Michèle Callard's Blog

NOBLE ROT is a mystery set in 1900, the glitzy Belle Époque, when Paris and Bordeaux were awash with money, art and sin. Blooming banking and industry gave rise to a new kind of aristocrats who replaced those guillotined only a century ago. They built chateaux, took up fencing and paraded with expensive courtesans while their wives languished in stultifying boredom. What strikes me about the Gilded Age is the gap between rich and poor. What if the poor had been paid just a little more? In the first tome of the Vine Saga, we met Godin, an industrialist who paid his workers above the going rate and profited from it. To this day, Godin is seen as a visionary and his wonderful Versailles of the North (in Laon) is a joy to visit. In Noble Rot, our hero, Ricar (the antagonist in the first two tomes) mends his ways, but finds himself stymied when he attempts to pay his workers a fair wage. Noble rot is the name of a fungus, Botrytis Cinerea, which coats grapes to produce a sweet wine. The rot is the hypocrisy and greed of the local nobility who, since they can't bribe Ricar, gang up against him, threaten his grape harvest and do everything they can to protect their sinful decaying lifestyle.

My novel, Born Under the wrong Sun is set in Haiti. I checked my Facebook author page, surprised to learn that I recommend the services of a mambo, whose spell are guaranteed to bring your man back!

Huh? Why would you want the rat back?

That page is attracting a lot of interest. Tired of threatening me in English, the spammers have taken to sending me messages in Irish. Though I've only studied the language for nine weeks, I knew what they were after.
Póg mo thóin, as Shane McGowan used to say.

'Writing, at is best, is a lonely life...' Was Hemingway right? Perhaps it was true, at first, when I dabbled in secret, but Historical Fiction has provided a treasure trove of good people. I made friends at the HNS conference. After a research trip, I met Judy on the Eurostar the day my tablet was stolen Gare du Nord. For details on the Basques of Nevada, Shoshone tribes and Prohibition, I rely on Janet at the Elko cowboy museum, Lorrie in Sonoma and Iñaki, at the Reno Basque university. Then there are the ladies of 'France's Splendid Centuries,' our gorgeous Renaissance Facebook group... Laure, who helped me turn The Wolf's Legacy into French and actually lived my story in 1971, Leannec, the Haïtian gentleman fact-checking Born Under the Wrong Sun. Caroline Hurry and a handful of authors ahead in the journey who provide advice and inspiration.
My beta-readers' comments buoy me up like cocaine.
Come on, Ernest, admit it, writing is a team effort.
When you were in Paris with Scott, Zelda and Gertrude, drinking with James Joyce and Ford Madox Ford, were you really that lonely?

THE WOLF'S LEGACY IS NUMBER ONE IN IRISH/BRITISH HISTORICAL FICTION.
The Cévennes, a little known part of southern France, is gaining interest with it tales of huguenot persecutions. My own name - Callard - is huguenot and is found in England, (Callard and Bowsers) the Netherlands and Guadeloupe. Yes, the Caribbean... that sugar connection... In my case, it is not a direct bloodline, but what if it were? Would I carry the evil?
'Does our bloodline matter?' is the topic of the Wolf's Legacy. Orla - who considers herself Irish - unearths a disturbing French family past. How will it affect her?
PART 1 is set in present-time Paris, an excuse to ramble along the recently gentrified Canal Saint Martin where once hay and coal were barged down from the north, while manure from Paris's 80 000 horses were barged up to the mushroom farms. I love that district.
Marguerite's vintage shop is loosely based on 'Thank God I'm a VIP,' a clothes emporium 12 rue de Lancry.
Bon voyage!