Voilà, The Long, Long Afternoon is out in French, as Un long, si long après-midi. I could not be prouder. Just look at it, right there on the table.

Launching in a different country is so exciting because it all feels a bit wild. My French is not that great, so I have to translate the reviews and guess at some of their meanings. I cannot follow the social media in the same way. Doing readings and signing books in France is adventurous. Will I understand? Can I get my points across? And how amazing is it that people care about my book, when there is so much incredible writing in France?

I wanted to give a few, quick book recommendations from French authors. There’s Leila Slimani’s Le pays des autres (The country of others), a haunting story of a French woman who moves to 1940s Morocco. For cozy mystery fans, there’s fellow L’Edition Martiniere author Frédéric Lenormand’s lovely series about Marie Antoinette’s hairdresser, Au Service Secret de Marie Antoinette (In Marie Antoinette’s secret service). And we need something for the true crime fans too. I highly recommend Sarah Maza’s Violette Noziere: A Story of Murder in 1930s Paris.

Maza, strictly speaking, is not French. But I, strictly speaking, am also writing in and about a place I wasn’t born and… je ne regrette rien!