Wearing a bright pink jacket and standing off to the side, Candace Bushnell dangled her black-rimmed glasses and placed them daintily on the edge of her nose as her publicist wrapped up her speech: "At the end of her reading, she will sign any of her books, but not any Sex and the City CDs or DVDs."

"Oh, it's OK, I'll sign it. ... I'll sign anything," Bushnell said, taking over the podium and introducing her new book, Lipstick Jungle.

"The characters in Lipstick Jungle are kind of composite and little bits and pieces of real women I know," Bushnell said.

"Oh my God, she sounds exactly like her," one middle-aged woman in the audience whispered to her neighbor.

Several surrounding heads nodded at the obvious. Bushnell was an uncanny replica of Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker.

Sex and the City began as a series of columns in the New York Observer and was later turned into the television series.

As Bushnell continued reading the traumas and dramas of Lipstick Jungle, Sarah Jessica Parker's voice resonated in every word.

Bushnell opened up her lecture for a question-and-answer session, offering women in the audience advice for their love lives.

"Women know that a guy is not going to come along and save your life and make your life; you have to be responsible for your own life," she said.

Several heads nodded vigorously in approval.

"Unlike men, who are allowed to have a wide variety of dreams, women aren't allowed to do that," Bushnell said. "Women are shot down if they want to be CEOs and higher positions of power."

"Amen to that, sister," an audience member whispered.

"There is a real 'Mr. Big,' and he did break up with me and, four months later, married someone else," Bushnell said, referring to a recurring character in her column.

"You can date Mr. Big, but you have to be Mr. Bigger yourself. You have to become your own Mr. Big," Bushnell said.

She also revealed her favorite episode of the show -- the pilot -- because most of the lines were based off her book, and it was "very cynical and real-life."

Bushnell ended the discussion, which was followed by a book signing, by linking the literature of Sex and the City to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, alluding to a connection between the ending of the series and the novel -- in both, the girl gets the guy.

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