Former award-winning journalist and author Michele
Drier writes the Amy Hobbes Newspaper Mysteries and the paranormal romance
series SNAP:
The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles. Learn more about Michele and her books
at her website.
Maps are a
passion.
Want to
get from Bath to Stonehenge by way of Limply Stoke? I have a map for that.
Looking
for the best route between Beaune and Auxerre? I have a map for that.
I love to
travel, to find different lands, different people, different foods, different
cultures and outlooks. There’s a sense of adventure, of reinventing oneself, of
adopting a different persona.
This may
be why I set the Kandesky Vampire Chronicles primarily in and around Kiev. The
protagonists live there, but they travel throughout Europe. And, like me, their
favorite city is Paris.
They own a
flat in the 7th Arrondissement, a leafy enclave overlooking the
Eiffel Tower, the Champs de Mars and the Ecole Militaire. They visit Paris for
shopping, for business and always for Fashion Weeks.
A few
years ago, before my mother died, she got a passport but hadn’t gone anywhere.
I told her it was illegal to have a passport but not use it and asked where
she’d like to go. I expected her to say England, but she said Paris and so we
went for a week, not long enough.
After we spent
hours at the Louvre, we sat beside one of the ponds in the Tuileries Gardens,
watched French kids sail toy boats and she said, “I’m in love.” She loved the
sights, the families, the art, the food, the sounds. She said that all her life
she’d heard French emergency sirens in movies and on TV and now she was hearing
the definitive “OOOH-ah, OOOH-ah.”
That was
probably my seventh or eighth visit to Paris and I, too, had fallen in love
with the city over the years. Now, as I write, I have maps of many European
cities and countries near. After all, the Kandeskys are an uber-rich,
uber-sophisticated vampire family who rose in Hungary five hundred years ago.
They spend time in many European cities, and I need to see where they go, what
they do, so I read the maps. The most tattered is a map
of Paris from Galleries Lafayette picked up years ago. I close my eyes and see
the street, the apartment, the courtyard, the trees that the Kandeskys see,
though their view is by night.
In the latest Kandesky book, SNAP: I, Vampire, a visit to a Fashion
Week show results in a kidnapping and chase through the French countryside. And
I traced the kidnappers’ route on one of my maps.
Soon, I’m
going back to Paris, back to the 7th Arrondissment, back to the
food, the people, the OOH-ah sirens, and to revisit the places where my mother
fell in love.
SNAP: I, Vampire
Book 9 of The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles
Maxie Gwenoch, LA-based media star, VP for International
Planning for the multi-national gossip conglomerate, SNAP, has finally agreed
to marry Jean-Louis Kandesky, a 500-year-old Hungarian vampire and leader of
the family that owns SNAP.
Is marriage a big change? Not as big as the fact that
Maxie is now a vampire, as well. When munitions from the Kandesky Enterprises
weapons plant in Slovakia turn up at the bombing of a Royal's house in England,
Jean-Louis and his "brother," Nik, are hot on the trail of shadowy
terrorist groups dealing in international weapons sales. Are the Kandesky arms
being sold to terrorists groups? Should Maxie use her newfound vampire
strengths to ferret out the scum?
Buy Links
Thank you so much for hosting me, Lois. It was comforting to remember that trip with my mother who died a few years ago. That's one of the reasons the Kandeskys visit Paris so often.
ReplyDeleteParis is indeed a gorgeous city, and I'm so glad you found the inspiration for your enjoyable Kandesky novels. But for me, it's Rome. I lived there decades ago and wish I'd stayed. Keep writing, Michele.
ReplyDeleteI have never been to Paris, but I've been to Italy, Rome, Venice, and Florence, Madrid, Spain, as well as Great Britain twice - London, England, twice, and Wales, Ireland and Scotland once. Travel to other countries is rather expensive for me now that I'm retired, but I do want to go back to Great Britain again to visit one of my Guppy critique partners in England and see more of Scotland and Ireland.
ReplyDelete