10 Reasons to Visit Southwest France

I have to admit I haven't seen all of France, but I have travelled through many parts of this beautiful country, both alone and with another person (and in a group). The north has charms quite distinct from the south, of course. The Loire Valley with its magnificent chateaux are a must-see. The French Riviera ditto. But today I'm going to promote a lesser-known region in the southwest: the Dordogne.

I spent two weeks there just a few years ago, and not only do I gush about its charms every chance I get, when I got home I was inspired to write a trilogy of erotic romance novels set in the region.

The Black Virgin Trilogy is titled after one of the most famous religious sites in France--Rocamadour. For centuries, the walnut figure of the Black Virgin of Rocamadour has drawn Pilgrims and the merely curious alike. When I learned of her story, a lightbulb flashed over my head, and I began to draft my first novel.

I love to travel, and if I wasn't so busy discovering new places I'd be back to the Dordogne in a blink. In the meantime, I'd like to share what I think are the best reasons to put the Dordogne region of France onto your next European itinerary.

1. If you go, you may be the first person on your block to have visited the region. That should give you lots to talk about.

2.  It's cheap. Or, at least, it can be. And its prices are certainly a relief after Paris.

3. The food.  Fois gras, truffles, pastries. Exquisite preparation. The best food I have ever eaten. Anywhere. What more can I say?

4. The wine. 'Nuff said about that, too.

5. Spectacular scenery. Forests, fields, vineyards, rivers, rolling hills. Quaint, often original, houses, streets and villages make you feel you've stepped back in time.

6.  The architecture. Whether you're an enthusiast or not, you can't fail to be blown away by the beauty of the churches, cathedrals, chateaux, and even the lowliest of stone cottages.

7.  The peace and quiet. You're off the beaten path, not jostled by mobs of tourists--even in the summer. Rent a car, toodle around, and relax.

8. The caves. This region is home to the famous Lascaux group of prehistoric cave dwellings. The public isn't permitted inside Lascaux anymore, but a reproduction is available for tours. Many other cave systems are just waiting to be explored.

9. Outdoor activities. Whether you're a hiker, spelunker, mountain biker, canoeist--you'll find a spectacular backdrop for your sports.

10.  Easy to get to from Paris. Of course you could fly into Toulouse but the fast train from Paris will get you into Souillac in comfort. Then Cahors, Rocamadour, St. Sozy, Martel  (among many other charming towns) await.

I hope my argument will sway at least one person enough to visit this perfect little gem of a region.
If you can't make it, you could live vicariously thought the protagonist in my Black Virgin Books.

Much cheaper, and almost as much fun.

Book one: Cult of the Black Virgin

Book One: Cult of the Black Virgin

http://www.amazon.com/Cult-Black-Virgin-ebook/dp/B00C9KWV3S/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1377630823&sr=1-1&keywords=Cult+of+the+black+virgin

Inspiration through travel

I like to walk, and I like to travel. I especially like walking in Europe, so a few years ago I started going on walking tours on my summer vacations.

For my first walk I chose to explore a part of France I'd never heard of--the Dordogne. Situated in the south-west part of the country, it's a little off the beaten track, and relatively free of tourists. To get there I took a train from Paris to Soulliac. Coincidentally, I had friends who ran a market garden in nearby Cahors, so I could visit with them after the walk.

I was stunned by the beauty of the Dordogne region. Each day of the tour brought more astonishing sights and experiences. The architecture was exquisitly beautiful, I thought. Magnificent chateaux, little stone houses topped with conical roofs as steep as magicians' hats, spectacular old churches. The scenery was equally lovely, mostly undeveloped rural landscapes dotted with orchards, vineyards and forests.

The food was perhaps the biggest surprise. I'd eaten in France before, but this time I was offered what turned out to be some of the best meals of my life. Natural, local produce, duck and goose specialties, to-die-for desserts, and the wine! It was all cheap, cheap, cheap, too, by my standards.

When we weren't eating, drinking  and walking we visited some pretty impressive local sites. The cave system in LaCave was the largest and most interesting I'd ever seen. And the ancient pilgrimage town of Rocamadour was so beautiful that I started to think romance.
  
And so it was here that I began to think of writing a romance novel. What could be a better place than the Dordogne River Valley to set a sexy, romantic story about a woman who is seduced by her French lover just as much as she is by the food, wine, history, architecture and landscape of his homeland?

I got busy, and after a few years I'd produced a passable first draft of The Cult of the Black Virgin. Much later, it was published an an e-book. Now anyone can read about the beauties of the Dordogne region of France, which will always live in my heart as one of the world's special places.


Visit Amazon for a closer look.

The first million words are the hardest

In my transition from academic writer to romance writer, I read several times that I needed to write at least one million words in the romance genre before my writing would ring true. That's on top of reading one hundred romance novels to get a feel for the genre.

Considering I hadn't read many capital "R" romances, and written none at all, I had a lot of work ahead of me. However, I realized I'd read an awful lot of literary novels that were, in essence, romances. Isn't Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera one of the most romantic stories ever written?

What about Far From the Madding Crowd, by Thomas Hardy? And most of Jane Austen?

Now the trick was to find my own voice as I spun my stories. And that, apparently, is where the "writing one million words" comes in. I redrafted my first two novels--Cult of the Black Virgin and Just Desserts--many dozens of times. And considering each book was over 80,000 words, that added up to over one million words pretty quickly.

And you know what? By the time these two books were released last spring, I felt my writing had changed, somehow.

I was working on the first draft of a sequel to Cult, when I noticed that I didn't have to rewrite every scene a dozen times. I didn't  have to redraft every single sentence to make it fit with the sentences that came before and after. Now my sentences seemed to take an organic flow, each one born out of the one preceding, and leading effortlessly to the next,

 Hey! I was becoming a writer!

Now I'm not saying that my latest book, Revenge of the Black Virgin is any sort of magnificent piece of literature. But it was easier to write, and it is better written, than my previous books.

And it hasn't stopped there. The third instalment of the Black Virgin Trilogy--Gift of the Black Virgin--was even easier to write. I'd found my voice, I knew my characters, and I just let them tell their stories. This book is being edited right now, and should be released in the fall.

Meanwhile, I'm half-way through another novel--the first book in a trilogy set in the Middle East. In Tracking Tor: Mirage,  I have to start all over with my characters and setting, of course. But I'm enjoying that. This time my alpha hero, Torval, is Danish--and although I've just met him, I think I'm in love already.

The rest should just come naturally....

Getting my manuscript (almost) fit to e-print

  Okay, after six years of drafting, editing, re-drafting and re-editing, Cult of the Black Virgin was finally ready for readers. Or so I thought. It ended up requiring another two rounds of oh-I-didn't-know-that-let-me-fix-it-right-now before it was fit to be released into cyberspace.

For my first attempt, I targeted eXtasy Books, an e-publisher of similar stories. I laboriously conformed to their submission requirements, and fired off my manuscript. In less than 24 hours I received a response telling me that I would be offered a contract if I made a few changes. In retrospect, they were pretty major changes, but, hey, I'm all about learning how to do this. So I got down to work.

Apparently, romance readers like to read what's going on inside the head of the big, hunky hero as he chases after the heroine. My novel was mostly told from one point of view--that of the main character, Joanna. It never occurred to me to tell part of the story from her lover's p-of-v. It was her story, after all.

So I got to work and wrote half a dozen scenes from Lucien's perspective. And you know what? Not only was it fun to write, the results made for a much better story.

I was also guilty of doing a little head-hopping. I cleaned up those grave sins and fired the manuscript back to the publisher.

Okay. Done! I was issued my first contract, and told that my manuscript would now go into the editing queue.

I was pretty excited. And as I waited for my first experience of working with an editor, I reflected on the long, difficult road I'd traveled from the inception of that first sex scene to the signing of the contract. Many times, I almost gave up trying to get my work out there. Many times I'd stammer some excuse when a friend asked how the writing was going. But then I would remember the kind words of a woman named Lisa, back in the early days, when I was trying to get an agent.

"Remember one thing," she said. "Never, ever, ever give up."

Thank you , Lisa. Wherever you are. You helped me believe in myself.

My "Getting Published" Story

Throughout my first fiction-writing and editing experience, I relied mainly on the Internet and RWA for information about markets, genres and other important considerations. And once I'd completed my first novel, Cult of the Black Virgin, it was time to try and get it published. Now keep in mind that I had no experience in any of this. I knew absolutely no one in the publishing business, and the only published author I knew wrote sci-fi and crime fiction.

So it was off to an international writers' conference, where I learned how to pitch my story to agents and editors.

Boy, was that ever a humbling experience. But it was absolutely necessary, I know now. I sure learned a lot.

First of all, meeting the pros, a rather jaded lot, I must say, reduced me to the status of an knee-knocking undergraduate turning in her first paper to a tenured professor. And for the first time in my life, I knew what it felt like to fail.

It was terrible. Throughout my academic career I'd shone. And throughout my teaching career I'd been the one to dole out the passes and fails. Now I was on the receiving end of a failing grade--and it hurt. Really, really hurt.

I had just paid hundreds of dollars to learn that my baby wasn't ready for publication. Nowhere near ready.

With my tail between my legs, I slunk home to learn how to write a synopsis, a query letter, and a log-line. Then I had to seriously re-think my first page. And I had to edit the whole damned manuscript about fifty more times. Given that it was over eighty thousand words, that was enormous.

In retrospect, the conference fee was money well spent. Of course it was. After another year reading more romances and books about writing, researching the publishing business, taking an on-line course, and attending a few workshops, I felt confident enough to begin the search for an agent.

And that, is a story unto itself.

Through the virtual grapevine I learned about a website called Predators and Editors. I found it invaluable for one important lesson alone. Not all editors and/or publishers are what they seem. In my quest for an agent and/or publisher, I became acquainted with something known as a Vanity Press. And editors who make their living in a similar manner.

I understand that it must be pretty easy to find desperate clients who readily agree to pay to have their book read, edited, formatted and/or published. Especially clients who'd suffered many, many rejection letters from traditional publishers and legitimate agents.

When I was offered my first contract from a publisher, I was over the moon. But a quick search on Predators  and Editors gave me the bad news: this was a vanity publisher. And sure enough, they asked me for money up front to "help defray expenses."

Ditto for the first agent who seemed delighted to accept my novel. But I didn't need anyone to tell me she wasn't what I wanted. She asked for $200 up front for photocopy paper and envelopes.

Every time I received the standard "congratulations! We are delighted to offer you a contract" letter, I was wary. And sure enough, my research showed me that every single offer was bogus.

Sad. I had no idea this sort of practice was so common.

But the good news was, I came out of the experience with more smarts.

At the same time I was searching for the elusive agent who would love my story and swear to bust her butt to sell it to a top publishing house for an enormous advance, I was learning that the publishing industry was changing at breakneck speed. More and more books were being published in electronic formats. And it was becoming more and more difficult for a writer, especially a new one, to secure any kind of contract at all with a traditional publishing house.

So I began researching e-publishers. Most of them accepted non-agented submissions. And many of them published the kind of erotic romance I'd written.

In my next post I'll share what I've learned from this next phase in my trying-to-get-published journey.

Practice, practice, practice

I won't apologize for my literary background. It's a large part of who I am. But when I decided I wanted to turn my hand to writing romance, I had to put a lot of prejudices aside. And I had to forget an awful lot about what I'd learned about literary writing. But I'll talk about that another time. Right now I want to explain how I fell into romance.

Frankly, I'd never read much romance, even as a girl. And I'd never read any category romance at all. A few years ago I enjoyed a fabulous trip to Scotland. I loved every bit of it. When I got home in August I was in a shop looking for a light summer read, and a tartan book spine caught my eye. It was Diana Gabaldon's first Jamie and Clair story. Titled Outlander in America, I think it's called Crossstitch in Britain.

I took it home, cracked it open, and began. I was totally bored. In fact I almost gave it up but I didn't have anything else handy so I kept going. Then I met Jamie.

What can I say? Like millions of other women, I fell in love with an imaginary Scot from the 18th century. I voraciously read the other 3 books in the series. Then I though about what I liked in these books. And I thought about the other great love stories I've enjoyed over the years. They may not have had happy endings, but they were love stories nonetheless. Anna Karenina. The English Patient. Pride and Prejudice. Marjorie Morningstar. The list is enormous.

So then I thought about turning my story of an adulterous wife into a love story. Focus on the new affair, rather than the broken marriage. Give the lovers the hope of a future together. In other words, turn the story from a tragedy into a romance. With a happily-ever-after.

I admit that I fought against this urge. But I was given a reality check when I started researching publishers. I learned that romance was the genre. Romance outsold all the other genres combined (or so I was lead to believe). So I joined the Romance Writers of America, and began to study.

I read that a writer who wants to begin writing in a particular genre must read at least 100 books in that genre. So I got busy. A kind editor from Harlequin gave me a few names in the erotic romance genre, and I ran to the bookstore to buy Megan Hart, Jina Bacarr, Lora Leigh, among others. I spent a fortune.

And honestly, I didn't enjoy everything that I read. But I did like some of it. So I focussed on what appealed to me, trying to understand why.

All the time I was studying I was redrafting my own novel, Cult of the Black Virgin. My heroine was no longer a wife on vacation with her husband, but a young woman running from the pressure to commit to marriage, leaving her fiancé at home while she traveled alone. She meets her French lover, struggles with her issues, and, ultimately everything turns out happily in the end.

This wasn't what I originally had in mind at all. But, the funny thing was, I love it. Somehow, with its happy ending the story was more emotionally satisfying to me. And so I wrote another. a sweeter story. And that one, Just Desserts, I really enjoyed writing as a romance right from the start.

And that's how I've come to love romance. There are now 2 sequels to Cult of the Black Virgin, and I've just begun a series called Tracking Tor. Mirage, the first book, is set in Syria before the revolution.

I'm going to get back to work on it right now. I'm almost at the best part--the seduction scene in the ruined amphitheater at Palmyra, deep in the desert....

Harder than I thought

I thought I'd share a bit about the transition I've made over the last few years from academic writing to fiction writing. Although I'd been planning to turn my hand to fiction for many years, I was always too busy working full time to even think about writing even one more word that I had to. Teaching four classes of first and second-year university English classes left me precious little time to even read for pleasure, let alone write. So I let it slide....

Then, once I got a handle on my workload I began to suffer from long bouts of insomnia. The good news was that now I had time on my hands. The hours between bedtime and when I was ready to fall asleep proved to be fruitful. It was quality time. Just me and my laptop. And so I began to write.

At first I had no idea what I was doing. I wanted to tell a story about a married woman who meets an irresistible man while she's travelling in France. Against her better judgement, she begins an affair right under her husband's nose. It wasn't supposed to be a romance. It had to end badly, a sort of cautionary tale. I was influenced by the novel Damage by Josephine Hart. It was gritty and dark and just my kind of read.

So I began. But I didn't begin at the beginning. I began with the first seduction scene. And why not? I wanted to jump into the fun stuff right away.

I have to admit that it was self indulgent of me. But again, why not? Once I'd finished the first draft of that scene, I was happy with what I'd written. And that scene appears, basically unaltered, in the middle of my first novel, Cult of the Black Virgin. But then came the hard part.

I had to create a sympathetic character, place her in a meaningful context, then lead her to this first, explosive coming together with her lover.

That proved a lot harder than I thought it would be. I really sucked at character development. I'd never done it before, and I guess I expected that characters were born fully-formed, ready to walk, talk and have great sex without any direction from their creator.

Boy, did I struggle. Not only was my heroine an adulteress, she was attractive and privileged. I had my work cut out for me if I wanted readers to like her.

That was when I turned to the professionals for help.

I bought books on writing fiction. I took some on-line courses. I attended workshops. And I read articles, blogs and even more novels.

Then things began to morph....