From traveled path to plot

With my French mother, Marie Reine and my French brother Arthur at the farm in Normandie

by Christine Kling

The imagination is a a thing of wonder. As writers we laugh at the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” but really when you think about it, it is a bit like magic. Why does the story take a left turn instead of a right turn? It’s usually because the writer had a certain experience somewhere in her history that influenced her to choose left. It could so easily have gone the other way.

I’m thinking about this because I’m here in Europe traveling around to various locations I think will work for my story, but I like to allow both my experiences and the knowledge I gain along the way to shape the story. It’s a fun but somewhat unnerving process, especially when it seems like something akin to magic is leading the way.

Several months before coming here, I wrote my old school friend Joelle, and she invited me to stay with her in her apartment located in a suburb of Paris.  I stayed in France as a foreign exchange student in 1971-1972, and Joelle was in my class at the lycée. It was the youngest brother in the family who was 13 when I last saw him, and I thought perhaps I would go have tea and visit with him for a few hours. Instead, I learned that my French sister was coming from her home in Fairfax, California to visit her brother in a few days and if I was willing to stay a few days longer, I could see her. Of course I wanted to see her, so I looked at the map and tried to decide where to go to see some more of the country for a few days. Normandie jumped out at me as the place where the memorial to the submarine Surcouf was, and I made my decision. Then it occurred to me that the mother of the family lived in the family’s house in Calvados, Normandie and I could visit her too.

So serendipity led us to spend 3 glorious days in Normandie. First, Wayne and I spent two days in Cherbourg and I did get to visit the same jetty where my character Riley stood in the prologue to Circle of Bones. One the third day, we took the train to Lisieux then hopped on a bus. When the driver deposited us on the side of the road in the small village of Livarot, I didn’t know what to expect. It was quiet standing there surrounded by the green hills of Normandie, listening only to the buzzing of the bees.

I was nervous. I hadn’t seen Arthur, my French brother since he was 19 years old and he would now be a man of 62. It was a glorious crisp sunny day and when I saw a man emerge at the top of the hill, I knew it was that same young man. I waved and he started forward hesitantly, but the closer we got the faster we walked. When we reached each other, we both wore huge smiles and hugged and kissed in the French style, one cheek, then the other. It was almost like we had last seen one another last week. We then hopped in the car and drove to the farm where the once 45-year-old, now 80-something mother awaited us in the garden. I cannot find the words to explain what I felt when I embraced her.

I didn’t plan any of this when I left Florida, but somehow I got to visit old friends I had not seen in over 30 years for the mother and for 40 years for the eldest son. What marvelous characters these people are, and knowing them at such a young age formed me in ways I will never begin to measure. It was those early adventures in France that gave me the thirst for travel and a life of savoring the unexpected.

The big plus from this all is the way that this past week will turn my new plot and provide me with new characters. I know that Riley’s mother will appear in book #3 and she will look a great deal like my French mother and sport her beautiful name, Marie Reine.

Vive la France!

Fair winds!

Christine

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