I don't blog much (read: ever), but I'm quite excited about my upcoming trip to Paris and thought I'd share a bit of it with you.
Starting April 1, I'll be in Paris for the entire month. It's surreal thinking I'll be out of the country for that long, let alone in one where I don't speak the language (like, not even bad high school French)—and if you'd asked me a few years ago where in the world I'd like to spend a month, I would've immediately said London—but I fell in love with the city the last time I was there and have been plotting my return ever since. I have an amazing day job and one of the benefits is a paid sabbatical after working there for 6 years, so I'm taking complete advantage of the time.
I'm gonna need to find a typewriter!
My intention with this trip is twofold:
- Have an amazing cultural experience (it's freaking PARIS, so duh)
- Finish the first draft of my new novel
Not to be THAT GUY, but the idea of writing in Paris is just so... romantic. 😍 The idea of sitting outside at a cafe, or on a bench in the courtyard of Notre Dame, or in a secluded section of a park, and just taking my time to absorb the very essence of the city and let it fuel my words was too inviting to pass up.
And the thing? I've already written over 40k words of the new novel and I'm very much on track to finish by the end of April (thanks to the handy word count metrics in Scrivener for keeping me honest!). I'm really loving the book and riding high on Genius Mode (that feeling you have when everything you write is brilliant, whether it actually is or not—and I might find out it's not when I have the first 20k words critiqued by my writing group tomorrow night... Eep!). It's a true speculative fiction book (I would call it supernatural... not fantasy/sci-fi per se, but it definitely has fantastical elements to it) and unlike anything I've ever written before. The story has global events/repercussions, but has an incredibly intimate setting at the same time, something I've been working really hard to achieve.
I'm calling it THE IMMORTAL LIGHTNING, and it is my version of a superhero/antihero origin story.
I plan to publish a website for it, just like I did with Sparkle Prep, so be on the lookout for that in the coming months for more info and a teaser chapter!
So I get to spend a month in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, doing something I love, and hanging out with some of my favorite people (I'm going to be there for a month, so of course I have guests coming!). It's going to be an amazing—and hopefully productive!—adventure and Saturday can't come soon enough!
Jusqu'à la prochaine fois...
~Kyle