Tag: art

Rendez-vous in the Big Apple

My husband and I spent a few days in New York City earlier this month, in between two bouts of record low temperatures up there, and (fortunately) days before snow fell in Manhattan.

As we walked from our hotel to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the “Met”) one day, I tried to picture Candace Morgan’s apartment. Candace is the main character in my Suspense novel UNDERWATER, and she lives in Atlanta and New York. Undoubtedly, her place in the Upper East Side is tiny compared to the luxury penthouse condominium she owns down south. But it works, because she’s a minimalist – sort of.

In UNDERWATER, Candace spends most of her time in the city I know better, Atlanta (though she jets off to two exotic locations, only one of which I’ve visited).  Relatively few of the story’s scenes take place up north, none during the winter; however, unlike me, Candace knows her way around “the City.”

So, why did my husband and I schedule a trip there, with no thought to the January weather possibilities? Parce que we recently reconnected with an old friend from our college days in Chapel Hill, whom we hadn’t seen in decades. That friend and we decided to rendez-vous in New York (she lives in Boston), and she and we contacted three other UNC friends who live in and around New York and asked them to join us.

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The Old Well on the campus of UNC in Chapel Hill, North Carolina:

We’d seen one of these friends a few times in recent years (although she, the Boston woman, hadn’t seen him since college), but we hadn’t seen or talked to the rest in over thirty years. Pourquoi? Because we had moved to Texas right after graduation and had simply lost contact. We hadn’t known their parents’ addresses or phone numbers  – pretty much the only way, back then, to find each other.

But now, thanks to technology, social networks and just plain serendipity – well, I’m going to credit serendipity too, because it just felt like it was a factor – all but one of us met on a Saturday at a Greek restaurant on 7th Avenue. We caught up over lunch at a round table, then continued to share memories and news at a nearby Irish Pub. That night, it was a smaller group at dinner at an Italian restaurant on 51st Street.

The one who couldn’t attend that Saturday had previously scheduled a weekend trip. But – serendipitously – we had arrived on Thursday, and she happened to be free for dinner that night, so we met at a fabulous midtown restaurant. It was a wonderful kickoff to a great weekend.

It was a  little weird to see each other again after so long and compare memories. On the other hand, it was somehow comfortable. We had all become friends without the benefit of instant and easy communication, and with the aid of serendipity. (Perhaps because we never did anything like it in college, exchanging emails and texts before and after our “reunion” in NYC felt a little odd – but only a little.)

I was glad the weather cooperated while we were there, and I’m thankful we dodged the snow and freezing temperatures (though ours down south have been pareil, lately). Next weekend, as I watch the Super Bowl, if it’s extremely cold (or worse) up there, I’ll be thinking of my northern friends.

With warm thoughts.

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Cover Reveal: UNDERWATER

 Look for UNDERWATER in just a few more days!
 
“…a woman haunted by a wrong turn in her past…believes she’s fulfilled a promise she made decades ago.
 

..the tension rises to a boiling point…rough seas threaten their young family…and her own demons rise to the surface. 

Dive into a page-turning suspense novel that asks questions about generosity, greed, shame, and sorrow as a family struggles and sinks deep underwater…”

 

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A preview of the cover! Devinez (guess) the rest…

The cover for my new suspense novel has been chosen. Here’s a petit morsel of it:

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The composition of this cover is simple in some ways, and complicated in others. The triangle effect, the size of the lettering and the font selection are important. So are the couleurs..

A few hints about the book (and cover):

– There’s a bit of français in this novel, but not near as much as in MAKE THAT DEUX. 

– The title of the book has more than one meaning, and so do several chapter titles…

– The shades of color on the cover were difficult to decide

– One of the chapters in this book is entitled “Revelation” – I will reveal the title and full cover shortly!

Another petit morceau:

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French leave, and a nouveau livre

I’m not sure if “French leave” is de rigueur en France, but if so, it would make sense – because the French seem to do so many things better.

Perhaps because I’m an introvert, leaving a party without bidding farewell to the host seems easier, less awkward, and more gracious – and even unselfish, in a way. You don’t have interrupt a conversation to announce your departure and your gratitude for having been invited. Since it’s socially acceptable, at times French leave is la solution parfaite, especially if you’re aren’t fond of goodbyes.

Jenny Miles, the protagonist in my novel MAKE THAT DEUX, is not particularly fond of them, but she’s not opposed to them, either. For Jenny, leaving someone she loves – or some place she loves – without saying goodbye is impossible. So, if her story had been titled FRENCH LEAVE – well, that would have just been wrong.

On the other hand, that title could have fit the story well. Pourquoi? Well, like me, Jenny’s an introvert. She also goes to parties. And she has some experience with being awkward…

My new book will be out shortly, and deciding its title was an easier process this time. I knew it needed to be in English (despite at least one scene in France), and I wanted it to be two words, at most. I wanted to simplify. I ended up with a title that has fewer words than MAKE THAT DEUX, but more syllables.

It was harder to decide on this one’s cover image,*  however. I’ll reveal it in a future post, but first I wanted to show you a few snippets of the ones I reluctantly rejected. They’re displayed below, not in order of preference:

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You may notice some things that these images have in common. Without revealing my new book’s title (yet), all I will say is that the cover image I chose is different from all the above in at least one important way – no, make that deux ways…

And it’s as fitting and apropos as French leave.

* My talented cover artist is Michael Faron; visit him at msfaron.com

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“How is that romantic?” – 4 ways, and a comment

During a recent family vacances au Colorado, I was asked this question about Paris.

Imaginez! (Imagine!)

To be fair, I think the person who asked me has never been there. I joined in his conversation with another (male) family member about Italy and France, and I was probably the person who brought up the idea of romance. But when he asked the question, I was speechless at first. What was the answer, and how could he not know it?

I started to say something about the history, museums and art, and then he they quickly seemed to believe that it was that simple, and didn’t let me explique.* Non, messieurs! C’est pas vrai!

Because I’m an esprit de l’escalier**  kind of woman, and a list-maker, I thought about it later, and here is the réponse I might have given:

1. It’s not just the art and history; it’s their relationship – their connection – to the people, and to the city. It’s something tout à fait français  – absolutely French – and something you just feel. New York City and Washington D.C. have a lot of museums and history, but I don’t find either place particularly romantic. For other reasons, I really, really like them, though.

2. It’s the streets, the restaurants, the gardens and the neighborhoods of Paris…and it’s les français (the French) themselves. What (American) woman doesn’t know that Frenchmen are (normalement) très romantique?

3. It’s La Seine, the river that runs through Paris! A body of water*** (whether sea or river) at sunset or later, makes everything more intimate. How? Je ne sais pas.

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4. It’s l’amour – love. It’s in the air in Paris, whether you’ve just discovered one another, or are rediscovering…Trust me.

Enfin, the “comment:” Another (short) conversation came up about becoming fluent in French, and someone (who doesn’t speak a foreign language) asserted that “you have to live there.”

Hmm. I diligently studied the language, il y a longtemps et récemment, lived in France for a year as a student, and now I practice and speak it autant que possible. I’d love to live there again un jour, but in the meantime, I’m going to continue speaking it and improving my fluency. C’est possible, madame!

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Sunrise at a beach on the Atlantic in Florida earlier this year

* With over thirty members of the famille converging in two cabins in the Rockies for a week, it was hard to finish your sentences without being interrupted (and I’m just a belle-fille et belle-soeur – much nicer sounding than  “outlaw”  daughter- and sister-in-law)

** See my post L’esprit de l’escalier, spiral staircases and faux-amis

*** While there’s romance in my novel MAKE THAT DEUX, there’s more water than romance in my upcoming Suspense novel…. More later!

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All things French: tout ce qui est français

What is it about the French? A joie de vivre, or just… a certain je ne sais quoi?

Je ne sais pas exactement, mais… for me (and millions of others), it’s an unmistakable something. For a country, ça me rappelle (it reminds me) of…that something, possessed by some girls (and women). Lisa, a character in my novel MAKE THAT DEUX, has it:

that something which is undeniably attractive, captivating and alluring.

En revanche (on the other hand), perhaps not everybody feels that way. Some people are not big fans of la politique en France, la culture, or even la cuisine (but two out of three isn’t bad). And some people are fans of all three.

I love all things French, or tout ce qui est français, including the language, the people, and the beauty. I even like their sense of humor,* and while I’m not crazy about existentialism, I get it, though some of their movie endings me rendent folle. De toute façon, mon sujet:

Here are a few of my favorite (French) things:

Champagne. Wine. Cheese. Boulangeries. Pâté. Truffles. Baguettes. 

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Cafés. Café au lait. Pâtisseries. Macaroons.

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Museums. Promenades, and parks. Monuments. Art. Palaces. Châteaux. Vineyards. Lavendar.

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Nice. La plage. Les peitits villages de Provence. Aix. Avignon. Nîmes. Montpellier. Carcassonne. Lyon. Beaujolais.

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A street in Montpellier where I once motored on my mobylette, régulièrement

And…Paris.

photo copy 5A view of the Champs -Elysées

Jenny Miles (the main character in my novel) has her own favorite things about life in France, but some of them she simply can’t afford with her few extra French francs, back when no one had thought of (?) the Euro (!) . It’s not that she doesn’t have un rond (well, except for that second time in Paris), but she is glad to get free admittance to lots of museums with her Carte d’Etudiant (student ID):

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*Below, une blague, courtesy of mon prof, Madame Marie-Hélène:  “Si vous n’avez pas ‘un rond,’ ca veut dire que vous n’avez pas d’argent !! ( penniless! )”

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Paris, Versailles and the Louvre


One of the most fun things about being an author is having to do research.

photo copy 3A view of La Tour Eiffel from the top of the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile

My novel MAKE THAT DEUX takes place (mostly) in the south of France, where the protagonist, Jenny Miles, spends a year of college. Before the school year begins though, she visits Paris with the other American students on her Year-Abroad Program.

Last summer, my husband and I spent four days there at the end of our two-week, adventure-filled vacances in Portugal and France. Our time in Paris wasn’t long enough – we weren’t able do as many things as I wanted to do, or to see as much. Cependant (however), maybe it was long enough, because after staying in five other lovely spots (the Algarve, Nice, Aix, Montpellier and Lyon), we were getting tired of traveling. (Oui, we had built too many stops into our itinerary….but we were all alone, sans les enfants, et plein d’énergie!)

We arrived in Paris on a Monday, and we made the most of our time, though the city was crowded with tourists just before the London Olympics. We stayed in a friend’s spacious appartement, conveniently located near the Eiffel Tower and close to a Métro station.

Cathédrale Notre-Dame

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We chose a few things to do, and quickly decided we’d have to plan another trip, stay longer and see more. One day, we ventured to Versailles. I had been there once before, il y a longtemps, with a group of other students on a guided tour. That day, the palace wasn’t very crowded, unlike the day we visited it last summer (though these photos don’t include tout le monde):

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Versailles

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We visited several art and history museums in Nice, Lyon and Paris, and my favorite was the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, parce que j’aime bien les objets d’art impressionistes…But we couldn’t leave France without a visit to the Louvre. It was the first European museum I had visited as a student, way back when, and it had changed. On ce jour-là, I walked right up to the Mona Lisa; now, malheureusement, the Louvre’s most famous work of art must stay well-protected. C’est dommage.

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However, we were able to walk right up to two very famous ancient Greek statues housed in the Louvre: Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace, pictured below. We also saw many other less bien connu (and amazing) works of art there, much more than Jenny did in MAKE THAT DEUX.

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Our trip to France wasn’t just for la recherche, but “research” was an element très amusant et agréable in our tour de France et de Paris. Mais pour un auteur, toutes les expériences de la vie sont la recherche…

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The Negresco: a very nice hotel in Nice — for deux

It was the first hotel where my husband and I stayed in France, and it was the nicest.*

Image 77Our plane had arrived that morning from Lisbon. We took a taxi to the Hotel Negresco, a bit of a splurge but well worth it, we agreed. That evening, after strolling along the Promenade des Anglais and through the vieille ville, then visiting not one, but two smallish museums (Matisse and Chagall), we landed at the hotel bar, Le Relais.

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I didn’t know the history of the hotel, nor that 2012 was its 100th anniversaire until the other day when I read about it in an entry in The Provence Post titled  What Happens at Negresco…

Oh-la-la. Il faut que vous le lisiez! (You HAVE to read it!)

Unaware that it had been recently redone (but still appreciative of it), we had dinner that first evening at La Rotonde. We sat outside on the terrace, looking out on the Mediterranean Sea, both of us (well, mostly me) trying out our French as we sipped our wine. The following evening — our last one in Nice — we would have loved to dine at the Chantecler, the hotel’s two-star restaurant. But we hadn’t booked a reservation ahead of time. So we found a table at another nice restaurant just steps away.

Le temps (the weather) — though a bit warm during the day — was perfect at night. Walking back to our hotel, I took this photo:

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Before we left the next day to head west along the Riveria in our rented voiture (whose GPS ne marchait pas — even the extremely helpful valets at the Negresco couldn’t get it to work), I took this photo of the view from our room, just over La Rotonde (located at the far left side of the hotel in the first photo above):

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Staying at the Negresco, even for just two nights, was a very cool experience, and I want to go back someday avec mon mari. I had never seen the hotel when, during my year in France, I stopped for an afternoon in Nice on the way home from Italy. I won’t say what year it was, just that it was long after Richard Burton left Liz’s jewels at the bar by mistake, but way before Michael Jackson installed a dance floor in one of the rooms and rehearsed there…

Somehow, I think my husband and I sensed the history and eccentric personality of the Negresco during our forty-eight hours as guests there in July, and were awed by it. He’s more into history than me (he was reading Alistair Horne’s LA BELLE FRANCE during our vacances), and though he has his idiosyncrasies, I’m a bit more eccentric. You might even say I’m quirky, as a friend did** last month at a launch party for my new novel MAKE THAT DEUX. 

*But the two other hotels where we stayed in France were lovely, too: the Hotel St. Christophe in Aix-en-Provence and the Best Western Hotel Le Guilhem in Montpellier.

**In a very NICE way.

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Lyon and Beaujolais, with the French and a faux pas

In my novel MAKE THAT DEUX, Jenny sees a lot of western Europe, but only a little of France itself. On school breaks, she travels mostly with Americans, staying in youth hostels and seeing the sights without the aide of les français.

Which is a shame. But that may keep her from committing too many faux pas in front of the French. Goodness knows she experiences enough embarrassing moments as it is…

Par contre, one of the highlights of our trip to France last summer was the weekend my husband and I spent with a French couple in Lyon. My faux pas (and I hope it was just the one) happened on Sunday…

Luc and Juliette met us at the train station on Saturday morning. Earlier, we had exchanged letters and emails – en français et en anglais – about our visit, a stop on the way from Montpellier to Paris. Near our age but with twice the number of children, they were très agréable, insisting that we stay at their belle maison rather than pay for un hôtel.

Luc doesn’t speak much English (though he made un effort) and my husband knows little French, but Juliette’s anglais is very good. She and Luc were surprised at my ability to speak French, very encouraging and complimentary.

(The men’s language barrier wasn’t a problem, since Juliette and I could talk to each other — and translate for our husbands — and since, well, men are men.)

For two days, she and Luc entertained us, showing us around Lyon and the surrounding area like only the French can do.

 

Above is a postcard they sent us one Noel. That Saturday, I took this photo of a similar view:

On the Presqui’île  — a peninsula between the Rhône and the Saône Rivers — we toured the Musée des Tissus et des Arts Décoratifs and the Musée des Beaux-Arts, then stopped for une boisson at a café off the famous Place des Terreaux. 

Refreshed, we crossed un pont (bridge) and explored vieux Lyon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We stopped to look in the window at the famous Musée Miniature et Cinéma and then wandered into a traboule between two main streets.

A window display of the Musée Miniature et Cinéma

Luc explained that these hidden passageways came in handy during World War II for the French to hide from — and fool — the Germans, and that people still live in the apartments which share covered spiral staircases:

Luc and Juliette were wonderful hosts, even helping us navigate the Versailles site web on their ordinateur (computer) on Sunday, in preparation for our visit to the palace the following week.

That afternoon, they decided we should explore the nearby region known as Beaujolais. We happened upon a vrai (real) French Renaissance Festival in the medieval village of Ternand just in time to watch a play (complete with horses and jousting) performed en français.

But earlier that day, after mass at their church just down the street, and during our visit to Les Halles in Lyon,* I made an erreur.

As we walked through the vast indoor market, Juliette made a few purchases, and I noticed poultry, fish, meat and cheese displayed in ways I had never imagined. Then Luc suggested we sit down at a café for a glass of vin and some raw huîtres — oysters. He ordered for us.

I listened and thought he had requested 3 oysters for each of us. Since I love oysters (and didn’t realize that Juliette already had un repas waiting for us at home), I interrupted en français and asked that he double it.

Oops.

Luc had actually ordered 24 oysters, not 12. But being a polite Frenchman (and perhaps assuming that Americans like more of everything), he changed the order to 48. Which I didn’t understand  hear  catch, until they arrived.

Good thing oysters are so low calorie. They were delicious, I was embarrassed, and later, we all ate a very light dejeuner et dîner! 

*for more, see my post “Les écharpes, le fromage et café crème (scarves, cheese and espresso with cream)”

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