Writing and Marseille

My week is busy with grading papers and writing.
I'm never really sure if anyone checks in on the blog and feels disappointed that I haven't written.
But, I have completed my first edit of Paris Runaway, my latest novel.
It's got a mother searching for her teenage daughter who ran away from their home in Florida to Paris chasing after the French exchange student.
The mother follows and learns about the importance of embracing life.
In addition to the streets of Paris, the novel will take you to Marseille, and into a Frenchman's bed.
Oh la la!
Thanks for sticking with me.
Here are a couple of pictures of Marseille.  The first is from the train station. In the background, you can see a hill and a spectacular cathedral sits on the hill overlooking the harbor. The church is called Notre Dame de la Garde.

And here's a shot of the ferris wheel along the harbor. 

Ferris wheels are becoming as ubiquitous as carousels in French towns these days. 

 

At Least Something About Me is Hot

So, my book releases have never gone the way I have planned.
When The Summer of France came out in October 2012, I was in the middle of a broken nose and recovering from surgery.

I didn't do the best job promoting that first novel, but it has plugged along and still sells the best of all my novels. 

My next novel, I See London I See France, came out right before Christmas in 2013. All of the hectic activity of the season caught me unawares again. 

I thought I'd get it right with this third novel. I had finished and edited my novel. Then I sent it out to the copy editor to find any missing commas or transposed letters. The editor told me when she would be finished and I set the book on pre-order for the following Friday. 

But then she wasn't finished on the promised date. And then suddenly I was unable to cancel the preorder. I did manage to update the file with the correctly formatted one. 

I sent the book off to another editor and finally got all the minute corrections in. And I'm thrilled that even without promoting it, Trail Mix has sold well.

In the tradition of Wild by Cheryl Strayed, comes a novel of two suburban women who decide to hike the Appalachian Trail, escaping their lives as moms and wives in search of nature, adventure, and the ultimate diet plan.
How does a woman know what she wants after spending 20 years thinking about her husband and children? Sometimes it takes a distraction from everyday life, time to examine the forest before the trees become clear. With no previous camping experience, Andi and Jess begin the 2100-mile odyssey from Georgia to Maine. The friends figure life on the trail can't possibly be worse than dealing with disgruntled husbands, sullen teens home from college, and a general malaise that has crept up in their daily lives. At the very least, the women are bound to return home thin.

Look, it even made the list of "hot new releases" on Amazon in the Adventure Travel category. 

The kindle edition is available on Amazon. The paperback is coming to Amazon, but currently on Lulu, and the Nook version is available now on Barnes and Noble, so everybody can get a taste of life on the Appalachian Trail.

The Making of a Memoir

I'm writing a new book. I just started a few weeks ago and I have 63 pages already.
Maybe I'm moving quickly because I already know the ending.
This time, instead of a novel, I'm writing a memoir.
During the Paris in July meme sponsored by Thyme for Tea and Bookbath, I realized that most of the French books that we readers recommended were memoirs. So, with my brain trust of running friends, we decided that I should write a memoir. Then we took it a step further, notched it up, and decided I should write about my time spent as a nanny. That's a combination of two tell-all books that people are sure to love.
So rather than a story about Americans who move to France and try desperately to fit into the local culture, I'll be writing about an American girl (me) thrust into the midst of a French family -- the awkwardness and the insights. So far, I'm titling it An American Nanny in France. An American Nanny in Paris sounds a little better, but we were only in Paris for a month, spending the other months in Corsica and at a family house near Bourges.

This looks like the perfect writing spot for me
with my notebook, my wine and the pool
shimmering before me.

I'll be changing the names of the French family members so that I can be very honest about everything that happened. I have written about some of these adventures on my blog before, so I guess I'll need to go back and change the names there too.
Anyway, I wanted to share with you my exciting news and tell you a story about how the memoir led to my mom and me laughing so hard that we cried.
I haven't written a memoir before, so I was kind of puzzled about recreating conversations and other important events. I have photos. I have a journal, which includes some conversations, but I also wrote in-depth letters to my mom and my brother Kevin while I was in France. I need those letters.
I saw Kevin last week and he said he didn't have the letters. He suggested I try Mom and Dad's house.
Of course, Mom and Dad have moved about five times since my trip 25 years ago.
I alerted Mom that I was searching for the letters and said we'd look when I arrived this weekend. she had already emptied out her mother's trunk (new in 1915) looking for the letters with no luck. She pulled out another bin that was filled with greeting cards and letters and memorabilia. We went through all the musty letters. We handed over golf score cards from years ago to my dad. We threw away the envelopes all those cards had come in.
Then my mom picked up a hand-made card from my little brother. "Happy Mother's Day, Mom," it said. "From Kevin Kincer" and that started us laughing that he felt the need to sign his last name to his mother.
Then my dad found, tucked in a birthday card to him from his mother some letters from me and my sister. They were letters we'd written to my grandmother and she apparently sent them back to him when she wasn't getting along with our family. Mom and I were laughing at that too -- how ludicrous.
Then Mom read aloud the letter my 9-year-old self had written. The basic gist of the letter was whether my grandmother had gotten my previous letters and why she hadn't written back when I was still waiting for a reply. I was quite insistent and pushy, even at 9 years old. As Mom read the letter, the tears were running out of her eyes and down our cheeks.
Sometimes you just have to be there to understand why the joke is funny. But we definitely enjoyed our time going through the old box of cards and letters.
The bad news is we didn't find the letters from France. The good news is that we have more boxes upstairs and can look forward to another day of going through old memorabilia. Maybe they'll make us laugh again.


First Paragraph Tuesday -- The Way

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.
This is a book I haven't started, so I'm reading the first paragraph with you. It's called The Way and is written by Kristen Wolf. The description of the book says Anna is a tomboy who has an adrogynous appearance and, after a tragedy, her father ends up disguising her as a boy. She is sold to a some shepherds then captured by "a mystical secret society of women hiding in the desert." There she learns "the way" of healing abilities. The first paragraph says it is set in a village near ancient Palestine in 7 A.D.

"Be a good girl and cover your face," her mother counseled.
Anna draped a shawl over her head and bound it halfway up her cheeks. She watched her mother arrange bowls of dates, cheese, and olives on a tray. She then placed a pitcher of milk among the bowls and capped it with a square of linen. As her mother did these things, her hands came to rest on her swollen belly then flew off, repeatedly, like frightened doves.
"Hurry to Grandfather and be home before morning meal," she said. She lowered the tray into her seven-year-old's waiting hands. She pulled back the camelskin hide that hung across the front door. Anna's head brushed the underside of her mother's belly as she slipped around her and stepped, blinking into the light.

What do you think? Are you intrigued?

Personal Legends

Am I a writer? If you had observed me for the past month, you would no more call me a writer than you would call me a runner. I haven't climbed out of bed early in the morning and sat before the computer, my fingers scrambling along the keys as the ideas pour out. I haven't turned off the college football bowl games to find a quiet corner where I can write. I haven't packed up my computer and slid along the wooden bench at Caribou Coffee, sipping from a macchiato. For the past month, maybe the past four months, someone tracking me would not have much evidence that I am a writer. The day after I turned in grades this quarter, I woke up and went for a run. A huge, 15-hour load lifted from my shoulders. But I didn't return to my new novel.
"I told you not to burn the house down," my 16-year-old daughter said when I left the story on the computer one day. Maybe she's right. Maybe my story has taken a turn that leaves me stymied, or maybe I've been led astray from what I thought was my purpose in life.
So, now, as I face 2009, what am I going to do about it? I've wanted to be a writer since I was a little girl. I think it was around second or third grade that I would get up, before anyone else in the house was awake. I would pack a peanut butter sandwich and gather a spiral notebook and pencil. Then I would roam the neighborhood looking for adventures to write about. I would end up back in my front yard, under a big maple tree where I would scribble furiously, not just the things that I had seen, but the things that I imagined.
I have boxes full of old notebooks that are scratched with my childhood musings. What will I do about that as an adult? I have two novels written and a third one in the works.
I am a writer, and that doesn't mean that it flows spontaneously. It may mean that I have to set a schedule and follow it until once again, my passion for writing, my need for it is stronger than my malaise. I know I can.
I am a writer.