What inspired you to write your memoir?
About four years ago, after my husband and I dropped our youngest daughter off at college, I went through a sort of mid-life crisis. I missed being a mom and I wondered how I would fill the void. Sure I had my part-time bookkeeping business, but it consumed only a few hours a day and it wasn’t interesting any more. Something was missing, but what?
This prompted me to review what I like to call my “mid-life list.” This is similar to a “bucket list,” with an important twist. The idea was to refocus myself and figure out the things I wanted to do with my life in my fifties – while I could still do them. My list was short.
-Learn to play the piano
-Travel to Africa to see the elephants
-Travel to Tahiti and see the island of Bora Bora
-Travel back to France (with my family this time)
-Write a book
At the time, I didn’t own a piano and, with two daughters in private colleges, I couldn’t afford a trip to Africa or Tahiti. I had already traveled back to France in 2001 with my family, so that left me to examine the fifth item on my list more closely. If I did write a book, would it be fiction or non-fiction? What genre would I choose?
The answers to my questions came to me in the shower (which is where many of my ideas seem to materialize, strangely enough). I decided to hunt down my diary from my au pair adventure in France and compose a memoir. It took me three years and countless hours to write French Illusions, but now I can scratch another item off my mid-life list.
About your Book:
French Illusions, the first of two books based on the author’s diaries, takes place in the summer of 1979. Linda Kovic contracts to become an au pair for an aristocratic French family in the Loire Valley. In order to secure the position, she pretends to speak the language, confident she’ll be forgiven once she arrives at her destination. This book captures Linda’s fascinating real-life story inside and outside the Château de Montclair. Her compelling memoir details her challenges and triumphs as she tries to adjust to her new life with Madame and Monsieur Dubois and their children. When Linda encounters, Adam, a handsome young student, her life with the family becomes more complicated, adding fuel to her internal battle for independence. Join Linda on her unforgettable adventure of discovery and romance in an extraordinary part of the world.
How did you decide how to publish your book and where is it published through:
I chose to self-publish my paperback through Dog Ear Publishing. They gave me control over design, editing, pricing and allowed me to retain all the rights to my book. Then, I contracted with BookBaby to create my eBook, which I published using my own Limited Liability Corporation called Dreamland Press. They were a good match as well because they charged a fee to create the eBook, but they don’t take a percentage of the royalties.
How do you see writing a Memoir as different from writing other genres of books?
I have to admit writing French Illusions was a lot more complex than I initially imagined it would be. My diary offered a great outline, but I realized early on that I would have to change the names of people and places in my story to protect identities. This was especially true with regards to my host au pair family. Acquiring permission from them was out of the question. Totally out of the question. I mean it. Read my book and you’ll understand. Additionally, over thirty years had passed since I spoke with anyone I’d met in France. I no longer had any contact information for them.
With this in mind, I researched common French names that might fit my characters. I tried them out and retained the ones that were a good match. A handful required more effort. Choosing a name for my main love interest, Adam, was difficult because it had to be plausible in both Morocco and France. Songais, the name I chose for the town had to sound French, but it couldn’t mimic any others in the region. My biggest challenge, was finding a name for the family’s chateau in France. I knew this term would be repeated over and over again and it had to be perfect. In my hometown of Kirkland, there is an old apartment building called “Mont Clare” just off of State Street. I never thought about it much until one day, during a walk with the dog, I glanced at the building, and it clicked. That’s it, I thought. I’ll call it the Chateau de Mont Clare. I loved the way this name rolled off my tongue. During a rewrite, my editor convinced me to alter the spelling to Château de Montclair, but the pronunciation remained the same.
Other decisions haunted me during the writing process. From the beginning, I struggled with how much French to incorporate into the story and whether or not to include translations. My editors gave me guidance here. We decided to keep most of the French and bring in translations only when it was absolutely necessary to the story line. Another challenge was finding data from 1979 on the Loire Valley, the Loire River and the town of Tours. It took hundreds of internet searches and numerous travel books to supply this information. The most challenging dilemma of all was how much detail to include in my own love scenes? Wiping the sweat off my brow, I wrote and then rewrote these scenes until I could read them without squirming in my seat.
Author Bio:
Linda Kovic-Skow resides in Gilbert, Arizona. She earned an Associate Degree in Medical Assisting in 1978 from North Seattle Community College and a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from Seattle University in 1985. She has been married for 28 years and has two daughters. An enthusiastic traveler, Linda also enjoys boating, hiking, gardening and socializing with friends.
Website(s)
Author Home Page Link
Link To Book On Amazon
Link to Book on Barnes and Noble
Your Social Media Links
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16163867-french-illusions
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https://twitter.com/LindaKovicSkow
http://www.pinterest.com/lindakovicskow/french-illusions
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