Today it's my pleasure to welcome Colette Kebell, author of The Retail Therapist and Blue and Green should Never be Seen! (Or so Mother Says) with a guest post about her life in France.
Hello Sharon, firstly I would like to thank you for allowing me to guest on your blog today, it is greatly appreciated.
Secondly, although I am currently in France and have been for the past five months, I do not currently live here. I was “exiled” if you will, when we sold our home in the UK and so I have spent this time separated from my husband, whom I have only seen for a couple of weeks or so, in the past five months. I won’t go into all the ins and outs but we hadn’t found a property to buy at the time of our sale, nor had we found somewhere we could rent, which allowed us to keep our two little doggies with us, so I left the UK to spend some time in our property in Lower Normandy, France.
I have and do love being in France, as unlike the UK it is peaceful (plenty of time to write) and without the hustle and bustle of the UK, particularly in the village where our property is. We were lucky on that front as we bought it some 11 or 12 years ago and despite still renovating it, we have some wonderful neighbours and have made plenty of friends both French and English. We are also lucky that the village has a cinema and once a month they put a film on in English. I was fortunate enough, having missed it doing the rounds in the UK, to have been able to see “Me Before You” last month and coupled that with a book signing. I also, by way of introducing myself to the English cinema goers, handed out personalised packets of pocket tissues, as having read the book last year, I knew they’d be needed by all the but heartless.
I’ve also had visitors whilst I’ve been here, firstly my parents who just wanted a long weekend away and secondly, almost at the drop of a hat, a long-time friend of mine decided it was about time we spent some time together and so she booked her flight from Reno (USA) to Paris and then took the train down. That was a whirlwind week as we visited quite a few places at a time when there were both train strikes and petrol shortages here in France and so it made each day quite the challenge. We visited Mont St Michel, Granville, Bayeux (together with one of the Normandy landing beaches), Bagnoles de L’Orne (Spa Day) and Caen, as well as my having taken her out on the Friday evening to enjoy some music and a meal.
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Mont St Michel
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Sadly I haven't been away on holiday anywhere this year and don't currently have any plans (or finances!) to so the only way I'm going to visit places is through books. So I decided to do a shout out to authors on a author/blogger FB page that I'm onto see if any of them fancied doing a post about places they love or places they have featured in their stories. Today it's my pleasure to welcome Zara Stoneley to the blog with a post about Barcelona which features in her new book The Holiday Swap.
One of the brilliant things about books is that they can transport you anywhere. I’ve always loved being able to curl up on the sofa on a miserable day in the UK and find myself immersed in a story set on a sunny beach, or being able to experience a magical snowy Christmas as the rain pelts against the windows in December!
I think the setting of a book plays such a big part in any story. I read for escapism, and as well as loving to immerse myself in the lives of the characters, I enjoy the feeling that I’m there with them in the dreamy locations.
It’s great to be able to write about the places that mean something to me. My Tippermere books were all set in Cheshire (which I love), but being able to travel to Barcelona to create The Holiday Swap was brilliant!
In the story, I’ve let Daisy take you to some of my favourite, and sometimes off-the-beaten-track, places. But here are a few more things I love about the city …
Window shopping – Barcelona is full of contrasts. I love to wander up the two main shopping streets Passeig de Gracia and Rambla de Catalunya. These are really easy to find, they’re just off the main square Placa de Catalunya. The streets themselves are amazing – wide avenues with gorgeous old buildings (like Gaudi’s Casa Batlló) mixed with modern architecture – and there are lots of designer shops. There are also lots of great tapas bars along the way so you can give your feet a break!
Head in the other direction from Placa de Catalunya and you can explore all the small boutiques in the narrow streets of the Barri Gotic, or (and I love it here more) El Born. The building are old, so most of the shops are small and unique, with lots of craftsmen. If you want leather shoes or handbags, clothes you won’t see anybody else wearing, or silver and gold jewellery (often made on the premises and sometimes very reasonably priced) then this is where you should go! One day, we even discovered a workshop where they were making guitars.
Today it's my pleasure to welcome Tracey Sinclair back to the blog with a guest post about how different locations can change your story.
My writing has always been heavily influenced by where I live. My first novel, Doll, was set in Sheffield, a city I lived in briefly (and, it has to be said, mostly unhappily) for six months – so the book was informed by the sense of a place I didn’t feel I belonged. Years living in Glasgow are evident in my short stories, and the fact that many of my characters share a Scottish connection – in the Dark Dates series, both Medea and her fiancée Katie are Scottish, and it has a big influence on their characters.
Sometimes, I’ll choose a location specifically because it changes the nature of the story itself. So many chick-lit novels take place in glossy locations like London, New York and Paris that when I came to write Bridesmaid Blues, I deliberately set it in Newcastle – making my heroine a down to earth Geordie who (spoiler alert) doesn’t end up doing some insanely glamorous job meant I could play with the tropes of the genre a little, as well as making the protagonist more – I hope – relatable.
The Dark Dates series, in contrast, was completely inspired by my locale. When I started writing the first book, I was working around Smithfield in London, an area soaked in history and blood – they used to burn martyrs near the market, and not long after I left, the Crossrail renovations unearthed the remains of a massive plague pit. Perfect inspiration for a supernatural series!
