Hello mes amis. I have a favour to ask you as I embark on the final push for My Grape Village. I am sitting at 84 Amazon reviews right now and I would LOOOOOOOVE to get to 100. Every single additional review increases the amount of times Amazon proposes My Grape Escape to potential readers. So if you could spare just a few minutes and write one, it would give me the extra kick in the derriere that I need to finish My Grape Village. Also, don't forget the following sage advice, in reviews or in daily life... ;) 
Is That A Tear?
Clem and I were biking home from school yesterday under a clear blue sky. Clem is rightfully proud of her newly acquired biking prowess. Clem: "I think I just felt a drop of rain on my eye."
Me: (looking up at cloudless sky) "I don't think it could be rain. Maybe it was sweat. You're pedaling super fast."
Clem: "No. It's not sweat."
Me: "Hmmmmm."
Clem: "It must have been a tear of joy."
My Goodread's review of "Somewhere in France"
Definitely on a French reading roll! Really enjoyed this cozy and thoroughly researched romance between an aristocratic ambulance driver and a Scottish surgeon on the front in WWI. Downton Abbey fans will feel right at home within the pages of this book.
Read my Goodreads review here.
Also, while you are there if you could rate and write a review for My Grape Escape that would be highly appreciated! Back to editing My Grape Village now...
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!
Review of "The Paris Wife"
I'm on a reading jag about France at the moment. Here is my Goodreads review of "The Paris Wife" by Paula McLain which I highly recommend, especially for people traveling to Paris this year.
Franck and I lived in the same Parisian neighbourhood that the Hemingways did decades earlier during our year in Paris. It is really worth a visit, especially the winding, medieval rue Mouffetard.
The Revelation
Clem: "I need to get a new bike. Mine is such a girly-girl colour." (makes a sound of disgust deep in her throat) "It's PINK." Me: "What is so bad about girly-girls?"
Clem: "They wear dresses and sparkly things and they're sensitive. I'm a tomboy now."
Me: "You used to wear dresses."
Clem: "I know." (shudders)
Me: "What made you decide you didn't want to be a girly-girl?"
Clem: "It was on the first day of kindergarten. I saw all the other girly-girls and then I saw the boys playing on the monkey bars and I said to myself, 'Clem, what are you doing with your life?'" (slaps her forehead) "I mean, come on."
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.
Following Your Instincts
This was the late, great Maya Angelou's last tweet. I found this a few days ago when I was preparing my speech for the Victoria Sparkfly women's event on the topic of "Following Your Instincts". Boy, did it ever resonate.
For me, the terms "God", "instinct" and "gut" are interchangeable. Personally, I think of these things as my "little voice" - that spark of the divine that is both inside and outside myself and which speaks to me, if I only listen.
My little voice can guide me about any variety of things; a relationship, a work situation, a conflict, health, life, the act of creation…
The theme of My Grape Escape is about a turning point in my life when my little voice was sick of being ignored and, as a result, started to yell. Here is the excerpt that I read at my speech last night:
“They will want to interview you,” he added. “You must return to Oxford immediately.”
I twisted the black phone cord around my wrist. Back to Oxford? Now?
“Are you still on the line Laura?”
Stone walls flashed through my mind beside polished flagstones and a centuries old wooden statue of the Virgin Mary.
“Non,” I whispered.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Non.” It came out in French again, louder this time, and sounded like the response of an impetuous five-year-old who had just been ordered to give back the bonbon she had stolen from her brother.
“But I can hear you. You must still be on the line.”
“I meant the Master’s program.”
A pause of disbelief. “You mustn’t worry about it not being fair tactics, you know. That is simply the way - ”
“No!” It came out in clear English this time and louder still. We were both stunned into silence for a few seconds.
He spoke first.“I simply don’t understand,” he admitted, peevish.
“I…I appreciate your offer,” I stumbled over my words. “I really do. It’s just that…maybe that Criminal paper is a sign that I’m not meant to do the Master’s program after all.”
“Nonsense! You mustn’t undersell yourself. You must know by now that one thing we value above all at Oxford is self-confidence. It is imperative that you believe in yourself Laura. You will never get ahead otherwise.”
Did I still want to get ahead, Oxford style? That was the question. What I really wanted was to watch the clouds float by and make toilet paper roll dolls and wake up in my own little house in France.
“I’m not certain I want to get ahead anymore,” I said.
I knew that in his Oxford office Mr. Partridge was shaking his head in disbelief.
“Laura,” he began, his voice soothing now. “I believe that perhaps the pressure has affected your judgment. I suggest that you take a day or two to think things over. Not any longer than that, mind. If we are to be successful we must start campaigning as soon as possible.”
Telling an Oxford student that the pressure had got to them was just about the worst form of insult. A month ago I would have done almost anything to prove Mr. Partridge wrong, but now…
“Thank you for the offer,” I said. “I appreciate your efforts. Truly. But I believe I’m coming to the conclusion that perhaps law isn’t for me after all.”
“Did you get accepted to a Master’s program somewhere else?” he demanded.
“I didn’t even apply anywhere else.”
“Then what on earth are you going to do?”
I turned this question over in my mind for a good while. “I have no idea,” I said, at last. Part of me vibrated in panic while the other half soared with relief.”
***
Where did that "non!" come from? When I was waiting to receive that phone call from Mr. Partridge I had every intention of doing anything in my power to gain admission into the Master's program at Oxford and continue working towards a prestigious career in law.
That "non" had actually been there the whole way through my law degree, but because I was constantly pushing my truth aside, it manifested itself in anxiety and panic attacks.
Why is letting ourselves hear and be guided by our little voice so scary?
Do not underestimate the forces that would label our instincts wrong, stupid, illogical, unreasonable, or - maybe the most damning for us women - selfish.
Here is another quote from Maya Angelou: "If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be."
Many of us are brought up in a society that teaches us to care very deeply about other people's opinions of us. We are taught that our identity is not forged inside ourselves by becoming the most authentic, honest version of our souls, but rather by what other people think of us.
This image-centered approach to life teaches us that certain things are important; prestige, money, whether other people find us attractive, and - the most insidious of all in my humble opinion - appearing to have everything "under control".
This was the mindset that led me to my law degree after four blissful undergraduate years studying English and French Literature, and continued to exert pressure on me to continue with my legal career. On the flip side were my anxiety and panic attacks telling me that continuing to study law was killing off my soul by tiny increments, until it finally yelled at me with that decisive "non!"
As Maya Angelou wisely (of course) said, "You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody." Think about the wisdom contained in those two short sentences.
When I get lost in the maze of other people's expectations, I always remind myself of one thing. From the minute I found out I was pregnant, each time, I loved my unborn daughters totally and unconditionally. I loved them when they were no bigger than a grain of rice. I didn’t love them because they had been selected to be on the gold soccer team, or won any awards, or astounded me with their beauty. I loved them without even knowing who they were exactly or what they would do in life. What I fell in love with mere seconds after seeing the double lines on the pregnancy pee stick was them - their essential selves.
We need to turn this self-love on ourselves for a change. We were once that grain of rice – we have always been that unique soul - nothing we can do or say or accomplish can add to or take away from this innate worthiness.
As those of you who read My Grape Escape or rented one of our vacation rentals in Burgundy will know, I listened to that non! and definitively turned my back on law. The process wasn’t pretty or tidy. I floundered for several months, unsure of my choices, but the universe somehow provided Franck and I with the opportunity to buy and renovate old houses in Burgundy and turn them into vacation rentals. It was the perfect gig for us.
How do you know when your little voice is talking to you?
STOP. WAIT. LISTEN. Meditation is great training for this and teaches us how to be mindful of what we are feeling and thinking. It also shows us how to stay with those emotions long enough to learn from them.
Also, if what your gut is telling you is crazy, you can be pretty certain that it is your little voice speaking. Little voices rarely say things like "clean the toilet bowl more often" or "pick a job based on the pension plan." Instinct is not logical or practical. It is never driven by fear. It does not care for appearances or money. It cares about one thing only - authenticity.
My French girlfriends are always confused by the North American obsession with reinvention. Go and scan the women's magazines at any North American store and you will be bombarded with a hundred variations of the headline "The New You!". They find this truly bizarre, as isn’t our life's work not becoming someone else, but rather becoming the truest version of ourselves?
Saying "non!" to the law was my first turning point, the second was my diagnosis with an incurable auto-immune liver disease called PSC (for all the gory details, check out this recent post) on the brink of my 40th Birthday. There it was, my midlife crisis on a platter.
Recently I heard the most brilliant definition of a mid-life crisis - "When the person you TRULY are kills off the person you THINK you are."
With my PSC diagnosis came an overwhelming knowledge of my own mortality. Suddenly everything inauthentic in my life just fell away. I sat down at my computer and for the first time in my life I wrote and I wrote and I wrote.
The reasons that had been preventing me from writing up until then were still there and just as logical as ever; I was probably no good, the majority of writers didn’t make any money, it was selfish to spend my time doing something that might never amount to anything…
Still, I wrote. I realized that even if someone told me that I would never earn a single cent from my writing, it is still what I would spend my time doing. I had to write and share what I wrote. My little voice brooked no excuses. .
I finished My Grape Escape in a year. Several agents were interested in the manuscript, but all of them wanted me to remove any mention of my struggles with anxiety and panic attacks. The prevailing opinion was that the readership of Peter Mayle's "A Year in Provence" could simply not handle such emotional messiness.
I thought about removing that aspect of my book, but my instinct spoke to me loud and clear. Without my anxiety struggles, the story would no longer be my story.
So, in a few short months and with the generous help of friends I learned how to self-publish. When I published My Grape Escape in November my book shot right to the top of the Amazon bestseller charts for "France" and "Travel" and has stayed near the top ever since. Sales continue strong. None of this matters though, compared to the fact that the “rightness” of writing and sharing my writing with others gets stronger every day.
In my experience, the instructions of my instinct that always provoked the greatest resistance from me were creative endeavors.
In his brilliant little book "The War of Art" that invites all of us to become creative warriors, Steven Pressfield writes "The more important an activity is to your soul's evolution, the more resistance you will feel to it - the more fear you will feel."
Creation is generally not valued by our society unless it is financially successful. Also, creating, as Steven Pressfield argues, is just damn hard work. Creating something out of nothing is one of the most difficult things we as humans can do, yet it is also one of the most magical.
If your instinct is telling you to create or change or start something, listen. The world needs you - the real you.
***
I will finish this off with a free-writing prompt I created for the topic of "Following Your Instinct" and used at my speech.
Don't be scared! Just take a piece of paper and any writing utensil - ballpoint pen or better yet a freshly sharpened pencil because who doesn’t love the smell of those?
The goal with this writing exercise is simply to fill up as much paper as you can with writing in ten minutes - a measly ten minutes - and to keep your pen or pencil moving as much as humanly possible. There is no wrong way of doing this (except to leave a blank page). Even if you fill the page with "Blah, blah, blah, I have no idea what to write..." that is perfectly OK.
Before you press "go" on your timer, take a moment to muzzle your internal editor / critic (who, let's face it, is a bit of a bitch). Ignore her and just download whatever floats through your brain directly onto the paper.
Ready? OK. Set your timers. Here is your prompt:
MY LITTLE VOICE IS CRAZY BECAUSE IT IS TELLING ME TO...
Tick, tick, tick.....Done?
First, congratulations. You just created something out of nothing. You, my friend, are a little bit magic?
Second, fold up that paper, tuck it away somewhere safe, and wait until tomorrow.
Tomorrow, carve ten minutes out of your day to lock yourself somewhere quiet. If you are a parent, I recommend a LOCKED bathroom and the excuse of "stomach issues". Unfold your paper. Read it. Reflect on what may be there to teach you.
Can you hear your little voice? You may have just heard God speaking.
Writing: A Lifeline
As you may know, two years ago life served me up my mid-life crisis on a platter. It came in the form of a phone call from an insurance company who had just performed medical exams on Franck and I for life and disability insurance.
"Ms. Bradbury?" the woman said. "I'm calling to inform you that your application has been denied by our underwriters."
"There must be a mistake," I said. "I'm perfectly healthy." In fact, the reason Franck and I applied in the first place was because we were feeling so goddamned self-satisfied with our lifestyle since moving back to Canada from France. It included a lot of running, freshly caught fish, and an abundance of kale.
"There's a problem with your blood test results," she said. "You'll have to take it up with your doctor."
Two months, many sleepless nights, countless blood tests, an ultrasound, an MRI, and a liver biopsy (let me tell you, those are a gas) later my gastroenterologist sat Franck and I down in his office and diagnosed me with PSC, also known as Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis. It was a very rare autoimmune condition, he said. It was poorly understood, he said. It was completely unpredictable, he said. There was currently no treatment or cure except a liver transplant, he said.
What did I do the day after, when I could barely get out of bed due to the weight of the diagnosis that was draped over my body like a lead blanket? I stumbled downstairs, turned on my computer, and I began writing "My Grape Escape." After writing for a few hours, I picked up a pen and scribbled in capital letters on a post-it note, "FUCK YOU. I'M NOT DEAD YET." Maybe it was a message to my PSC, maybe it was a message to life...to this day I'm still not entirely certain. Anyway, I stuck the post-it to my computer screen where I could see it and kept writing.
I wrote on days when fear felt as though it was devouring me from the inside. I wrote on days when I felt sure that I could not live with the uncertainty of my future for one more second. I wrote on days when I saw all my friends and family through a veil of anger, wondering, "Why me and not them?"
My writing does not stop the progression of the disease - nobody knows what can do that or if it is even possible. It does, though, give me a lifeline on the darkest days.
My writing distracts me and helps me daydream of something other than bile duct cancer and liver transplants. It makes me grateful for the incredible life I have lead so far. It reminds me of lessons life has taught me in the past and that I need to remember now. It allows me escape in my imaginary world. It gives me a way to contribute to PSC research (10% of all of my royalties are donated to PSC Partners for this purpose). It also connects me with the world through my readers and other writers.
Most of all though, it allows me to flip the metaphorical bird at my diagnosis. There is nothing as defiant or life affirming as the act of creation. The words I have written are out there now and only world oblivion can erase them.
Yesterday I met up with a new doctor for my PSC, one who finally seems to be an expert in the subject and who was the first to offer me A Plan. As much as this was a huge relief, he was blunt about the steeplechase I will have to run in order to beat my PSC.
He confirmed that my disease has progressed to the stage where I have a cirrhotic liver (without any of the fun that heavy drinking writers like Bukowski and Hemmingway had getting there, which is a complete pisser). He hopes to maybe squeeze "one to three years" out of my current equipment, but a transplant is definitely in my future and sooner rather than later. That is, if I can pass the rigorous testing that ensures I could survive the operation in the first place. That is, if (hold on to your pants here folks, because this almost scares mine off every time, and my underwear too) I can dodge the bullet of bile duct, liver, or gallbladder cancers that PSCers are far more prone to than the general population. I have heard this same information from many other doctors in the past, but the harsh realities of my PSC shatter my soul every time. I walked out of the hepatology clinic dazed anew with terror and wondering how I was ever going to survive the next ten minutes living with this cruel disease, let alone the next ten years.
Yet what did I do first thing this morning when I woke up feeling as though I was trapped in a nightmare I couldn't escape? I started composing this post in my head and set a goal for how many words of My Grape Village I wanted to edit today. Now, I am at my computer. Writing. Creating. Defying. It's all I can do but you know what? It’s actually a lot.
The Naked Philosophy Lesson
My yearly exam was not something I looked forward to any more than any other woman. Still, having to go through all of that in French and when I was not sure of exactly how things worked with one’s gynecologist in France…this added a whole new element of the unknown. Uncertainty was not always a bad thing, but it was not something I particularly wanted to experience at a gynecological appointment.
For example, Franck’s mother had informed me the night before that gynecologists were not referred to as “docteur” in France, but as Monsieur or Madame. Voilà! There was one potential faux pas narrowly averted right there. How many more were lurking in the treacherous path between the receptionist and the stirrups?
Embarrassingly, I still hadn’t completely overcome my phobia of doctors, particularly foreign doctors. Franck’s family doctor (and now our family doctor) in Burgundy, Le Père Dupont, had gained my trust with his tatty espadrilles, prodigious smoking habit, and rotund belly. Michèle and Stéphanie warned me that their gynecologist, Monsieur Le Courbac, was a completely different genre of doctor. He was technically competent, they assured me, but possessed the approximate warmth of hoar frost.
By the time I was ensconced in Monsieur Le Courbac’s waiting room, thumbing through the vast selection of Paris Match and Madame Figaro magazines, my fight or flight response was in full bloom. Pounding heart, dizziness, burning face, nausea, a sense of impending doom –all of the usual suspects were present and accounted for.
A tall gentleman wearing an impeccable white jacket over a suit materialized in the waiting room. He announced a woman’s name. A thin and elegant sixty-ish year old woman in capri pants and Hermès scarf got up from a chair near mine and followed him.
I had almost finished a long article in Madame Figaro about Charlotte Gainsbourg and her alluring husband Yvan Attal when the doctor appeared once again and called for “Madame Germain.” My heart made a strange thump as I shot out of my chair to follow him.
He didn’t say so much as bonjour until he was seated behind his desk – a sleek structure of shining metal and glass. Even the chairs were clear plastic and très à la mode. I sat down in one. They were also uncomfortable for all but the smallest of skinny French derrières.
“What can I do for you Madame Germain?” he asked in a disinterested voice.
I noticed then that he was wearing a silk neck scarf, or foulard. There was something deeply disconcerting about finding that urbane article of male clothing on my gynecologist. Whereas Le Père Durand ‘s tatty espadrilles eliminated my fear, Monsieur Le Courbac’s foulard ramped up my heart rate. He watched me, waiting, with icy blue eyes.
“I just moved here from Canada a few months ago,” I stumbled over my French. “I didn’t have the chance to have my yearly physical before I left. My sister and mother-in-law are patients of yours, so I made an appointment.”
I realized belatedly that I had used the informal “tu” form instead of the “vous” which I imagined was de rigeur in conversations with one’s gynecologist. I always found myself slipping into “tu” without realizing it whenever I was under pressure. It was, after all, far easier to conjugate.
Monsieur Le Courbac narrowed his eyes at me for a few moments before opening what looked like an empty file on his desk with a plain piece of paper stuck inside. “Do you smoke Madame Germain?”
“No.”
“How much do you weigh?”
Definitely more than his previous patient – I was certain of that - but I actually had no idea. “I’m not sure.”
“Any major health problems?” He made no eye contact and did not so much as crack a smile. I began to shiver...the hoar frost effect.
“No.”
“Children?”
“Two daughters. Two and four years old. They were both born by C-section.”
His Mont Blanc pen stilled. “Why was that?”
“My first one was…” I struggled to come up with the French words for ‘coming out feet first’ and mangled my explanation. “The second was just…kind of….” My hands flapped in bizarre movements as I tried to convey my answer. “She was positioned in a diagonal fashion…she wasn’t coming out…she was…you know… stuck.” I realized belatedly that I had used “tu” again instead of “vous.”
He raised a brow at me, then scribbled a few more things on his piece of paper. “Please go in the next room and remove your clothes.”
My face was on fire. I knew in an abstract way that a human body was just a human body, but hadn’t I already been humiliated enough for one day? Did I really have to take off all my clothes and get into a examination gown now? Maybe the French version would be more stylish and self-explanatory than the Canadian one. At every annual physical back home I would find myself sweating bullets over whether the ties were supposed to go at the back or the front.
I somehow managed to get myself up from the chair and walk into the next room, which was large and bare except for an examination table.
“You can remove your clothes in the cabine,” the doctor said, gesturing behind his head to a little room just off the main examination room. The cabine, I noticed immediately, appeared to be lacking a door or even a curtain. Luckily Monsieur Le Courbac was still sitting at his desk with his back turned.
“Merci,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant, as though it was an everyday occurrence for me to disrobe a few feet away from a disapproving man wearing a foulard.
I put down my purse on the floor and removed my jacket. All I could see in the room was a wooden stool, a coat hook, and a digital scale. No gown. Now where would they hide the gowns in France? Was there some secret drawer or compartment that I was supposed to know about? Maybe you supposed to bring your own, like the bags at the grocery store.
“Pardon,” I called out. “I think you have forgotten to leave a gown for me.”
Monsieur de Courmac swiveled around in his chair and eyed my still-fully-clothed self. “There is no gown.” He swiveled back to his file.
No gown? How was I supposed to get from the changing cabine to the examination table? It looked like a long, lonely walk to take naked.
“Have you removed all of your clothes Madame Germain?” the doctor askeda few seconds later, impatience coloring his words.
"Non," I said.
“Please let me know when you do, and don’t go to the examination table right away. I need to weigh you first.”
I noticed a scale on the floor by my feet. So he was going to come in this tiny little room and weigh me once I was naked? “OK,"I said faintly, stripping off my clothes. A terrible thought occurred to me - what if I had understood him incorrectly and I wasn’t supposed to be completely naked at this juncture? That was the awful part about conducting your life in a second language - living in fear of misunderstanding some absolutely crucial piece of information
"I'm ready," I said, my voice barely a whisper.
When the doctor walked into the cabine, I was still debating whether to sit on the stool or remain standing. More importantly, where was I supposed to put my hands?
“Please stand on the scale Madame Germain,” the doctor said, making no eye contact, dieu merci. Part of me was very relieved at this, but the other part of me wished he would so I could get a clue of whether I was doing this right or mortifyingly wrong.
I stood up on the scale. He peered down at the number after it beeped and scribbled something on his piece of paper. He went into the exam room and sat on a little stool at the foot of the exam table.
“Please come to the exam table Madame Germain,” he said.
I took a tentative step into the exam room and then decided that I was fed up with feeling cowed and intimidated. I was naked anyway - how much more embarrasing could this get? People could only intimidate me if I let them, I reminded myself. Surely this rule applied, clothes or no clothes. I strode across the room and hopped up on the table.
“Please lie on your back,” he intoned and I lay down.
I quickly noticed that there was a cluster of comics and quotes taped on to the ceiling just above my head. It was, I thought, strangely considerate of Monsieur Le Courmac to supply strategically placed reading material for his patients.
“Everything has been figured out, except how to live,” I read, a quote by Jean Paul Sartre and compared it to,“I may be no better, but at least I am different” attributed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The quotes were certainly effective distraction. Being naked somehow made them more touching and more profound. I never expected to brush up on my French philosophy at the gynecologist’s office.
“Interesting quotes,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “I choose them myself.”
This, for him I was learning, was a remarkably expansive answer. All of the doctors in Canada were gifted at making innocuous chit chat during a pelvic exam, talking about he weather, politics…anything expect what was actually going on. Monsieur Le Courbac clearly did not feel the onus of the conversation lay on his shoulders, yet maybe I could divine something about him from his choice of quotes. I contemplated a Pierre Deproges quote, “Culture is like jam – the less we have the more we spread it around.” Was this what Monsieur de Courbac thought of New World countries such as the United States and Canada? Well, maybe we did have less history and perhaps less culture, but at least we had gowns at the gynecologist’s office.
“C’est fini Madame Germain,” the doctor pushed his stool away from the exam table. “You may go and put your clothes back on again.”
I walked tall back to the cabine but put my clothes back on with alacrity. I picked up my purse and went back to sit in one of the doctor’s uncomfortable chairs.
“Everything appears to be in order Madame Germain,” he said, neither reassuring me nor alarming me. “Come back and see me if you have any problems, or if not in one year’s time.”
“All right,” I said. “Merci.”
I watched as he wrote more things on my piece of paper, unsure of whether I had been dismissed or not.
He looked up at me after a few seconds. “You can leave now.”
I stood up. “I hope you have a good afternoon,” I said, trying to retain my dignity
It was only after I sped down the stairs and out into the crisp pre-winter air that I realized I had committed the cardinal sin of “tu-toie-ing” my gynecologist yet again.
Race Me To The Finish Contest!
Bonjour lovely people! After a brief hiatus from editing while Franck and I went all cowboy in Colorado, I'm back in the editing saddle.
Every day my email list expands as you add your names. Remember - everyone on the mailing list is eligible to win a free week at our restored winemaker's cottage - La Maison de la Vieille Vigne .
The catch? You have to get your name on my mailing list by the time I publish the sequel to My Grape Escape , entitled My Grape Village, and which is all about moving back to France with our two eldest daughters to restore La Maison de la Vieille Vigne.
Five minutes ago I hit 50,000 words edited. I have to be honest with you - it is slow going in this middle section - a part of the writing process that I have named "The Doldrums" and where I have to resist the siren call of all of my other unfinished and imagined manuscripts. All of a sudden they all sound SO much more fun than my current work in progress.
But resist I will - even if I have to be like Odysseus and plug my ears to avoid being lured away from My Grape Village. I am also planning another writing getaway at Shawnigan Lake before the end of the month. I feel it is only fair to warn you - last time I did that I got more words edited in three days than I had in the previous three months.
So get your names on my list for updates, excerpts, and no spam (promis!). Here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorLauraBradbury/app_100265896690345 .
Sparkfly Event - May 29th, 2014 at Nourish Bistro
Join us for an evening of sharing, exploration and great conversation. Prepare to find inspiration from the stories of two fabulous creative women who have made, and continue to make their mark in Victoria and beyond. We are so excited to have the following women share their stories with us and inspire us all to follow our instincts. Laura Bradbury
In November 2013 Laura Bradbury self-published My Grape Escape - the first book of The Grape Series - one book for each of the properties Laura and her husband renovated in Burgundy, France. My Grape Escape hit #1 on the Amazon.com “France” chart almost immediately, as well as placing in the top 5 of the “Travel-Europe” category and in the top 100 “Memoirs.”
Laura is currently editing My Grape Village about moving back to Burgundy with her two eldest daughters in tow to renovate a dilapidated cottage just behind Franck's childhood home in the village of Villers-la-Faye.
At the moment Laura, her french husband Franck, and their three franco-Canadian daughters share their time between Victoria, Canada and Burgundy, France where they own and manage four vacation rentals in the vineyards, including a 16th century restored winemaker's cottage and a 13th century wine cellar under the streets of Beaune (www.graperentals.com).
Laura is a holder of a BA from McGill University, a "License" from the Sorbonne in medieval French literature, and a law degree from Oxford (which she never used, much to the horror of her parents). She published several articles about French wine and culture in glossy magazines before being distracted for a good decade by motherhood. Laura has no spare time, but she does neglect her children and husband on a regular basis in order to write, paint, read, and enjoy a strong espresso with a square of dark chocolate.
Laura will delight us with her humour on this Sparkfly evening, while recounting some of her journey from the law offices of London to leaving it all to follow her heart.
Author website: www.laurabradbury.com
Nicole Smith
One year ago Nicole took the leap from her 13 years working at, and consulting for Microsoft to launching her start up www.flytographer.com in a brand new, unexplored arena of the travel sector - connecting travelers with local professional photographers for short, fun candid photo shoots.
For her first 100 clients, Nicole handled each and every aspect of their experience directly, ensuring she accurately understood their requirements, needs and wants; all of which enabled her shape the company and its values into what it is today. She has since been featured in Conde Nast Traveller, Huffington Post, NBC, Today.com, The Daily Mail and The Sunday Times. Flytographer is currently operating in 85 cities worldwide across Europe, Asia, Australia, North America, Central/South America and Africa and has over 135 talented professional photographers on their roster.
On this special Sparkfly evening, Nicole will share a little about her process of starting a new company and how she has integrated her young sons into the process (hint -they do family high-fives every time a new client comes in). She will also talk about the triumphs and challenges that have come with trusting her instincts and following her dream.
Our goal at Sparkfly is to encourage community, collective creativity and stimulate collaboration. Let’s get together and have some fun, dream, share and give ourselves the space and permission to explore. The last event was sold out and tickets are limited, so secure yours now.
Race for the Finish and a Free Week at La Maison de la Vieille Vigne
In honour of my editing marathon I'm putting on a contest (if you have not already cottoned on, I love contests). So far I've edited 40,000 words of My Grape Village, the sequel to My Grape Escape. My total word count is 80,000 words.
The prize will be one week's stay at La Maison de la Vieille Vigne - the restored winemaker's cottage dating back to the mid 1600's that is at the heart of My Grape Village. All you have to do to enter is sign up for my email list* either by the clicking on the "email signup" button just under the header on my Facebook page, or by entering your email on the "subscribe" box on the footer on every page of my website www.laurabradbury.com .
The catch? This contest will end when I have finished editing the manuscript...could be three weeks if I work really fast, or...?
* I hate spam as much as you do. I'll never share your email address with anyone and will only be sending you the occasional blog post, news about my books and appearances, and contest information like the above. You are always free to unsubscribe at any time.
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.”
Five Reasons Why Self-Publishing was the Right Choice for Me
The debate between self-publishing and traditional publishing rages on. I am the first one to pounce on any essay or blog post by self-publishing trailblazers such as Hugh Howey, Martin Crosbie, or Jasinda Wilder to name only a few. They are invariably a damn good read. Rather than pit black against white, however, my choice to self-publish boiled down to five highly personal and idiosyncratic reasons.
1. I wanted to teach myself how to self-publish a book
I am not the sort of person who learns well when someone is trying to teach me things. Within five minutes I zone out and ants start to hatch in my brain. I can only learn things by hurling myself in the deep end and doing them. This accounted for my appalling French mark all through high school (to the desperation of my parents, my french teachers, and my french tutors). When I went on my Rotary exchange to Burgundy in high school and lived with four non-English speaking French families, I was fluent in four months.
I wanted to learn how to build a house from the ground up, so we built a house in Victoria in 2010. I now know how houses are built.
When I decided I wanted to know how to self-publish a book, I knew the only way I could learn was by doing it myself. This doesn't mean I did everything myself - far from it. Just like we had a general contractor and plumbers and electricians build our house, I recruited great people to help me with the parts I knew I couldn't do well - the conversion of Word documents to Createspace and Kindle files, cover design and format by a graphic artist, etc. However, I did figure out how the process worked from beginning to end and learned a ton that I will apply to publishing my next book.
2. I am impatient
You can just ask my husband, impatience is one of my dominant qualities. Being diagnosed in 2012 with a rare and serious auto-immune liver / bile duct disease (PSC) exacerbated it by about...oh...around one hundred per cent. One of the most difficult things us PSCers have to live with is crushing uncertainty. There is currently no effective treatment for our disease except eventual liver transplant, which of course brings its own set of risks. We are at a far higher risk for liver and bile duct cancer than the general population, and because the disease varies so much from person to person we could be asymptomatic for 20-30 years or need a transplant next month.
All this uncertainty compounded my impatience. I decided that I was unwilling to surrender the timing of My Grape Escape's release to anyone.
3. I knew I had a ready-built market for the book
We started renting La Maison des Deux Clochers fifteen years ago. I learned quickly that we did not have to work very hard (or at all, actually) to sell the idea of France or Burgundy. It has already been accomplished in the collective consciousness, and rightly so.
When we lived in Burgundy for five years between 2004-2009 I wrote a popular blog called "The Grape Journal." Over the years countless guests, many of who we have stayed in contact with, asked me to write a book. So before I even started the self-publishing process of My Grape Escape I knew that I had 15 years of past vacation rentals guests who would have a personal interest in my memoir about our Burgundian renovation. I was able to market it on our Grape Rentals Facebook page and we will soon be redoing our Grape Rentals website and linking it more effectively to my book(s).
4. I wanted to donate a portion of my royalties
Because PSC is so rare (only around 100,000 people in the world have it so it is officially an "orphan" disease), most pharmaceutical companies have no interest in researching treatments - there is just not the return of a new treatment for something far more common, unlike a disease such as Hepatitis C. One doctor actually laughed in my face when I asked about new treatments coming down the pipeline.
I do indeed donate 10% of all my royalties to PSC Partners Seeking A Cure (and will continue to do so with everything I publish and sell). This motivates me to write more books and sell more books. It is a win-win for me. I could be mistaken, but I suspected most traditional agents or publishers wouldn't have agreed to this and it was of primary importance to me.
5. Most agents wanted me to remove every mention of my struggles with anxiety from the manuscript.
I went into this in more detail in an earlier blog post "Panic Attacks and Pain au Chocolat" . Basically, almost all the agents who read the full manuscript of My Grape Escape said they were uncomfortable with the fact that I wrote about my struggles with anxiety during and after my Oxford law degree and while we renovated La Maison des Deux Clochers. They felt it just didn't "fit" with an often humorous memoir about the renovation of a revolutionary era house in Burgundy.
I thought long and hard about their comments, but concluded that for me the anxiety was a crucial part of the story I wanted to tell. Self-publishing gave me the freedom to publish the book as I wished. So far the overwhelming majority of readers do not seem to feel it is out of place. On the contrary, they tell me that exposing my own vulnerabilities allowed them to connect with my story.
So there you have it - the highly personal reasons why self-publishing was the right choice for me. I'm grateful that writers have options these days. It wasn't like that in the bad 'ole days ten or even five years ago.
How about you - what made you choose either self-publishing or traditional publishing (or that new beast - the hybrid)?
"Never confuse what is urgent with what is truly important." - My Grape Escape
Fiction Snippet - "Agnes"
I had five minutes today between making pancakes for a Charlotte and a gaggle of her friends and taking Camille to find a posterboard for her upcoming school project on Tanzania. I snuck my computer open (I have to do this veeeeeeerrrrryyyyy quietly at my house as Clem has superpower hearing and feels the overpowering urge to sit on my lap whenever she hears me open my laptop) and surfed around in my old writing files, looking for something to do writing-rise while I wait for my rough draft of My Grape Village to "rise" for a week or two before plunging into editing.
I found this old fiction manuscript - working title simply "Agnes" (the title of the main character) - that was originally inspired by a woman I had met flying back to Canada from Oxford during law school. Agnes' story is about the collision of the "dream" life she has built for herself in Tuscany and a different, less glamourous path that may include her soulmate.
Here is a bit from the first chapter (keep in mind this is pretty rough):
"It was amazing how awful a dream life could feel sometimes.
I stared at the frozen luggage shoot, trying to will its metal teeth into action. The grime from twenty four hours of traveling, three airports, and two airplanes encased my body like congealed wax. I’d brushed my teeth quickly in the first bathroom I could find after the flight from London had disgorged us in the pristine halls of the Vancouver airport, but my mouth still tasted like the bottom of a bird cage, albeit with a minty finish.
An owlish woman standing beside me let out a beleaguered sigh. “Do you think it’s broken?”
I searched the gaggle of passengers around us, wondering who she was talking to, until she turned and fixed me through her thick lenses.
“It wouldn’t be the first time,’ she prompted, just as I remembered how, unlike Italians, Canadians felt utterly comfortable striking up conversations with complete strangers.
“Maybe.” I shrugged, but she kept staring at me, expecting more than that. “Back in Italy this would be completely normal,” I added. “You can pretty much be guaranteed that whenever a plane arrives all the baggage handlers decide it’s the perfect time for an espresso.”
“Italy?’" she breathed. “I knew you weren’t from here! I can always tell that sort of thing.”
A flash of satisfaction made me feel friendlier. Despite my disheveled appearance there must have been something, maybe my Armani sunglasses or the Prada scarf thrown over my shoulders, that proved I was no longer a bumpkin.
“I grew up in Victoria, but I live in Tuscany now, in a little village near the Umbrian border called Monterchi.” I peeked at my watch. It was midnight in Monterchi right now. Dante was undoubtedly sound asleep in our whitewashed bedroom in our big wrought iron bed, with his favorite painted icon of the Virgin Mary smiling benevolently over him.
The luggage belt groaned to life and the chute began to spit out suitcases. If one of mine came in the first ten, they’d all arrive, I promised myself. Italy had done nothing to cure my superstitious nature. If anything it had made it worse.
“What do you do there?” Her venerating gaze made me feel like the Virgin Mary. Except for the Virgin part, naturalmente.
“I run a country inn with my husband Dante. He’s Italian.”
Suddenly my legs began to shake, and I looked longingly at my luggage cart. More than anything, I just wanted to collapse on top of it and ask my nosy neighbor to push me clear through customs. Adrenaline had coursed through my thighs almost non-stop during the past twenty-four hours. I might be a glamorous globe trotter, but the embarrassing truth was that I was still terrified of flying.
She grabbed on to my arm and squeezed hard. “Oh you lucky, lucky thing. An Italian husband! Is he gorgeous?”
“He’s very handsome. He’s well on his way to becoming a renowned chef.” In a few hours Dante would wake up just as the ochre rays of sun caressed the Tuscan hills undulating around our property, as though our Inn was a pebble thrown in a still pond. He would speed off to the market on his Vespa and harangue all his favorite vendors to find the best food for our guests.
Our guests. Guilt twinged the nape of my neck. By coming here, I was abandoning him at one of our busiest times of the year. Part of me was exhilarated beyond belief to sneak away at this exact moment; guests needed constant pleasing and lots of guests meant lots of constant pleasing. Whereas this used to be one of the favorite parts of my life, somewhere along the line I had begun to resent it. But I loved Dante, and he loved our guests, so…
“It’s just so romantic.” The owl lady’s eyes glowed.
“I know.” I had every reason to be proud. Dante was wonderful and Tuscany was as beautiful and seductive as he was.
I had left Canada ten years before with my heart cleaved in two, but just look at what I had carved out for myself; the kind of life most people can only dream of. If certain people, especially a certain person didn’t realize I had moved on, they certainly would now. But that didn’t matter, I chided myself, because he didn’t matter anymore.
I rubbed my forehead. A migraine was taking root at the back of my left eye socket.
“You must be so deliriously happy,” the woman sighed.
“I think I see my suitcase,” I lied. “You’ll have to excuse me.” She opened her mouth to say something else but I deftly disentangled myself from her iron grip. “I hope you get yours,” I said, and slipped through the crowd to the opposite side of the conveyer belt.
Happy. My head throbbed as I tried yet again to make sense of the word.
No point in mulling over that now, anyway. That was the whole reason I was here - to close the chapter on him for good - to prove to him that I had forgiven him and, more importantly, forgotten him. Then I would be free to be completely, totally, 100% happy."
On Panic Attacks and Pain au Chocolat
"I can't believe you wrote about your anxiety and panic attacks. That was so brave."
Since publishing My Grape Escape in November I have heard this from many readers. I always find it surprising.
For me, writing about the anxiety and panic attacks I struggled with during and after my law degree at Oxford wasn't a conscious decision. They were so intergral to that juncture in my life that to leave them out would have felt (to me) like I was telling a story that made no sense.
The agents who read my full manuscript weren't big fans of the anxiety aspect of my story. They said it would be a hard sell to publishers. I believed them. I am not sure where it is written (I personally blame Peter Mayle) but there appears to have developed a rule whereby memoirs set in France should stick to descriptions of fresh baguettes, humourous linguistic misunderstandings, and eccentric french people wearing berets. The only acceptable emotions are exasperation and wonder (and just for the record, Peter Mayle is a master at these two).
Of course, My Grape Escape includes a lot of the above - because during the months we renovated La Maison des Deux Clochers we did enjoy lots of delicious french food and wine and were surrounded by a crew of fascinating, eccentric french people (we were in Burgundy, after all).
My story, however, also included the emotional messiness underneath the surface. This made a lot of people very uncomfortable. I heard from another agent who said he would be interested in taking on the book if I eliminated the anxiety angle altogether. I thought about this long and hard but decided that I just couldn't do it. The story of My Grape Escape without talking about anxiety felt inauthentic at best, dishonest at worst.
Don't get me wrong, I am as much a sucker for glossy surfaces as the next person. I find it bizarrely soothing to flip through a copy of Real Simple magazine and delude myself for about fifteen minutes that life can really be that tidy.
Still, glossy images capture my attention for a while, but never for very long. Honesty is ulitmately what holds my interest - in people, in writing, in life.
Honesty always leads me to the same conclusion. This human journey we are all on is a wild, complex thing. It is joyous, it is tortuous, and it is anything but tidy. More importantly, we are all on this journey together. The more honest we are, the more we can support each other.
I am most touched by the readers who thank me, most often in urgent whispers, for writing openly about my struggles with anxiety. Somewhere along the line these people have been made to feel that they are defective because they are a mix of many complex, seemingly incoherent parts. "No," I tell them. "You are not defective. You are just beautifully human."
A glorious life is still possible with depression, or an anxiety disorder, or health issues, or family trauma. You can have your panic attack and enjoy your pain au chocolat too.
In Praise of Merdiques First Drafts
Merdiques, or in English, "sh!tty" first drafts are the only way I get anything written at all.
My fellow writers who by some manner of sorcery are able to produce polished or, even more incredible, publishable first drafts make me green with envy. Alas, I am not that kind of writer.
I am messy in writing just as I am in life - I paint messy, I parent messy, I pin up my hair messy...
I am one of those writers who, like Anne Lamott, author of the genius book "Bird by Bird" (which if you haven't read you should run out and buy right away) lives in fear of dying in a freak accident and having people discover my sh!tty first drafts. They would marvel over my vague words, pointless scenes, stilted dialogue, and blatant overwriting (see all those adjectives I just used?) and shrug their shoulders. "Wow. I guess she couldn't write after all."
I have tried to be a neater, more organized writer. The problem is that every time I attempt to be even margially coherent in my rough draft I end up swimming around in circles like a one-finned dolphin. I change and edit, then eliminate, then add again. I could never finish a rough draft that way, let alone a publishable draft.
Right now I am finishing up the rough draft to the sequel of My Grape Escape, called My Grape Village. I have produced almost 80,000 words of...well...frankly speaking, mostly crap.
Still, without that crap I would have nothing to mold. My rough drafts are the equivalent of throwing my clay on the potter's wheel.
There is a strange and perverse pleasure to be found in how epically bad my writing is in the first go-round. The sheer mess shines with a sort of transcendent beauty. To me, anyway.
Not so much when I sit down for the first re-write - at those times I feel like I am at the foot of Everest and The End of my book is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay up there at the top. So far up there in the clouds that I can't even see The End. I want to be at the top already. It would be so nice to have my mansucript almost completed instead of requiring life-saving surgery. I do give it major surgery though because, for better of for worse, that is the only way I know how to write. The silver lining is that wading through the blood and guts I invariably make magical connections and dicoveries.
Merdiques first drafts are how I have produced every essay through high school and University, every blog post during the years we lived in France, and every single one of my manuscripts.
I decided around two years ago to stop trying to tidy up my innate messiness and to work with it instead. I gave myself permission to paint messy, coiff my hair messy, and especially write messy.
It is no coincidence that these past two years have been the most creatively prolific years of my life. For me, messiness = creativity.
Bonjour!
Bonjour tout le monde!
Me voici, back to the blogosphere five years after moving back to Canada from Burgundy, France and taking what turned out to be a permanent break from my old blog The Grape Journal.
Since then Franck and I have:
- Built a house in Victoria
- Returned to Burgundy every summer
- Continued to manage our four vacation rentals (four and half if you count the 13th century wine cellar under our Beaune apartment that we rent out)
- Watched “The Bevy” (our three daughters, Charlotte -14, Camille –12, and Clémentine –6) grow older and more lovely (not to mention more complex…)
- Become a super fast runner (10 km in under 40 minutes) and exercise nut (*ahem* don’t go into shock - I’m talking about Franck here)
- Coped (ongoing) with a cr@ppy health diagnosis (me – a rare auto-immune disease known as PSC)
- Been told by my doctors I will probably need a liver transplant in the next 1-5 years (me again).
- Wrote a memoir “My Grape Escape” about La Maison des Deux Clochers, the first property we bought and renovated in France (me)
- Self-published said memoir on Amazon.com to great success and began writing the sequel
- Found had much to say about above events (me...encore) so returned to blogging on my new author website www.laurabradbury.com
Merci for being here! I can’t wait to hang out with you.
Bises,
Laura
