The Paris Affair

 ʺThe day I left New York to come here last year I was walking down fifth avenue with my agent and we came to a gallery with a painting of a woman in the window. It was a self portrait of the artist signed Marilyn. There was something about the painting or the way she was looking at me, I bought the painting and brought it here with me and the night we went to Nicky’s for dinner I talked to her about you and Paris and being back in 1921 and I never stopped talking to her, I told her about my day and about what we were doing and where we’d been ad how I felt about you. Anyway before long I found myself believing that I’d meet her, Marilyn, one day and when I did I’d fall in love with her and I’d never let her go. And one day I did meet her, at the elevators of a building. I didn’t recognize her at first but when she told me her name…I told you I loved you, Annabelle, and I do. You’re the first woman I truly loved and I still love you, but I was in-love with Marilyn the first time I saw her. She liked the heroine of a Hemmingway novel he’s going to write soon, Lady Brett Ashley, and when we came back to Paris she started calling herself Brett Ashley and it’s stuck. That’s how I met her you have to believe me. And it was your fault I learned to really love her. You said you’d help me to learn how and you did. I’m sorry I didn’t fall for you, kitten but I do love you.”

The Paris Affair

Wednesday

I finished The Crowded Hours on Saturday and it was edited by Sunday afternoon and Monday I returned to writing the two books that come before I Will Stand Alone in the Women In Love series.
I was having trouble with That Summer In Paris but it's coming together. This is the first of the Gregg Gregory books and he's just arrived in Paris with the painting of Marilyn and he's met Annabelle and Hemmingway and Scott Fitzgerald in the Paris of 1921. In the second book, Appointment In Paris, Gregg has returned from New York and he meets Marilyn at the elevator, When they go for dinner Annabelle appears to tell them they've gone back to 1922 and Marilyn decides to call herself Brett Ashley and she already knows she loves Gregg.
It should be noted that Marilyn is really Christina when Dominique takes her place in I Will Stand Alone, and in the last book in the series Galen, Christina's mother, will reveal what happens to Christina.  

The Ukraine

I find the similarities with Yugoslavia interesting and I can see the Russians retaining the Crimea while the major part of the country forms an alliance with the EU. Hopefully Obama's advisors think the same way and they don't over react. Putin, of course, is being the KGB Colonel daring the Americans to do something, knowing they won't and thinking he'll get more votes for it.
The Matt Chritchley series is going to continue now that I have paved the way for Matt to head a European taskforce to find and eliminate the criminal mastermind behind all the groups in Europe and America. This second book will cement the relationship with MI6.

Random thoughts for Monday

I am convinced that Monday was a mistake.
I mean everyone is happier when they have a three day weekend. Why not get with the program and drop work on Monday?
Still, having said that I am busy trying to find a listening device in the main room of the convent where Matt and Catherine-Elizabeth, Kelly and Nickie and Gabrielle have been talking about the rogue agent, Jane.
She has sent them a rather dramatic message telling Matt to stop looking for her and hinting that she's out there somewhere. But the message of the stained glass window in the chapel where they are at the moment is a message of hope and forgiveness. And the sight of Gabrielle kneeling and crossing herself is an offer of hope.
This mystery is absorbing a lot of my time but I'm enjoying it too much to rush it.
I do wish I had a few more hours to work, though. I have several novels to finish as well as this book.

And God created the universe in her image

I was so happy to see the sun yesterday that I came in and said, "And God created the universe in her image. And she saw that it was good and She created the world in her image. Then man. And man set out to do his best to take control but She prevailed.
It was an old joke and I told my wife not to tell any of my men associates I said that.
But really, Cassiopeia, Libra etc. The universe is feminine and look at the Sea and clouds and the trees and birds...color. Feminine
Enough. It's a great day and I have to work. I have a great deal to do and I have to get to it.

Day Two Of The Year

Day two of the year's blog has turned out to be a sensationally beautiful, sunny, day that goes against all the forecasts. It wasn't as windy as they expected last night and we have full sun rather than rain and wind. It's fine with me. I am working on THE CROWDED HOURS anyways and I'm supposed to go shopping later.
I am looking for a Canadian Agent for the books but I think I might have to search for an American Agent after all. The agents in Toronto seem to be reluctant to take on anyone from the west and it's not in my plans to move to the center of the world as we know it just to obtain an Agent.
Then again I admit I could try other agents in Toronto.
The mysteries are part of a series that will center around groups all over Europe and America headed by one criminal mastermind (think Moriarty or the James Bond series) and Matt Chritchley, Catherine-Elizabeth and Gabrielle are tasked with eliminating the Paris group as well as doing the autopsies on the dead that keep showing up. Each book is a different story of course and a new adventure.

I was thinking about someone I knew who reminded me of Gatsby (The Great Gatsby, Scott Fitzgerald) and the reasons I eventually felt sorry for him rather than hated him. He's dead now but I wish he wasn't although I would still feel sorry for him if he was alive.
He was the ultimate manipulator and it didn't bother him and I still don't understand why it didn't bother him. He was intuitive and brilliant but he never looked in the mirror of his self. Why?
One day I'll probably run into him again (he wasn't evil  and he deserved a place in the 'heaven' I think we go to) and I hope I can talk to him again. I don't like feeling like that about anyone and I know Fitzgerald didn't either. And when I put down some of Fitzgerald's other books I wonder if he realized that he'd become the very person he most didn't want to be.
Anyway, on a happier note, I have to go to have a hearing test to see if I need to upgrade my hearing aids. Yes I wear hearing aids. And I'm very aware of them although no one else is, and I covet the newest ones that are almost invisible because I'm vain and I don't want people to think I'm old. Stupid I know, but then so is the idea of being old. I have outlived friends and family but I don't feel any older than I was when I started writing, forty odd years ago.