by Anna SugdenI'm delighted to give everyone in the Lair a Christmas surprise - we have a special guest today. All the way from Paris (yes, the one in France, not the one in Texas!) is Lair favourite, my good friend, the awesome NYT best-selling author, Eloisa James.
As many of you know, Eloisa and her family are spending a year in Paris. Even I, an avid Paris-hater (and we won't mention the Parisians *g*), have been captivated by her daily tales of life in the French capital, which she has been posting on Facebook.
So, with great pleasure I hand you over to Eloisa who will share with you a special piece about her time in Paris.Thank you Anna and Banditas. It's great to be back here.
My study looks out over a small, quiet street called Rue du Conservatoire. This morning the snow is coming down fast, slanting sideways and turning the gray slate roofs opposite the color of milk. Since I grew up on a farm in Minnesota, this makes me feel at home. I found myself thinking about peeling potatoes for a hearty soup.
That’s when I got a jolting sense of vertigo. After all, I grew up on a farm outside a town of 2,242 people, though my father was a poet and not a farmer. One year we had no money (poetry is not lucrative), so my mother took down the dining room curtains, which had sailing ships on them, and made my sister and me new dresses for the first day of school. My prom party was held in a gravel pit, and I earned the money to buy my prom dress by waitressing in DeToy’s Supper Club.
Paris is a long, long way from the polyester dirndl skirts worn by DeToy’s waitresses.
And yet it’s still me, sitting here, looking out at snow, which is falling in that directed, intense sort of way that happens in Minnesota and apparently in Paris as well.
Sometimes life turns a corner and you catch a glimpse of time passing, as if you were in double time, both a teenager in a farm town, and a woman in Paris. And the current you is one that the Midwestern teenager would never have envisioned -- at least, I wouldn’t have. Skipping anything that has to do with an unflattering mirror, what about you? What’s happened to make you sit up and think: Is this really me? Can this be happening?
What’s one thing that’s happened to you that you never would have envisioned when you were ten years old?Three commenters will be sent frivolous Parisian souvenirs – pocket mirrors adorned with glittery Eiffel Towers, bringing with them a whiff of la vie Parisienne, not to mention snow. And please join Eloisa’s Facebook Fan Page (http://www.facebook.com/EloisaJamesFans) to follow her daily adventures in Paris.
Anna: And don't forget, we're still doing the 12 Bandita Days of Christmas! One of the three lucky commenters Eloisa chooses will also receive their special Bandita goody!
Quick reminder to the following people to claim their prize from Eloisa James' visit:
I know, I know! I'm so sorry! I meant to post this weeks ago!
I'm delighted to welcome back a huge Lair favourite, Eloisa James!
I grew up on a steady diet of fairy tales. My parents read them aloud to us, and then sprinkled Arthur Lang’s Blue, Green, Brown Fairy Books around the house. But much more importantly, fairy tales truly interested my father, Robert Bly. Years later, when I was in graduate school, he wrote a long analysis of one such story, called Iron John. When I was a child, he was just breaking in the fairy tale analysis, as it were. I have a distinct memory of being challenged to give a psychological explanation of the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk.
I had a wonderful time writing A Kiss at Midnight. My heroine Kate is a feisty, funny version of Cinderella: not a victimized scullery girl, but a young woman placed in an awful situation, and making the best of it. My fairy godmother, though she doesn’t wave a wand, is just the kind of godmother we all wish we had. And the Prince…well, Gabriel turned out to have many reasons for that ball, and falling in love with Kate was not one of them. I tried to take my father’s lessons to heart: rather than creating a saccharine sweet version of the original story, I thought about the choices my characters faced. I think I succeeded; Publishers’ Weekly called A Kiss at Midnight “a candy floss comic romp around a core of heartache.” 
Lots of prize-winners today - 3 lucky people get a Parisian trinket from Eloisa James.
As many of you know, Eloisa and her family are spending a year in Paris. Even I, an avid Paris-hater (and we won't mention the Parisians *g*), have been captivated by her daily tales of life in the French capital, which she has been posting on Facebook.
My study looks out over a small, quiet street called Rue du Conservatoire. This morning the snow is coming down fast, slanting sideways and turning the gray slate roofs opposite the color of milk. Since I grew up on a farm in Minnesota, this makes me feel at home. I found myself thinking about peeling potatoes for a hearty soup.