Laura Bradbury's Blog, page 8
December 7, 2015
On Panic Attacks and Creativity...
I had a humdinger of a panic attack last Wednesday. Many readers ask me after reading My Grape Escape and My Grape Village whether I still get them. Short and honest answer - yes, as last Wednesday proves, I certainly do.
I no longer waste precious time and energy trying to eliminate panic attacks from my life. I have been having them, after all, at random intervals since my mid-teens. They come. They go. They are always epically unpleasant and unwelcome.
I no longer believe they happen for a reason. I have come to the conclusion that searching for triggers or reasons for my panic attacks is a colossal waste of time.
On Wednesday, I was just sitting on the couch talking to a friend on the phone when my heart started beating faster than usual. The anxious part of my brain seized on this and started going, "Why is your heart beating faster? Something must be wrong! Redalertredalertredalert!!!"
Within three minutes my hands were shaking and my mind was spinning in that hellish anxiety vortex, making note of every uncomfortable physical sensation, amplifying it by approximately a million, and creating a logical case for my imminent demise (or worse yet, being trapped in a situation I can't control aka Just Kill Me Now).
Even though I consider myself a writer, I find myself at a loss for words when I try to describe the intensity and sheer terror of a panic attack to anyone who has not experienced one before. Conversely, when I talk about panic attacks with people who have experienced them, words are not necessary. I can just tell by looking in their eyes that they get it.
Even though I hate them I have come to a place of acceptance that they stem from a glitch in the way my brain is wired. I think we ALL have glitches in how our brain is wired. Some people have the depression glitch, some people have the jealousy glitch, some people have the fear-of-intimacy glitch...as for my brain, I suspect my panic attack glitch is the same or closely related to the part of my brain that allows me to imagine and write.
I am no longer ashamed of my anxiety. Indeed I think the stigma around mental health is one of the most corrosive forces in existence. However, I certainly don't want to feed my anxiety by treating it like the most exotic, fascinating animal in my own personal zoo either. I think my creativity, love for Star Wars, and humour are all vastly more interesting than my anxiety. Still, panic attacks are part of my emotional hard-wiring and chances are I will most likely have to co-exist with them for the rest of my life.
Something interesting, though, has been happening in the midst of my panic attacks since I began taking my writing and creativity seriously. In the middle of my Wednesday anxiety roller coaster ride, in the midst of my shaking hands and my pounding heart and my spinning head full of thoughts of certain and imminent doom, another little voice popped up. I like to think of this particular voice as the voice of my creative self.
"Remember Tillly?" it whispered to me (Tilly is the protagonist in my paranormal romance - she doesn't suffer from anxiety disorder but she does experience plenty of well-warranted fear). "You have to remember how you are feeling right now. How exactly is your heart pounding? What muscles are contracting in your chest so it feels like you cannot take a full breath? What is making you so viscerally uncomfortable right now? You have to make note and remember so that you can depict Tilly's fear more effectively."
One of the things that I am trying to learn through my mediation practice is to create some distance between myself and my thoughts and physical sensations that are always, even though they never feel like it at the time, transitory. Meditation encourages us to be curious about our thoughts and feelings without judging them.
Creativity does the same thing. By looking at my panic attack-y feelings and thoughts as a potential writer hoping to harvest them for future use, I create some much-needed space between myself and the deeply uncomfortable sensations my crocodile brain is creating for me.
The sensations are still wretched, but having curiosity about them brings a glimmer of transcendence. And then, when I actually use the material, which I always do sooner or later, the circle is complete. I have used my own misery to do a better job of writing and to hopefully make others who have felt profound visceral fear (and who hasn't?) feel less alone.
In other words, for people who have managed to carve out a creative outlet for themselves, even the really, really bad stuff is useful. Through our creativity we make even the unwanted and the uninvited serve a purpose. As I have said before, IT'S ALL MATERIAL.
I am not a subscriber to the belief that bad things happen for a reason, but I DO believe that we can choose to give even the yuckiest things meaning. This ability, in fact, is one of the things that makes us uniquely human.
Creativity won't make my panic attacks disappear for good (godammit), but it does make them slightly easier to cope with, and remains one of the most best ways for me to render useful something that is inherently useless.
On Panic Attacks and Creativity…
I had a humdinger of a panic attack last Wednesday. Many readers ask me after reading My Grape Escape and My Grape Village whether I still get them. Short and honest answer – yes, as last Wednesday proves, I certainly do.
I no longer waste precious time and energy trying to eliminate panic attacks from my life. I have been having them, after all, at random intervals since my mid-teens. They come. They go. They are always epically unpleasant and unwelcome.
I no longer believe they happen for a reason. I have come to the conclusion that searching for triggers or reasons for my panic attacks is a colossal waste of time.
On Wednesday, I was just sitting on the couch talking to a friend on the phone when my heart started beating faster than usual. The anxious part of my brain seized on this and started going, “Why is your heart beating faster? Something must be wrong! Redalertredalertredalert!!!”
Within three minutes my hands were shaking and my mind was spinning in that hellish anxiety vortex, making note of every uncomfortable physical sensation, amplifying it by approximately a million, and creating a logical case for my imminent demise (or worse yet, being trapped in a situation I can’t control aka Just Kill Me Now).
Even though I consider myself a writer, I find myself at a loss for words when I try to describe the intensity and sheer terror of a panic attack to anyone who has not experienced one before. Conversely, when I talk about panic attacks with people who have experienced them, words are not necessary. I can just tell by looking in their eyes that they get it.
Even though I hate them I have come to a place of acceptance that they stem from a glitch in the way my brain is wired. I think we ALL have glitches in how our brain is wired. Some people have the depression glitch, some people have the jealousy glitch, some people have the fear-of-intimacy glitch…as for my brain, I suspect my panic attack glitch is the same or closely related to the part of my brain that allows me to imagine and write.
I am no longer ashamed of my anxiety. Indeed I think the stigma around mental health is one of the most corrosive forces in existence. However, I certainly don’t want to feed my anxiety by treating it like the most exotic, fascinating animal in my own personal zoo either. I think my creativity, love for Star Wars, and humour are all vastly more interesting than my anxiety. Still, panic attacks are part of my emotional hard-wiring and chances are I will most likely have to co-exist with them for the rest of my life.
Something interesting, though, has been happening in the midst of my panic attacks since I began taking my writing and creativity seriously. In the middle of my Wednesday anxiety roller coaster ride, in the midst of my shaking hands and my pounding heart and my spinning head full of thoughts of certain and imminent doom, another little voice popped up. I like to think of this particular voice as the voice of my creative self.
“Remember Tillly?” it whispered to me (Tilly is the protagonist in my paranormal romance – she doesn’t suffer from anxiety disorder but she does experience plenty of well-warranted fear). “You have to remember how you are feeling right now. How exactly is your heart pounding? What muscles are contracting in your chest so it feels like you cannot take a full breath? What is making you so viscerally uncomfortable right now? You have to make note and remember so that you can depict Tilly’s fear more effectively.”
One of the things that I am trying to learn through my mediation practice is to create some distance between myself and my thoughts and physical sensations that are always, even though they never feel like it at the time, transitory. Meditation encourages us to be curious about our thoughts and feelings without judging them.
Creativity does the same thing. By looking at my panic attack-y feelings and thoughts as a potential writer hoping to harvest them for future use, I create some much-needed space between myself and the deeply uncomfortable sensations my crocodile brain is creating for me.
The sensations are still wretched, but having curiosity about them brings a glimmer of transcendence. And then, when I actually use the material, which I always do sooner or later, the circle is complete. I have used my own misery to do a better job of writing and to hopefully make others who have felt profound visceral fear (and who hasn’t?) feel less alone.
In other words, for people who have managed to carve out a creative outlet for themselves, even the really, really bad stuff is useful. Through our creativity we make even the unwanted and the uninvited serve a purpose. As I have said before, IT’S ALL MATERIAL.
I am not a subscriber to the belief that bad things happen for a reason, but I DO believe that we can choose to give even the yuckiest things meaning. This ability, in fact, is one of the things that makes us uniquely human.
Creativity won’t make my panic attacks disappear for good (godammit), but it does make them slightly easier to cope with, and remains one of the most best ways for me to render useful something that is inherently useless.
December 1, 2015
A Noel Grape Books Giveaway
Regardez-donc!
How did we find ourselves in December already?
No matter. December is the month for giving things away and I LOVE giving things away to my readers. I especially love giving them the opportunity to travel to Burgundy and experience for themselves its special magic that I try to convey in my Grape books.
So, my Noel Grape Books Giveaway will have the prize of a free week at La Maison des Chaumes – our home in Villers-la-Faye, Burgundy, France. This three bedroom house with a huge deck and garden is located in the same village where Franck’s family live, where he grew up, and where we fell in love, as I write about in My Grape Year.
My Grape Year has hit #1 on the Amazon “France” bestseller list several times since I self-published it in late September. I have all of you to thank for that and I am so grateful to have such an amazing community of Francophiles and book loving people who support my writing.
Without further ado, here are the rules & regs:
the week at La Maison des Chaumes can be redeemed whenever, subject only to availability, and can also be gifted to another person if you wish
all you need to do to enter is write a review for My Grape Year on either Amazon.com (or any of its affiliate websites (Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, etc.) or Goodreads and then email me at laura@laurabradbury.com to let me know where the review has been posted (I need this because I often can’t contact people via their Amazon or Goodreads screen names). If you post on Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, and Goodreads, for example, you’ll receive three entries.
if you have already written one or more review(s) for My Grape Year just let me know via email as above – that counts too (and MERCI for posting a review so promptly)
it doesn’t matter if your review is one star or five stars – they all count and I am grateful for them all. The only thing is that you do have to have read the book in order to write a valid review – just common sense and good ethics
entries will be accepted until midnight on December 25th and the draw will happen and the winner will be announced the day after Boxing Day (December 27th)
Bonne chance to tout le monde! I hope you all have a merry, sparkling, and joyous December filled with lost of delicious cheese.
November 30, 2015
What’s With the STAR WARS Nerdgasm?
Many of my friends, even those close to me, confess from time to time that they find it odd I get so geeky about Star Wars.
I never fail to be surprised by this question because: a) duh. It’s STAR WARS people! and, b) do I come across as some sort of high brow intellectual or something?
The latter concept makes chuckle because, to me anyway, it has always been clear that I am a nerd at heart. I get unaccountably excited by odd, random things, I spend so much time in my own head that I usually walk around with my hair looking demented and stains on my clothes, and there is nothing that bores me more than being stranded in the middle of some intellectual circle-jerk discussion about cutting edge literary fiction or cryptic films.
Anyway, suffice to say my love for Star Wars goes very, very deep. My first encounter with Han, Leia, and Luke was one of the most profound spiritual awakenings of my life.
It was 1977. I was five years old. My Dad, who was never one for going to the movies, decreed that he was going to take my older sister Suzanne and me to see this new film that everyone was raving about. It was called “Star Something”.
I was immediately suspicious. “Is it a cartoon?” I demanded.
“No. It’s a real grown-up movie,” he said, as if this was a good thing.
No thanks. Anything that wasn’t a cartoon held zero interest for me. Grown-ups found boring things riveting, such as conversations about mortgages and the optimal shade for shag carpeting.
How exactly my father managed to drag me to the Odeon movie theatre in downtown Victoria is now lost in the mists of time, but I do remember feeling severely put-upon as I flipped down my movie seat. My Dad reached in his coat pockets and pulled out three full size Mars bars, one for each of us.
“Isn’t it funny?” he said. “We’re going to watch a movie about space and and we’re eating MARS bars!”
I knew the chocolate bars were a peace offering, but I was still dreading the movie. Also, it was about space. I hated watching the documentaries about space on PBS with my parents that never failed to leave me fretful about a meteor falling out of the sky and squashing me. I began chomping resentfully on my galactic sized Mars bar.
The lights went dim and the screen filled with a weird sort of writing that slid backwards instead of side to side the way writing was supposed to. Besides, I couldn’t read yet. What if the whole movie was just words on a screen? That would be the kind of useless thing that grown-ups would enjoy, I reckoned.
Then the writing disappeared and the screen filled with a battle on a star ship, and R2-D2, and C3-PO, and Princess Leia. Hey…was that beautiful lady really talking back to those evil grandpas dressed in black? Was that a lazer gun she was shooting?
And I was gone.
Me as I knew myself up until that point vanished like the planet of Alderaan. I wasn’t just watching this movie, I was living it. I remained plastered against the back of my seat with the centrifugal force of the story, the half-eaten Mars bar dropped, forgotten, on my lap.
Good vs. Evil. A trio of heroes who were funny, brave, and eventually, friends. Darth Vader who made me want to pee my pants every time he breathed…
I had not know this was possible. I had not known that through a story I could actually live a different life for a while – a life that was more vivid and more real than my own. By the time the Millennium Falcon swopped in with Han at the helm to shoot away Darth Vadar so Luke could take his bull’s eye aim at the Death Star exhaust vent I thought my heart was going to explode.
What was this magic that could transport me to another time and place more effectively than a time machine and a tele-transporter all wrapped up into one?
When the medal award ceremony was over and the movie’s credits rolled I stayed glued to my chair, as did Suzanne and my Dad.
Finally the lights came back on. My Dad turned to me. “So? What did you think?”
I shook my head, mute. No words. There were no words.
He looked down at my lap. “You didn’t finish your Mars bar.”
I hadn’t. I actually threw it in the garbage can on our way out of the theatre as I was still too deep in my walking Star Wars daydream to consider doing anything as pedestrian as eating.
Up until then I hadn’t known such a magic existed, but I knew it was something I wanted and, more than that, needed in my life. It wasn’t until I was older that I learned the name for The Force that inspires and fascinates me as much at age forty-three as it did as a five year old sitting in that darkened movie theatre.
The name for it is storytelling. Also, those laser guns are pretty cool…
November 23, 2015
Faith and Paris
I’ve been struggling a lot with the notion of faith (again) this month.
The attacks in Paris happened right in the middle of a two-week long treatment for me at the local hospital. This involved going every morning to get pumped full of IV antibiotics to try to beat back the infection that has taken up permanent residence in my sick liver and bile ducts.
Every time my liver infection rears its head the physical effects are wretched, but worse still is the mental anguish of not knowing what is going on inside my body and what will happen next. Crippling uncertainty and fear become my constant companions.
Having faith that everything will be OK is one of the hardest things in the world for me, as it turns out. How do I put my faith in a power (call it God, Buddha, Allah, Fate, or the Great Manitou) that has let many of my friends with PSC die despite the fact they had unrelentingly positive outlooks and everything that I don’t seem capable of maintaining throughout this journey?
In the midst of my struggles with that conundrum, the attacks in Paris happened. As the news began filtering in I spent several hours feverishly checking in with friends and family to make sure they were safe. I discovered with horror all these innocent people who had thought they were going out to a concert, or for a drink with friends, or for a casual meal, only to be gunned down or blown up in the most cowardly and brutal manner.
How was I supposed to have faith that I would be taken care of by the same power that neglected to protect the victims in Paris and of other attacks over the globe?
Paris has felt like my backyard for all of my adult life. It is a place where I feel safe and nurtured. At the end of August, Franck, myself, and the Bevy were careening around the city in the wee hours of a sultry summer night with our friend Joelle, leaping out of the car to enjoy ice cream cones and an impromptu musical performance by some street musicians on a bridge over the Seine. It was one of those glorious moments when my whole soul throbbed with the joy of being alive. I seem to experience such joie de vivre frequently in Paris.
The day after the Paris attacks Camille said to me, “Mom, is Paris going to be changed forever now? Will it never be the same?”
“No way,” I said. “Paris has been through much worse. Paris is resilient. Paris will always be Paris.”
I realized after I answered that I had complete faith that this was true.
The day after the attacks my friend Joelle posted on Facebook that she had gone out to a bistro and sat on the terrace for not one, but two drinks. Thousands of other Parisians did the same in the impromptu #jesuisenterrasse movement.
Parisians did not cower in their apartments. They went out and fought terror with joy and wine and fresh croissants.
The Parisian approach gave me a new insight into my struggles. Often, since I got sick, I feel as though the disease is not only destroying my body, but that it is dismantling bit by bit all the things that make me…me.
But now I will remind myself to be like Paris. When things get scary and sad I will fight back by moving ferociously towards LIFE. For me, this means spending time with my family and friends, writing, reading, eating delicious food, beachcombing, creating new things…all the things that remind me that, despite my PSC, there are still so many pleasures to be savoured – so many petits bonheurs du jour as Franck’s Aunt Renee always says.
If I could get on a plane right now to join the Paris #jesuisenterrasse movement in person, I would. However, budget and liver are not cooperating so I thought I’d do the next best thing – I could help others travel to France via my Grape Books. Reading is one of my favourite (not to mention most budget-friendly) methods of travel, after all.
I have never discounted my books before because I know better than anyone the work, sweat, and effort that go into creating them for my readers. I don’t believe that creatives should get in the habit of undervaluing their efforts. For Paris, though, I have made an exception.
I chose to discount My Grape Year because it recounts how I fell in love with not only France, but Paris. I want everyone to be able to remind themselves of how the French have made an art of enjoying life’s small, countless pleasures (which is why, I believe so many of us feel that France is one of our spiritual homes).
Choosing life, again and again and again, is a defiant type of faith. It has allowed Paris to weather hardships over the centuries that would have toppled lesser cities.
In good times and in bad times we should all strive to be like Paris. When things get tough, we can find ourselves again by going #enterrasse.
October 3, 2015
MY GRAPE YEAR now available in paperback!
I was busy getting in some words for the upcoming My Grape Wedding memoir-ette and before logging off the computer I checked Amazon and – le voila! – the MY GRAPE YEAR paperback is now available!
It is three dollars more than my previous books because it is *ahem* rather large (366 pages to be exact) and consequently production and shipping costs are more. However, it should provide you with a long, lovely, escapist, cozy, and romantic read. Just click here to go and check it out on Amazon.com .
Also, you should be able to share this blog post with the newly-added buttons below. If someone could test drive those for me I would be extremely appreciative!
September 30, 2015
Experience Burgundy’s Magic Yourself
I received my two paperback proofs for My Grape Year last night, which means I will be able to put the lovely paperback version up for sale on the Amazon website in the next 24 hours.
This also means, however, that there are only 48 hours or less to enter my contest to win a free week at any one of our four Grape Rentals in Burgundy. Here are all the ways you can earn one (or more – lots more!) entries in the “Race Me to La Fin” contest.
There is also an additional way to enter for those of you wonderful people who have already purchased and downloaded (and even read already, for a lot of you!) a digital copy of My Grape Year. Simply post a review of My Grape Year on Amazon to earn yet another entry.
Here is one of my earlier reviews:
I’m going to blog in the upcoming months about our last-minute trip to Burgundy this summer, but let me just say that Burgundy weaves a spell on me and so many of our guests that come and stay in our vacation rentals. There is an authenticity there, a devotion to the art of pleasure, a measuring of the days that takes place in humble rituals such as opening the shutters, buying bread, and going to the market that never fails to fill up my soul.
Also, my web designer has added some cool buttons at the bottom of all my blog posts so you can easily share them on Facebook, Twitter, and all those other fun places. Check them out and let me know if they work!
Sharing Burgundy’s magic with others, both through my books and our vacation rentals, is one of the most rewarding parts of my life. Good luck, or should I say bonne chance!
September 24, 2015
My Grape Year Has Arrived on Kindle!
My Grape Year is available, as of this morning, on Amazon’s Kindle. Just click here to check it out. There is nothing quite so satisfying as hitting the “publish” button on a new book and this one particularly so. Here are my top five reasons:
1. It is so far the most downright romantic book I have ever written (all about the year Franck and I met).
2. I realized how lucky I was to conduct my first real love affair before the age of emails, texts, and cell phones.
3. I got to revisit the first time I tasted snails.
4. I managed to write this book during a year of serious health shitstorms, including hospitalizations and a full week-long work-up at the Toronto Transplant Clinic to see if I was ready for a liver transplant yet (verdict: not yet – still too healthy).
5. My eighteen year old self taught me all over again that the universe has a plan for all of us and that we all have to fight for our own personal fairy tale.
So, for the meagre sum of $3.99 you can purchase and enjoy My Grape Year for yourself. The paperback will be available on Amazon as well and at local bookstores in approximately 2-3 weeks. I’ll be sure to announce that on here.
I wrote My Grape Year with my awesome tribe of readers in my mind and close to my heart. You have supported me, made me laugh, and made me think during the writing and editing of this book. More than anything, I cannot wait to hear what you think.
July 23, 2015
Last Minute Leap-of-Faith (and Leap To France!)
I won’t entirely believe it until the airplane actually takes off to Paris with me inside.
We made a spontaneous, last minute, leap of faith decision and bought tickets last Sunday to leave for a month at our house – La Maison des Chaumes in Burgundy, France this Sunday.
It has been such a weird year with my health (you need a transplant! No! Wait! You’re still far too healthy for a transplant! But you do need to go to the hospital again!) that I feel scared writing those words, as though I’ll jinx myself and I’ll land myself on an IV drip rather than on an airplane in three days time.
Still…my PSC specialist in Calgary encouraged me to travel now. He said, “Sure, you can get sick and end up in the hospital, but that can happen just as easily while you are sitting at home in Victoria as in France.” It would suck to be sick in France, but at least I would have the satisfaction of knowing that my kids are visiting with their cousins and grandparents and friends and having a lovely time in Burgundy. Besides, I spent a week in the hospital in Beaune after having Clementine and as far as hospitals go it is a pretty sweet place to be – three course meals, coffee and petits gateaux that come by on a trolley every afternoon…I was waited on hand and foot and actually read Ken Follett’s “Pillars of the Earth” from cover to cover in the six days following my C-section.
Living with a life-threatening illness has taught me many things over the past three years but the lesson that I keep circling back to again and again is that I have to live for the NOW. Also, shit happens in life. Sooner or later, pretty much everyone will encounter their own personal shit storm. All anyone ever has is The Present (yes, with capitals) – ill or not. We must throw fear to the winds and tackle that sucker. It is, as far as I can tell, the only sane way to live life.
So I thought to myself, “Eff it. Let’s at least try.” Then I pressed the “purchase tickets” button on the Air Transat website. Ready.Fire.Aim. That’s my motto.
So for the next month I will be eating cheese, baguettes, pastries, looking longingly at the wonderful wines I can’t drink, taking a gazillion photos, soaking up every moment with my beloved French family and friends, scoping the markets and the vide-greniers for antiques…I may also have a little sejour in Beaune’s Club Med (aka the hospital) but that is OK.
This may delay the publication of My Grape Year by a few weeks. Right now it is in the hands of my copy editor. Once I make those final changes there is really little else to do. I am taking my laptop with me but my goal for this vacation is play, not work, so I’ll just see how it goes. It will be published soon though – very soon…I am so excited to hear what you think and I am determined to craft the best possible story for all my fantastique readers.
In the meantime, of course, this gives you a little extra time to gain some additional entries for my “Race Me to La Fin” contest. I am receiving several emailed entires per day and rest assured they are all going into my ‘contest’ folder and are being counted. In particular, I am only four reviews away from hitting 200 reviews for My Grape Escape so if you could write one to receive yet another contest entry I would love you forever – promis!
I will be posting photos and snippets of our Burgundian adventures on my author Facebook page, my Instagram account, and my Twitter Feed (where yesterday two of my writer idols – Cheryl Strand and Elizabeth Gilbert ‘favorited’ one of my tweets…verklempt).
In life and in travel my new mindset is not to strive for a perfect vacation or a perfect month, but rather to be on the lookout for perfect moments. This is just another version of Franck’s Aunt Renee’s petit bonheur du jour approach to life that I describe in My Grape Escape and which resonates with so many readers.
I will gather up and cherish these perfect moments like the shards of beach glass I collect. They are the closest thing I have found to capturing eternity in my hands.
July 15, 2015
A Little Note About My Chaotic Brain & Reading Order in my “Grape” Series
I swear to god, I am not trying to confuse everyone. It’s just that my brain resists operating in anything resembling a linear fashion. Now that there will soon be three books in my “Grape” series I realize I need to clarify their chronological order.
Most readers understandably thought my next book in the series would be about Franck and I and an apartment in Beaune. After all, the last few lines of My Grape Village go like so…
That’d what I learned here. The French were instinctively good at living in the moment. At the same time, I knew that the lesson was far from over for me. In fact, it had barely begun. But what path could I follow next?
“You know what I think would rent really well?” I turned my face so that I caught Franck’s eye.
“What?” His lips curled into a smile.
“An apartment within the medieval walls of Beaune.”
As you can see, it would not be a huge leap of deduction for my readers to assume this next book would be about Franck and I buying and renovating what would become Le Relais du Vieux Beaune.
What can I say? I write whatever story is clamouring the loudest to be told at the time I write my rough draft for the National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo) every November.
This past November, it was not the apartment story but rather the story of how it all began that was being by far the loudest and the rowdiest. It was what was to become My Grape Year – the story of that pivotal year when I was seventeen and sent to Burgundy as an exchange student. That year completely altered the course of my life, particularly a certain Spring evening in Nuits-Saint-Georges when I met a certain Frenchman named Franck.
My Grape Year ended up being crazy romantic (so much so that I am seriously considering banning my parents from reading it, or at least my Dad) and a sheer pleasure to write. When I was struggling with the stress, uncertainty, and just sheer merdique-ness of my current health challenges these past eight months, writing My Grape Year was a daily exercise in gratitude for the incredible moments that I have been privileged to experience so far this time on the human merry-go-round.
All my editors and readers have told me that in their opinions this is the best book yet in the series, which is extremely gratifying. I have high hopes that my readers will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it for them.
The apartment story is also clamouring to be told, and who knows? It could be next. I already have the title to that one – it’s called “My Grape Town”.
If you are interested in having a peek into my anarchic brain, here is what I have as my mental list of books in the “Grape” series. This may or may not be complete…
My Grape Year (soon-to-be-published)
My Grape Paris (about Franck’s and my year living in Paris)
My Grape Town (maybe next project???)
My Grape Baby
There will also be several novella-sized additions – around 40,000 words each I am estimating. These would be “My Grape Wedding” (could be next Grape project too…clamouring pretty loud these days and I already have an outline), “My Grape Cellar”, “My Grape Quebec”…however, any one of these could bloom into another novel-sized book. That has a tendency to happen.
I am trying to figure out a name for a novella-sized memoir…a memoirette? What do you think? Do you have any suggestions?
But, for right now once I have published My Grape Year the reading order will be 1. My Grape Year, 2. My Grape Escape, and 3. My Grape Village
Clear as mud?
Also, don’t neglect to enter my Race Me To La Fin contest to win a free week in Burgundy, the birthplace of not only Franck and Clementine, but also of all of my Grape adventures so far.
Now I must be off to email my copy-editor! I won’t rest until I get My Grape Year into your hands (or on your Ipad or Kindle!).
