Author: “Conventions: The Garden At Paris,” “Passports,” “Frontiers,” and “Distances.” British Airways frequent flier. Lover of the Catskill Mountains...and the 1700s. New novel of 1797-1805, "Tomorrow The Grace," due out in September 2019.
A “spirited” online discussion is one thing, but NEVER be libelous… or, well, stupid in what you write. Think before you post anything. I am sure you know seemingly EVERYONE is now on social media somewhere – including, uh, your employer, or your desired future employer, or that college you so hope to attend. You NEVER know who will see what you post…
Read that masterpiece again. The nature of those who follow her and whom she also follows are essentially a problem for her now. I am a problem, I see?
I wrote Conventions: The Garden At Paris imagining there might be two further volumes someday – all of them to be stand alone novels each of which may be read on its own. But each book has proven such a massive writing undertaking that for now I feel I have yet again largely run out of steam: I’m exhausted. So it’s two books. As for a third? I hope so. We’ll see.
Oh, please. As I read that here once more, I can (as I did in March 2018) yet again feel an urge coming on to bash my head down on my desk repeatedly. For if her “time-travel”-based tale is “historical fiction”…
We decided to do it on the spur of the moment. On Tuesday, we booked a hotel and reserved a ferry there and back. On Thursday, we headed from Dover to Calais to have a night away not far from Calais, in Boulogne-sur-Mer.
“I keep getting rejected, so my writing can’t be good enough.”
Uh, not necessarily; and, in fact, that is probably decidedly NOT so.
If criticism of your writing goes with the authoring territory, it may drive you bananas when someone lectures you as to why you have written that novel and what you mean by what is in it.
After doing this four times previously I have come to learn this is always that moment where I feel I have finally achieved something tangible.
I admit I have never so had the s-it scared out of me as I have felt at times since March. I did not even feel the same about my father’s 2014 heart failure (from which he recovered), or even my mother’s and my uncle’s deaths in 2015. These have been the most unsettling weeks in my life.
What was a year ago often a formless mess that also existed in parts only in my head, now is nearly all on the (almost 600) pages.
“What do you think of Meghan?” I was recently asked by a woman barber. “She’s a harmless actor now playing the role of a lifetime,” I chuckled…
Flying within the US, that classic novel got me, uh, “in trouble” – twice.
I can’t really offer up replies to them quite as the questions are asked. But I suppose I can offer some general personal takeaways based on nearly six years of doing this now. I think I have learned lots I did not know in 2013.
Following Yellowstone, we had headed to the incredible Tetons…
The real reason we are here in the US: my niece and nephew wanted to go to Yellowstone Park. Months ago, we said, “Sure.”
Welcome here to my semi-weekly journal covering novel writing, travel, international matters, and whatever related that pops to mind…. sometimes seriously, sometimes rather less so. The center (centre) of my authoring universe. I hope you enjoy your visit.
Edward: “I hope I may be quite honest with you that I will be quite pleased for the opportunity to become far better acquainted with Miss Sánchez once we reach Holland…”
Robert: “My friend who wrote that letter, he’s passed eighty now. When I was in Paris fifty years ago, where I met him, he loved her dearly. And, oh, Nancy, how she loved him…”
Béatrice: “We will all of us have a drink to everyone we remember and love.”
Bill: “Fiction comes from fact, and lots of fact makes great fiction when you re-write it as fiction.”
Valérie: “Because you are born on a farm, this does not make you a horse!”
Isabelle: “I’ll set the table… This is better than a restaurant. Oh, and by when I leave… I expect you will have told me all about General de Gaulle also.”
