I'm looking at photos from Burgundy, where I stayed in a home in the village of Vire for a few weeks while researching my third novel, BURGUNDY: Twisted Roots, that was published in September (2017). I had submitted 100 pages to my editor by the time I arrived in Burgundy, and was stunned to realize that the internet research was somewhat outdated. Beaune, especially, has a lot of hipsters running around. The young are everywhere making wine. Still, the old standards continue to exist, thank God, especially for the more celebrated wineries.
I moved in with a woman I had never met--Nancy Ebersberg--and she had already set up a little writing table for me in her study, a room filled with books and art. On clear days I could look out and see Mont Blanc.
;)
Below is the library, the room where--spoiler alert--Olivier proposes to Max. It adjoins the "office space."
Mornings we met in the kitchen--and oh, what a kitchen!--for coffee and petit dejeuner. After, we dressed and drove off to wineries, and all the places I thought my characters might inhabit. Here's Nancy at one of the little restaurants in Auxey-Duresses.
This is how I started my day.
It was such a joy to be here. Originally I was to rent the house with a friend from Vermont, but she fell and had to return to the States to recuperate, and I--at the last minute--asked Nancy if she could help me. I will be writing more later about our adventures, and food and wine tasting.
This short series is about where I wrote, and about the friends who provided me with a "room of my own."