Maybe Marseille...(working title).
The previous working title was Dog Shit Nation, but that might hurt sales in France.
I swore I would not write a book about France.
Even before France was France, outsiders have been traveling here and then writing about their experiences. My first exposure to the genre was Charles Joyce’s Latin I, seventh grade: our first text was from C. Iulius De Bello Gallico, Caesar’s Gallic Wars:
Gallia est omnis dīvīsa in partēs trēs
Ever since then the English, Americans, just about everyone, have been coming to France and writing stories about maisons and merde, being a skinny Parisian, finding love or at least getting laid, piano ateliers, and buerre.
The world really doesn’t need another book about moving to France. But after eight years here, I've changed my mind. Our story was a little different.
We didn't inherit a vineyard. We had not bought a home in Provence. We were not English chicks looking for sun and sex. We were Annie and Blake with three children, and enough room on our credit cards for a year.
We had lost our jobs in California, and were trying to figure out where to move to. One day Annie suggested that since all our possessions were already in storage, let's take the kids and spend a year in the south of France. Just a year, because we couldn't afford to stay for longer. Maybe Marseille?
The next day we made an appointment at the French Embassy and began gathering all the necessary documents.