Looks like sunny spring Sundays are not for writing. This morning, on the middle of a sentence, I had a sudden irresistible urge to research New York in the 1930s, which is where my novel begins. And what better to immerse myself in than my latest find, the New York Public Library’s dog-earred copy of […]
By mid-afternoon, after hours of crafting and deleting sentences at the computer, my brain is stale and flat as yesterday’s club soda. Even my characters, struggling through the dramas of 1936 in Paris, are begging for a break. Time for a walk in nature. My Yosemite, my Niagra Falls, my Amazon River, is Central Park. […]
In 1989, I moved to Paris. I didn’t yet know the city, and in my imagination, it was the magical, mysterious black-and-white place portrayed by such great masters of photography as Brassai, Kertesz, and Cartier-Bresson. I quickly needed a furnished apartment to rent for 6 months, but was discouraged to find only dreary flats crammed […]
Just saw Hitchcock’s delicious 1938 mystery, “The Lady Vanishes.” The genre is that seemingly impossible contradiction in terms, a comic thriller. It’s all about spying, of course, which was the great theme of the pre-war years. Spoiler alert! Miss Froy, the kindly old English governess turns out to be a British spy, trying to get a […]
Suspense, espionage, betrayal, and love, as darkness falls over the City of Light… Read here to see why this book had to be written. Enjoy a taste of the start of a dangerous adventure into the labyrinth…
I once visited the Priory of Notre-Dame d’Orsan in the Loire Valley. Some years earlier, two young architects had left Paris and bought the medieval ruins set in a fertile farming landscape. Laboriously they renovated old stone buildings and created an extraordinary series of gardens inspired by the MIddle Ages. From the utiliarian kitchen garden, […]
On May 20, 1936, a young college girl boarded the SS Manhattan and, waving excitedly to her family on the pier, sailed out of New York harbor, bound for Paris. She was to spend eight months studying art and design at the Ecole des Arts Appliqués. The charming, lively Gladys Goodman was 21 years old, […]