Montreuil-les-Vignes*, our home, is a town of 1246 people, of which 70+ families are wine makers. Which means that basically everyone is involved in some way with making wine. If you drive southwest from Paris, you will reach Montreuil-les-Vignes in 3 hours, passing several famous Loire Valley chateaux along the way.

Montreuil-les-Vignes is on the blue square above "Loire River" just under the big red "France".

There is a 10th century church in our town square. There is also a bakery, a butcher, a charcutiere, a post office and two hair salons. There is a bar, but I’m scared to go in because it’s all of these old farmers sitting on stools and drinking, and if you are not an old farmer and dare walk in on their turf, they all turn around and stare at you. Trust me, those old farmers can be intimidating.

There is a farmer’s cooperative, open some mornings, but I’m not sure which, since the opening hours seem to be run by some type of mysterious unposted schedule. The last time I happened to arrive at the right time their entire offering was carrots, strawberries and asparagus.

Every July there is a scarecrow festival. Everyone dresses up a scarecrow and puts it in their yard. At the end of the week, the scarecrows are judged and a prize is awarded. The last time I was in Montreuil-les-Vignes during the festival, a drunk scarecrow holding a bottle and propping itself up on a telephone pole won the prize. The children all put flowers on their bicycles (like mini-Rose-Bowl-floats) and these are also judged and given prizes.

So why did we move to this podunk town in the Middle-of-Nowhere, France?

My handsome French husband, Laurent, and I met at a party here. So there is a nostalgia factor. After that historic party, I returned several times with him to stay with his father, who lives in the Hauts Champs (High Fields) overlooking the little town. Each time I visited, I savored the beautiful countryside and slow pace, and, coming from a crazed city lifestyle, swore that it was the only place on earth I could completely relax.

In Montreuil-les-Vignes, entertainment consists of the following: stopping by your neighbor’s house for a drink, and then continuing on to another neighbor’s house for a drink, or, if you happen to be home, watching several neighbors coming up your drive for a drink.

There are certain times that you can plan on having people stop by for a drink. Usually this is right before lunch or dinner. No one expects you to invite them to stay to eat, luckily, or you would have to have lots of food on hand all of the time in addition to all of the drink. One usually drinks around 3 small glasses per visit (not a rule – just something I noticed). This means that if you are planning to make a few stops, you need to pace yourself.

Or not. One of the neighbors in particular chooses “not”. His girlfriend joked with him the other night as he swatted a mosquito away from his arm that he needn’t bother because any mosquito that bit him would die of alcohol poisoning.

Anyway, back to the attractions of Montreuil-les-Vignes. There is the relaxation factor. There is the friendliness factor, as evidenced by the neighbor-visiting entertainment program. There is the not-to-be-missed scarecrow festival. The town is only 1 3/4 hours away from Paris if you take the TGV (fast train) from Tours. And you can get a nice, big house for the same price as a tiny apartment in Paris or a shack in the uber-popular South. The cheese, bread and food are to die for. And don’t forget the produce of those 70+ wine makers. For wine lovers like ourselves, they might as well add the words “a.k.a. Paradise” to the end of the big sign at the entrance of the town that says “Bienvenue à Montreuil-les-Vignes”.

*Fake town name – you won’t find it on a map!

Five and a half years ago, when we told our friends and family that we were moving from New York back to France, the reply was inevitably, “Oh, to Paris”? When we answered, “No, to the French countryside”, the responses ranged from “That sounds idyllic” to “Are you kidding? You will go absolutely insane living in the countryside”. Bets were placed on how long I could make it without a rural-induced mental breakdown and subsequent return to city life.

We had several reasons for moving to the countryside.

In New York, everyone we knew who had lived there for several years bought or rented a house or flat outside of the city, if only during the summer months. It is commonly acknowledged that one must escape the city from time to time in order to ward off being involuntarily committed to a padded cell at Bellevue. A few friends had even made the leap and moved to the countryside, keeping their jobs in the city. We had been in New York for eight years, and the creeping malaise of city life had infected us. We were renting houses in the woods or escaping to the beach every time we had a couple of days off.

Secondly, I have lived my entire adult life in cities: Chicago, Paris, London, New York. And after a while, I began to get the overwhelming urge to plunge my hands into soil. I actually dreamed about dirt. So as soon as we moved into our top-floor Brooklyn apartment which had (illegal) roof access (via fire escape), I bought a half-whiskey barrel and some planters and started a roof garden. I ran a hose from my kitchen sink through the window and up the side of the building to water my tomatoes, basil and radishes (which grew beautifully), melons (which never grew) and corn (which birds ate before I could). The next, and last, apartment we had in Brooklyn had a dangerously sloped roof. I tossed my planters and hose and my dirt-fetish returned with a vengeance.

My illegal New York roof garden

There was also the property-ownership angle. The price of a studio apartment in Manhattan would buy us a big house in the French countryside, with enough room for a washing machine and dishwasher, both normally inaccessible to New York renters.

And then there’s the fact that we have an 80-pound dog who likes to run.

Once we had decided to make the move, other factors sealed the deal for us. We discovered that Child #1 was on his way, and felt that proximity to his grandparents in France, who were gagging for grandchildren, was a positive thing. (And who laughs in the face of free babysitting?)

We already had in mind the perfect destination: my father-in-law’s little town in the Loire Valley. And that’s how we made our decision to swap the asphalt avenues of New York City for the dirt roads of Montreuil-les-Vignes.*

So how did it work out? Well, for the first few months I loved it here, then the next couple of years I hated it.

I was lonely. I didn’t know how to do the Mom thing without a support network, so felt pretty lost most of the time. And I missed the culture-on-tap and around-the-clock-shopping-and-eating-out of big cities.

But the last couple of years have been better. I’ve gotten used to the isolation and have adapted to the fact that I have to communicate with my friends online instead of face-to-face. I’m involved in our tiny community, volunteering at my kids’ preschool – teaching them songs in English. And I have my own office, across the yard from my house, where I can go when I need to think and create.

However, I do not have Starbucks. Or nights out with my friends, like I did in my previous lives. But, Paris is just three hours away and when I feel the deprivation starting to hit, I pack up a bag for a couple of days and run away.

Oh, how I love Paris!

* Don’t bother looking Montreuil-les-Vignes up on the map. It doesn’t actually exist. It’s my fake name for our town of (gulp) 1300 people!

So…you’ve quit your job to write full-time. Your first book is done. A rough draft of the second book is with your editor. What do you do with a couple of months “break”? Take a vacation? Enjoy your free time? Are you freakin’ kidding me? This is your new career! You want to do EVERYTHING you can to make it work.

You try to master all of the social networking stuff you’re supposed to be doing. You take care of all sorts of boring tax and incorporating issues. You use NaNoWriMo to write 50,000 words of a new story that’s been brewing “up top” for a while. You meet the challenge, but after 30-days of intensive writing, you need a break from the manuscript.

So you launch upon a new project on your personal “to do” list. You begin studying your colleagues. You’ve been stalking a few of them since your editor suggested it. But now you choose a dozen or so and look at their websites, their schedules, their social networking, their touring, their swag, their products, their marketing, and their bios.

And you get TOTALLY INTIMIDATED. How can someone handle 3 series (that’s 3 books per year) AND Tweet every fifteen minutes? Not just “I’m brushing my teeth now”, but something really witty. How can someone whose first book is due out at the same time as yours already have a thousand Twitter followers? And holy cow, this one not only looks like a beauty queen, but she has a law degree! And next June you’re going to be sitting next to her signing books.

Plus, they all know each other and send each other funny personal Tweets all the time. You wonder if you’re supposed to be getting in touch with the other writers on your imprint. But if you did, maybe they would think, “Who does she think she is?” Or, on the other hand, and even worse, maybe they think you haven’t contacted them because you’re stand-offish…that is, if they have actually heard of you.

You Tweet one. She’s not only heard of you, but she has your book. “Oh my God,” you think. “I am on their radar.” It also means your editor has sent advance reader copies of your book to other writers to get blurbs for your book cover. Fear grips your heart as you realize that you’re in the most intimidating of situations: being judged by your peers.

And all of a sudden, you don’t only feel like you’re back in high school. No, this feeling predates high school by at least a decade. We’re talking elementary school. On the playground. In a game of double-dutch jump rope. You’re on the outside, swaying back and forth and trying to figure out the pace before jumping in and skipping to the beat.

The problem is, you’ve never had a very good sense of rhythm. You’ve always felt a bit awkward, especially since you seem to live half the time on another planet, far far away inside your imagination. But, you tell yourself, this is not a time to falter. It’s time to pull up your knee-socks and start jumping as if your life depended on it. And you try to convince yourself that—even if you fall—a skinned elbow isn’t the end of the world.

Lisa Marie Runfola!! Like my main character, Lisa Marie is an American living in Paris, and she bid an amazing $338 for the book. Lisa Marie wrote me a very touching note after the auction, saying that she wanted the book for her 17-year-old daughter Marie and that she thought it was money well spent because she believes everyone (including Bridget Zinn) deserves a chance at life.

And for those of you who knew me in my previous incarnation as a blogger, Lisa Marie AND the underbidder (a Minnesotan, who bid up to one dollar less than Lisa Marie) were both loyal Chitlins followers and read my posts for years. Lisa Marie told me in her note that she believes in me. Which makes me realize how lucky I am to start my writing career with such a firm base of long-time readers who are all cheering me on.

Thank you Lisa Marie. Thank you to the two other bidders (A.N. and J.C.) who I know participated. And thank you to everyone out there who donated and bid in the auction, helping Bridget’s friends to raise over $8700 for her cancer treatments.

And Merry Christmas to Marie Aquelina Runfola in New York, who will be getting a box with these inside in a little over a week. (If the post office gods are feeling benevolent.)