Birthmarked
The Paris Book Fair: Quite Fun
Audrey Petit, Caragh O'Brien, and Sarah Millet in Paris, 2011
My French editor at Mango, Sarah Millet, kindly fetched me from the airport in Paris a couple Fridays ago, and we were joined by Audrey Petit, the sci-fi series editor of Mondes imaginares, for lunch at La Marlotte, a quaint restaurant in the 6th arrondissement. Sarah was friendly and engaging from the first hello. She spoke of how she came to Paris to study, stayed on to work in publishing, and has grown to enjoy the busy… Continue reading
Behind the Scenes: A Note on the French Translation
My daughter and I met Hélène Bury, the French translator of Birthmarked, in front of the Hôtel de Ville in Rennes at 10:00 Saturday morning and instantly bonded. Hélène is funny, smiley, and genuinely nice, and what’s more, she and I have certain things in common that sealed our friendship: we both prefer hot chocolate to coffee and adore Colin Firth.
C. O'Brien and H. Bury, in Rennes
I’m particularly grateful that Hélène was chosen to translate my novel. In the first place, she has lived in… Continue reading
Coincidences
Coincidences tend to be unbelievable in fiction, but I’m living with a couple of curious ones now in my real life. A year ago, when my daughter told me she wanted to study in France, she applied to a program at the University of Rennes, and Rennes just happens to be the city where Hélène Bury, the French translator for Birthmarked, resides. What are the chances that my daughter and my translator would end up in the same city, giving me ample excuse to visit?
Off to France… Continue reading
Note to Self: Keep Going
The Uninspiring View
The view from my couch is not inspiring. It’s raining on top of several feet of old snow out there. I dropped off the car for new tires before Rini’s garage opened and walked home in the rain, over ice, falling once. So far today, I’ve revised one page of Book 3, and I can already tell: it’s going to be work this morning. Looking at glamour photos from the Oscars last night is not going to help, nor will going to dig… Continue reading
Facebook, Amigas, and a Foreign Rights Deal
Thanks to the Internet, I’ve become friends with Eva Rubio, a university student in Salamanca, Spain, who blogged enthusiastically about Birthmarked last summer. Eva was determined for Birthmarked to be translated into Spanish, so she and her friend Rocío Muñoz started a Facebook page aptly named Queremos que Birthmarked de Caragh M. O’Brien sea publicado en España and started collecting followers. I thought they were unbelievably nice, but I didn’t hold out much hope.
When my family made plans to visit Salamanca last summer, Eva and I… Continue reading
Note to Self
When you keep erasing as many pages as you write each day, and you keep going in wrong directions, don’t think that you’re not making progress, because you are. It’s just thinking progress, not pages progress, and when you eventually identify that you’ve put your main character in a position of power and influence where her problems are global rather than personal, then add in some guards and get someone arrested, preferably her.
You might think you would know by now the absolute basic rule of fiction: make things… Continue reading