Grape Titles!

I have had a lot of people ask me why the books in my Grape Series have similar titles. They do indeed: My Grape Year (currently writing)

My Grape Paris (to be written)

My Grape Escape (published)

My Grape Village (published)

My Grape Town (to be written)

My Grape Baby (to be written)

Interspersed between these will be a scattering of smaller memoirs (memoirellas?) such as My Grape Wedding, My Grape Cellar, My Grape Summer, etc.

For our French life, "grape" has always been highly emblematic. Our network of vacation rentals is called "Grape Rentals". I liked the play on the word "great" plus in my mind a grape evokes so many things that are profoundly Burgundian - the earth, tradition, the rhythm of the seasons, the combination of man and nature to create something truly sublime...

These titles came to me right away, whereas the title for my paranormal romance continues to elude me. The working title is "Silver Fish", pulled from the poem by early Canadian poet Isabella Valency Crawford that inspired my epic story idea over a decade ago.

The line goes "Love is like a silver fish, shy of line and shy of gaffing."

Unfortunately, I was informed very quickly by my fellow writers (who are, thank god, blunt when they need to be) that "silverfish" were also pestilential insects that called for reliable fumigaters. Not really an association I wanted for a paranormal romance. So....back to the drawing board, except that I'm still waiting for that lightning bolt of inspiration. If you have any ideas, please help me!

Anyway, back to The Grape Series. I realized after I had already decided on the "Grape" titles that one of the reasons having the almost-identical title repeated again and again was that it reminded me of my first love in the world of memoir writing:

Who else is with me on this one?

At Thanksgiving dinner this weekend when my sisters and I were gushing over the "Little House" series my brother-in-law Mark said, "Christ! I frickin' hated those goddamned books." Maybe there is a gender split here, but in any case I LOVED them. Also, I have never forgotten this section near the end of Little House in the Big Woods that struck me as a six-year-old when my mom read Suzanne and I the whole series one winter, and stays with me still. To me, it embodies the magic of memoir:

When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, "What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?"

"They are the days of a long time ago, Laura," Pa said. "Go to sleep, now."

But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

She thought to herself, "This is now."

She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

Hang Out With Moi

Come hang out with me and let's talk writing, self-publishing, and mustering up the courage to create:

FACEBOOK - You can find me at www.facebook.com/AuthorLauraBradbury where I procrastinate a tad too much, posting anything useful and inspiring about living a writerly life.

TWITTER - I fart around on here as @Author_LB , hanging out with other writers and the self-publishing community (it gets lonely sometimes), posting word counts to keep me motivated, and participating in writing sprints.

INSTAGRAM - I keep a photo diary of my daily life as laurabradburywriter : the good (my family, my writing life, and the beach), the bad (my rare auto-immune liver disease), and the ugly (even ugly on Instagram looks beautiful, which is why we are all addicted).

PINTEREST - Eh oui, I too have fallen down this vortex of gorgeousity. My boards are under my vacation rental persona as graperentals and will likely make no sense to others and illustrate once and for all that my brain is a messy place. However, suffice to say I have discovered the art of creating mood boards for my stories and I am hooked.

Paperback of MY GRAPE VILLAGE - sneak peek!

This feels disloyal but I have to admit it - I vastly prefer reading a paperback or hardcover book to a digital book. Kindles and Ipads are very practical when traveling, or in bed when your grumpy husband doesn't understand why you need to stay up so late because you are deeply engrossed in a story (!), but I look at a screen all day when working. The tactile experience of shifting to an actual book for me is pure pleasure.

Since publishing the Kindle version of MY GRAPE VILLAGE - you can also download the Kindle app for free on your Ipad and read it on there - if I can figure it out, anybody can! - two days ago, I have had many people ask when the paperback is due out.  Rebecca, my graphic designer, Paul, my formatter, and me are working very hard and the estimate is about October 15th.

Rebecca sent me this mock-up of the paperback cover yesterday and I got so excited I thought I'd share it with you. What do you think? I'd love to know.

The first review of MY GRAPE VILLAGE was posted last night (from a very speedy reader as the book does clock in at over 110,000 words). As always, reviews are HUGELY appreciated and make a massive difference for us authors. I am tres, tres curious to find out what you lovely people think of my story. This is the nerve-wracking part of putting my writing out there to share with the world. That, at least, never changes!

Here it is:

"5.0 out of 5 stars Just As Captivated With This Sequel October 8, 2014

By ina

Format:Kindle Edition

I loved Laura's first book "My Grape Escape" and found that I was just as captivated with this sequel. Like the first book, it is a lovely and entertaining read by an author who has a detailed eye for cultural differences and a gift for sharing it in her writing. You get drawn into the characters in their new situations and roles. Burgundy becomes your next travel destination. I read it in one sitting. Being relatively new to digital books, I found myself checking and hoping that I wasn't reaching the end soon. (The sign of a great book for me.)"

MY GRAPE VILLAGE is now available!

After eleven months of writing, coffee, rewriting, coffee, editing, coffee, more rewriting, more coffee, and still more endless editing MY GRAPE VILLAGE is available this morning on Kindle. The paperback will be out in the next two weeks.

Behold the blurb!

Five years after “My Grape Escape,” Laura and Franck are back in Burgundy to tackle their newest project, a derelict 16th century winemaker’s cottage located behind Franck’s family home. Not only is this a daunting rebuild from the ground up, Laura and Franck now have two preschoolers adjusting to the foreign customs of a French school. 

Navigating the different rules for raising children and managing a family in a small French village prove every bit as challenging for Laura as learning to drive a stick shift through narrow streets, or arguing with the Architect of French Monuments over permissible paint colors (spoiler alert: any color as long as it’s gray). Come along on this evocative and honest journey where love, coupled with good French food and local wine, pave the way to la belle vie.

I cannot wait to hear your feeback and I hope you have as much fun reading MY GRAPE VILLAGE as I had writing it. As always, I am forever grateful for your ongoing love and support (and your reviews on Amazon or Goodreads). Please shout out the joyous news to the rooftops (or, better yet, share it on social media) that book #2 in The Grape Series and the sequel to the Bestselling MY GRAPE ESCAPE has arrived.

I'm off to eat a square of chocolate to celebrate! Merci mes amis. Bisous to you all. xo

My Grape Escape Pilgrimage

 

This is so fun! Friends of friends read My Grape Escape recently and were inspired to make a pilgrimage to Magny-les-Villers and La Maison des Deux Clochers. Even better, they blogged about it! Read all about their adventures in Burgundy here. I love that they took our advice and lunched at our favorite local routier "L'Auberge du Guidon" in nearby Comblanchien and familiarized themselves not only with French truckers (and their moustaches) but huge communal bottles of wine and gargantuan "help yourself" cheese platters.

During their stay in Magny they ventured out to the epic Monday morning market in Louhans and blogged about it  (scene of our memorable day with Rene when we ended up going home with a freshly butchered poulet de bresse and a pile of dirt cheap Emile Henry kitchenware). That was when Rene reminded me to "never confuse what is urgent with what is truly important."

I hope you enjoy these two blog posts as much as I did. I wonder what trips My Grape Village will insipre?

The Grape Harvest at Domaine Buffet in Volnay

Check out these amazing photos of the 2014 Burgundy Grape Harvest...

As I write this post, the grape harvest is happening all over Burgundy. My amazing friend Charlotte (who is also Clementine's godmother) is busy at work at the family Domaine in Volnay (Domaine Buffet) that is now managed by her husband Marc-Olivier. I hadn't met Charlotte yet in My Grape Escape - she was busy in Paris meeting her now winemaking husband.

Charlotte is a major character in the upcoming My Grape Village (although I had to change her name to "Marie" as having two Charlottes - her and my eldest daughter - was just too confusing for this here writer). We had several hilarious email exchanges where we competed to find the most hideous name for her - my favorite being "Fredigonde" I believe - but for the moment I have been calling her "Marie" in the manuscript as her friendship and that of my other French bestie Isabelle was truly one of the miracles of my years in France.

I will keep posting photos of the Grape Harvest at Domaine Buffet for the next few days...a huge merci to Jacqueline Hogue, another member of my beloved Buffet clan, for taking these phenomenal photos.

The vineyard above supplied the grapes in the first and last photos. These vines are Le clos de la Rougeotte, and the ancient and gnarled cherry tree to the right there is what gives this appellation of Volnay 1er cru such a unique cherry flavour. 

The fact that every section of vineyards in Burgundy creates unique tasting wine based on a myriad of such oddities is what makes Burgundy such hallowed grown for wine lovers.

According to Charlotte B. (or Marie, as you will be getting to know her, or Fredigonde if we decide to go that direction) the 2014 grapes are beautiful and luscious with very little rot. The only shame is that the yield will be low due to the disastrous hail storm when Franck was in France. Rest assured, there may not be a lot to go around but the wine that is going to be made from these grapes above is going to be delectable indeed.

Grape Harvest has begun!

The grape harvest in Burgundy has begun! Sue Boxell from "Burgundy on a Plate" wine tours sent this photo yesterday.  I'm currently finishing up one of my LAST round of edits for "My Grape Village" which will be published next month. I'm at that stage where I feel as one writer friend put it, as though somebody has locked me in a dark closet and is forcing me to smoke every single page of my manuscript without a break! The same day that Sue sent this photo I was editing this scene of Charlotte and Camille taking part in the harvest shortly after our move back to Burgundy. I thought you might enjoy the excerpt!

***

Hand in hand, with the girls skipping in front of us, casting up the ochre vineyard dust, we made our way over to the harvesters. They were a motley crew, dressed in filthy clothes, with T-shirts or shorts tied around their heads to protect them from sunstroke. I knew that some of them were probably doctors and lawyers or other well-heeled friends of the winemaker who came and did the harvest every year, picking side by side with backpacking teenagers and unemployed youth. Harvesting was the great equalizer and they would all be complaining about the heat of the beating sun and sore backs from kneeling down in the dirt all day long.

Unlabeled bottles of wine were being passed up and down the rows. Charlotte and Camille stood at the head of the row, wide-eyed and tiaras askew.  

“Do you want to try to harvest some grapes?” A man with an impressive girth and a pink t-shirt wrapped around his head came over and kneeled down beside the girls. He held out his wickedly sharp shears.

“Go ahead,” I said, while Franck began chatting with another bare-chested man wearing a fraying straw hat. Franck and he seemed to vaguely know each other. I watched as the pink T-shirt man took Camille and Charlotte half way down the row and showed them how to separate the grape bunches from one another and where to cut the grapes off the vine. They cut off several bunches each until the man’s bucket was full.  

He kept up a constant stream of chatter and the girls occasionally nodded yes or no and Charlotte even squeaked out an occasional oui. When he asked them if they were from Savigny the girls shook their heads and Charlotte whispered “Non. Nous sommes Canadiennes.”

“Canada!” he exclaimed, then stood up and shouted out to his fellow harvesters “We have little girls here that have come all the way from Canada to help us with the harvest. Everybody say bonjour to les petites canadiennes!”

Everyone shouted bonjour and Charlotte and Camille were immediately swept into the team of harvesters. My girls snipped off grapes, helped haul buckets to the tractor and then, when that was full, they were invited to ride on the tractor that was festooned with grape vines back to the village. 

Franck and I followed behind on foot through the vineyards.

“Did you know that guy you were talking too?” I asked.

“Vaguely. Turns out he’s a distant cousin, maybe second or third cousin. We couldn’t really figure it out.” This happened often since we arrived in Burgundy. Sometimes I wondered whether Franck wasn’t related in one way or another to most of the people here.

The tractor wove through the narrow streets and into the cuverie at a local winemaker’s family Domaine where the grapes were dumped out on the sorting table. We were all given a glass of freshly pressed grape juice to sip, although our new friend used imaginative miming to explain to the girls that they had to be careful not to drink too much or else they would get an explosive case of diarrhea.

About two hours later we all wandered out of the massive cuverie, Camille and Charlotte both wearing crowns of grape leaves and vines laid over their tiaras. They were smiling from ear to ear. 

"My Grape Village" Publication Update

Dearest amis. With my publication of my ebook Philosophy of Preschoolers a couple of days ago, I didn't want you to think I had been neglecting the sequel to My Grape Escape entitled My Grape Village. Pas du tout! 

Philosophy of Preschoolers has been hugely fun to put together during those weeks when I was waiting for one or another of the rounds of edits from My Grape Village to come back to me. Here is a great review that was posted today on Amazon.com that does a much better job of summing up this hard-to-describe chef d'oeuvre of the preschool brain than I can:

"I'm not sure what I was expecting when I started reading The Philosophy of Preschoolers, but what it turned out to be was a complete delight. Clem is a wildly imaginative five year old trying to make sense of the world, and Anna is her smart as a whip, practical three year old cousin. Mom chimes in occasionally, but basically it's a brilliant My Dinner with Andre, courtesy of Clem and Anna. I laughed aloud multiple times, once or twice wiping tears of laughter, too. Highly recommended!"

I just received the My Grape Village mansucript back from my beta-readers and am racing through this second to last round of edits. Lastly, I will need to do the copy edits but that generally goes quite fast. So if all goes well (fingers & toes crossed) My Grape Village should be available for purchase as both an ebook and a paperback at the beginning of October.

It is also turning out rather larger than My Grape Escape. My Grape Village is clocking in at about 110,000 words whereas My Grape Escape was around 75,000. So, LOTS of new adventures in Burgundy contained between its covers!

I am teaching a workshop on self-publishing at the fantabulous Surrey International Writers' Conference at the end of October (in the company of Herself aka Diana Gabaldon *gasp*) as well as doing a Keynote speech on giving youself permission to be a writer (before it's too late) on the Sunday morning. I am determined to have My Grape Village all ready and published by then.

In the meantime this means you are still eligible to win a free week at La Maison de la Vieille Vigne if you go to my website www.laurabradbury.com and sign up for my mailing list before then. Tout le monde on my mailing list will be eligible for the draw.

Bonne chance, keep in touch, and rest assured I am constantly writing, editing, and publishing new things for my readers - truly the loveliest and most supportive people in l'univers.  I think you all deserve a big french bisous. *smack*

Favorite Memories of Camille in France

As of this morning "My Grape Escape" has 94 reviews on Amazon.com. More reviews = more potential readers seeing my book. Merci BEAUCOUP! To thank you here is an excerpt from "My Grape Village" that recounts the moment when we knew Camille would be just fine at preschool in France despite the fact that for the first three months she did not utter a single word in either English or French.

***

Franck and I spent the entire afternoon on the cliffs of Bouilland, descending to real life just in time to have a strong black espresso under the tilleuls of the village café before going to pick up the girls from school. It was strange how there could be moments that were idyllic in the midst of the chaos and confusion of creating a new life here in France. When we had imagined only the ideal images before we moved here we were seeing just a sliver of the whole picture.

When we got to Saint Coeur, Franck went to Charlotte’s classroom while I made my way to Camille’s, dreading to see my traumatized little raven-haired girl.

I caught sight of Camille. She sat at the end of a row of children on a bench by the door of the classroom. Pensive, she clutched her bag of school slippers to take home for the weekend. My heart contracted with guilt. I heard Franck and Charlotte arrive behind me.

Camille’s teacher was helping a crying child do up her zipper and had her back turned. A blond headed boy who didn’t have a coveted spot on the bench squeezed himself between Camille and the next child on the bench. I gasped as the usurper, with a strategically placed elbow, shoved my daughter off the bench and sent her tumbling to the ground.

Before I could surge forward past the crowd of parents to pick Camille up off the floor, she sprung up and dusted off her denim jumper. She narrowed her hazel eyes with a look of calculated vengeance at the boy.  

She inserted herself beside him again so that he was teetering off the end of the bench.

The little boy began to whine to the teacher that Camille was pushing him. Camille took a cursory glance at her maitresse to ensure that she was still preoccupied with the crying child’s zipper dilemma. Safe in this knowledge, Camille pivoted herself slightly, raised one leg and gave the winging boy such a decisive kick in his ribs that he went airborne. 

By the time the maitresse turned to discover the why the little boy was sprawled, sniveling, on the floor Camille was sitting with her knees together and her hands folded in her lap - the perfect angel. 

I felt Franck’s hand on my shoulder. “I think Camille is going to be just fine,” he said.

Race to the Finish Contest Update

 

Bad News for you / Good News for Me: I have edited 84,000 of 88,000 words of "My Grape Village"

Good News for You / Bad News for me: I realize I need to write and insert about 5-10 more scenes to make the mansucript complete before handing it off to my editor on June 23rd.

So, if you haven't entered already, all you need to do to qualify to win a free week at La Maison de la Vieille Vigne - our restored winemaker's cottage that dates back to the 16th century is sign up for my mailing list by clicking here.

Rest assured, I hate spam as much as you do! I generally email out my blog posts, book reviews, and absurd things my girls say...you can unsubscribe as soon as you start finding me tedious. I am simply not prolific enough to clutter up your in-box.

But as soon as "My Grape Village"is published, it will be too late to qualify!

Celebrating the Small Things

 

Yesterday I edited 8000 words and reached 80,000 words edited in "My Grape Village." I also ordered business cards. To celebrate I bought myself this lovely new pencil case. It makes me absurdly happy every time I look at it.

My Grape Village - A Sneak Peek

 

I have begun editing My Grape Village, the sequel to My Grape Escape. Yowza!  Big Job. Still, I love delving into the mess of my rough draft  and seeing the story take shape.  Here is an excerpt:

***

“Are they going to survive?” I asked Franck.

I clutched the white metal gate as I watched our two daughters make their way through the preschool playground. I had never seen such a place of utter lawlessness.

Despite the larger than life statue of the Virgin Mary that loomed over the courtyard, French children were punching each other, taunting each other, and bullying each other while a cluster of three teachers stood well off to the side of the mayhem, chatting as they sipped coffee out of china espresso cups. I had learned about the French laissez-faire philosophy in Grade Eleven history class and here it was in action. It would have been entertaining to watch if not for the fact that Franck and I had just jettisoned our daughters into the deep end of it all.

Two and a half year old Camille in her yellow sundress and white sandals glanced back at us and furrowed her dark eyebrows. She lifted her shoulders and lowered her head as she marched straight to her classroom door. She made eye contact with no-one. I couldn’t take it, I just had to make sure she-

I began to open the gate, wincing as it made a screeching sound.

“Non!  Non!  Non Madame Germain!” One of the teachers in the cluster shook her finger at me.  “No parents allowed in the courtyard during school hours!”

“How did she see me?” I turned to Franck. “She didn’t even turn around when that red haired kid was yelling for help when the other boy was beating him to a pulp.”

“They see what they want to see,” Franck said, putting his hand over mine and closing the gate. There was more metallic squealing and the teachers heads all snapped in our direction.

“I bet they don’t have the gate oiled on purpose,” I muttered.

I noticed Franck’s knuckles were looking rather white as well. “Allez,” he said. “We must leave them.”

I caught sight of four and a half year old Charlotte walking to her classroom, which was unluckily located at the far end of the schoolyard. Her blond hair was pulled up with two ladybug barrettes and she dragged the Barbapapa that we had bought her the day before. She smiled at a boy who was running in her direction. He shoved her as he ran by and knocked her cartable off kilter. Charlotte steadied herself and kept walking with that brave smile still plastered on her face.  A little girl with angelic blond braids stuck her tongue out at my daughter. Charlotte was blinking back tears by the time she reached the classroom door, even though she was still smiling. She saw us and gave us a small wave that was so courageous it made my heart feel like it was splitting in two.

Franck had to drag me back up the path and out the heavy wooden doors of the school that were promptly locked behind us.

Once we were in the parking lot I threw myself against his chest. “We’ve made a terrible mistake,” I mumbled in his T-shirt.

The girls weren’t even supposed to be going here to Sacred Heart in Beaune, they had been all signed up to attend the village schools in Magny-les-Villers and Villers-la-Faye. Three days ago a teacher friend of Franck’s had phoned to tell him they couldn’t take Camille – there were simply too many children in her year. We had been left scrambling to find a school for the girls so we could have some time to work. Franck had thought of Sacred Heart because it was where I had gone to school during my Rotary year in Burgundy. They luckily – or so I had thought at the time – had spots for both of our daughters. Now I knew why Sacrée Coeur wasn’t full like most other schools; this place was where Burgundian society put all the hardened future criminals.

Franck kissed the top of my head. “We just need to give it time Laura. We all have to adapt. I went to preschool in France and – régardez! – I’m still here.”

I stared at the now locked doors. “I can’t stand the thought of my girls locked in there with all of those horrible French children and the teachers who don’t care if they get kill-“

“We had good reasons for coming back to France,” Franck interrupted. “Not just for us, but for them.”

Maybe we did, but my daydreams of family outings to Beaune’s market, introducing the girls to pain au chocolat and escargots, and having them become completely bilingual in French had lost all meaning.

“I can’t remember why they were so compelling, can you?” I asked Franck.

Franck glanced at the closed doors and frowned. “Not at the moment, to be honest. I do know one thing though.”

“What?”

“Stéphanie told me about a Judo class that Tom takes.  After we pick up the girls from school today we’re going straight there to sign them up.”