The Tour de France

Tour de France 2009

Cannondale Daniele Bennati (tour de france 2009)team Liquigas

The genesis of a book

It was Christmas 2003. With the arrival of my in-laws, the holidays of the struggle was in full swing. I went sneaking into our small study, close the door, and left an old piece of foolscap front of me. I have a stack of these sheets of paper long and narrow for my father. I stared striped and blue paper, gathering courage, Tommy wrote not so immortal line: "I was on vacation with their parents. I'd like to start a new short story by Luisa my youngest daughter. I wrote a page. A house swap, oh yes! a home exchange went wrong. Tommy and his dad and mom changed her regular house a castle in France.

Now I've heard of a castle in France and not particularly well, so it will be that I'm going to model. But to protect the privacy of my friends have it, I'll put it out of Toulouse, where it is not. Right, the newspaper became transparent and looking through it I could see streets lined with banana and hear the cicadas singing, as Tommy extended along the French small car that his father had just bought, is coming … where … Romolue. I do not know where wine of that name, but French friends ask where does it actually is (nothing), especially when they hear it in all its glory Romolue les Bains Romains St Etienne-Just. Others laugh because it sounds like a name someone made up, as Littlehampton, under the hill. Now I realize that there is a high wall on the road, some ornate metal gates a long journey, a bar, where they ask the way and a friendly waiter, the Tour de France on TV, watch out – this has to be in July for that!

The figures would the major players begin to enter: the priest and the wrinkled old servant in the castle, but do not yet have an adequate history. For several years I thought of writing a story about traveling in time, when the castle, which I know was a new and mixed with the people there. So I know what I want, but do not know how to get to it. You see, there is an engraving on the wall of the royal castle, which shows the gardens, and it must have been three or four years ago. The first time I saw this print, I knew I wanted to write a history of exploring the world of 1599, entering the lives and thoughts of people in the garden, shown marching in long dresses and pants with ruffles around the bushes in the etching.

I can re-read what I had written, deleting things, pushing bits, scribbling in the margins. Then, as can happen, I took where I had left and just scribbled in an hour or more. Magic around the gates of the castle, the magic of all the engraving, a mystery has been explored and so I had the car I wanted, the engraving itself, of course! And when, in the next chapter Tommy actually comes in 1599 …. he had his phone with him. Of course. Much a part of the life of my daughter, the mobile phone would be another important figure in history. But what story?

I read what I had gone to Louisa that night. "Go on, go on," she spoke softly. I know that might have been the same if he had been reading the phone book, because children will always love what Dad (or Mom) has written. But anyway she liked and was very disappointed when I stopped.

"Go!

"But I can not," I said. "No more. You'll have to wait until you have written. "

"Tell me what's going to happen, 'and she gave me a sly smile, knowing that I would not. I did not know – and I did not tell – Is that I still do not know myself. Every time I read a little history, was the same. "Go! And actually happened until I realized that I had written fifty pages and the story had simply taken over and was unstoppable. This is how I came to write a book, now three books, with no intention of when I started!

(Originally published in GoArticles and reprinted with permission of the author, David Field).

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