Bonjour from France!

I realize I have not posted in 9 months, but there wasn't much to post about.  I've been working on "The Fairy Hollow" for a year and a half, but I've only really made progress on it in the past week.  I am currently in the Languedoc region of France doing a writing fellowship.  I am staying in an 11th century manor where I spend my days writing, reading, hiking, and eating.  I am half way up a mountain and to walk anywhere you either go up hill or downhill.  Needless to say my legs have been sore this entire time.

The original plan of this trip was to go to Paris first and "take notes" for the follow up to Turtle Soup and Tiramisu.  I put that in quotation marks because I knew a lot of my research was going to involve eating croissants.  But for a number of reasons my trip got all rearranged and I am now going to Paris tomorrow and then home to Boston.  I was going to have the follow-up (which will be named something like "Croissants and Crepes") start in Paris, but now that I am in the South of France, I think it may start with Emily exploring an old church in the country or something.

I am really excited about "The Fairy Hollow," however.  It is very different from "Turtle Soup and Tiramisu."  One interesting fact about it is that whereas T and T had characters and places named after the town of Wellesley where I was a teacher, this book has places and people names after things around the Tewksbury, MA area where I grew up.  I even have a character named after a student I had in a writing workshop in Tewksbury, per his request!