Frontignan :
To Frontignan near Montpellier in the south of France for the 7th Festival International du Roman Noir. This year's subtitle being Intimate et Roman Noir.
There's me from England and a good bunch of Americans -- Vicki Hendricks, Joe Lansdale, Craig Holden, Jason Starr, Michael Nava. There's also Cambell Armstrong from Scotland via Ireland and some pretty interesting sounding years in Sidona, Arizona. Most of the writers are, of course French, but there are a few I've met before, Nathalie Mege who translated my first three crime novels into French, her partner Maryvonne, and the publisher/journalist/translator Marie-Caroline Aubert who I've met several times before. I know that at the very least I'm in for a good weekend of conversation and drinking. Not necessarily in that order! Though OF COURSE the main reason I'm there is to talk about crime novels and intimacy -- oh yes. Just most likely to do that with a nice bouteille de vin inside me. Or more ...
The intimacy comes in the form of a panel on homosexualité and the crime novel, in which Joe Landsdale is our token straight guy and French writer Paula Cigcanga very kindly tells the audience that anyone who hasn't read Calendar Girl (les Effeuilleuses in French) really should read it for the lesbian sex -- I reckon I sell an extra twenty or so novels.
 While the festival itself is very laid back and pleasant, there is an odd (and in my experience unusual) pressure on us to sit in the book tent most of the time we're not on panels.Vicki and I run away at one point to the market where I buy some really quite expensive -- but yummy -- tapenade and she finds some very good sun dried tomatoes. Whether or not they make it safely back to London and Miami is an entirely different matter.
This hotel is right on a lovely canal leading up to the sea port -- a great location and the organisers have sensibly worked out that someone like me would happily sit on the balcony for hours at a time and never make it to the book tent -- so the event itself is a good fifteen minute drive away and we're picked up first thing in the morning. Whenever Cambell and I finally arrive in the tent the American authors are already there, having agreed to be picked up earlier and not stopped for a coffee on the way -- quite obviously they suffer from a far greater protestant work ethic than I do. Then again, they may well be selling many more books …
On Friday night we travel out to the shore in convoy to the dinner event -- a great big mess of moules and paella, lots of wine, and most astonishing dinner entertainment -- a Brecht/Weill-sounding brass band made up of about twenty players, all goth-dressed and playing brilliant dancing music. After a little dancing I'm tempted to swim as well, but am put off by the lack of waves -- the Mediterranean is all very well, but it doesn't really do waves in Pacific style. Great night though.
I get to the book tent the next morning a little tireder than ideal -- the Americans are already there. Which is good I think, because Craig's wife Lisa Louise is seated behind my book pile -- she's younger and blonder than I am, both of which are rather more likely to tempt buyers over to my spot than my own dehydrated presence. I think of a new book-event ruse -- get younger & lovelier versions of the real author to sit & sign (I'm sure publishers would approve of this one) while the author is off soaking up the local wine. I mean ambience ...
After another night of warm late evening drinking and eating (LOTS of squid), Vicki, Michael, Campbell, Didier our interpreter, and I find ice-cream and coffee near the water. I eat the best cherry sorbet in the world and go to bed a very happy girl. Only slightly disturbed by raucous French writers outside my door at 2am!!
By the time I'm ready to leave the next afternoon there's been ANOTHER boozy lunch with Nathalie, Mary-Yvonne, Marie-Caroline (and the M. from Le Monde) and I'm packed and ready for the plane. I'm home for just one night and then down to Cornwall for a comedy gig -- and a wee rest for my liver I think ... I'm sure the elegant way to drink French wine is just a little with a meal or a nice loaf of bread ... how lucky I am to be with French people who are not interested in stereotypes of themselves, and happy instead to drink loads, eat slightly less and chat about the French woman's love of botox and fear of wrinkles, in between discussing the finer points of Euro-American relations, how many nice Texans there are that are nothing like George Bush, and whether legalizing gay marriage is positive and forward-thinking or giving in to the traditions of the patriarchal society. If they could just have given me and the Americans the secret of how they eat so much good food and stay in such good shape I would have gone home a very happy girl. Still, you can't have it all ...
Coda : talking to the French women that lunchtime, all of them a little (or perhaps more than a little!) older than me, came to a glorious bit of self-realisation. I was always pretty rubbish at being a girl -- not girly/thin/quiet/trying-to-please enough … never have been. But I don't have to try any more. I am not a girl. I'm over forty (ooh, only just!!) and have AT LEAST thirty years of being a woman ahead. Maybe after seventy I'll become a crone. Between now and then I can just practice being a woman. There are years to get good at it. And so many good role models. Huge relief. Now, what were the French women saying about botox …??
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