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.