The Dear Paris book cover (plus the rejected options)

 Ta daaaa! A whole book of Paris Letters awaiting your perusal. How sexy is THAT?A few other cover options that were considered...Pas mal, as they say. I like how that Eiffel Tower looms in the back.Very springy.And of course, the beloved Seine.But it was a café that won, in the end, and it looks good with these other two books in the series. . You can order it online and off. Read all about it and where to order here. Now back to us, you and me. You, dear reader, and me, lazy blogger. I feel sometimes that so much time goes by between blog posts that when I finally do get to it, I have so much NEWS to give you and not much in the way of pretty pictures and funny thoughts. C'est comme ça. Etsy shop is filled with letters. This is the letter that graced the cover of DEAR PARIS. It oozes literary Paris café scene. It's about feet.I love my stamp man. He's a hot older dude who can barely stand how I care so deeply for worthless stamps. This was the March 2020 Paris Letter.The November Paris Letter is about silent monuments around Paris. You don't even realize they are there until you've done a deep study of Paris. Then you realize the glorious thought behind this museum city. It features a clock that is outside the main post office, obvs. January's Paris Letter featured perfumes of Paris and how they relate to social movements. Incredibly. My sister was looking for something in my office and laughed that the Eiffel Tower painting on the cover of DEAR PARIS was slipped in a pile of papers titled VARIOUS. I know you have piles like this. Admit it.This is the August 2020 letter titled The Dancer. I don't usually write what the letters say in my blog posts, but this one is nice and I love this broad, so here it is:

Dear Áine,I’ve been tracking The Lady. Her window faces my window. Our courtyards are divided by an ivy-covered stone wall so that we cannot see into each other’s courtyards but we can talk to each other from the windows. She calls out for her cat, I peer into my courtyard and report if the cat is on my side. She is a good mouser—the cat, not The Lady. I don’t know her name and by now it’s too late to ask. She’s ancient and wears a pillbox hat wherever she goes. I spoke with her on the street and asked if she was going on vacation like most of Paris in August. “Too old,” she said. “Don't want to spend the money to struggle on stairs by the sea. I have my own stairs in Paris for free. I just hope I don’t die in August. No one will be here for the party. All on holiday!” I asked about her health. “Same! But at my age I could ‘expire’ at any moment.” Then she went “Pouff” with her hands.So I’ve been keeping an eye out for both her and her cat. I have also recruited Christophe to report when he sees her on the street. Today I saw her dancing at the Sunday market. Every Sunday on rue Mouffetard there is music, dancing, and a sing-a-long. She was dancing with a handsome man. She had a sparkle in her eye that led me to believe there might be other reasons she’s not interested in going anywhere any time soon.JanicePS "Screen door slams, Mary's dress waves. Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays." - Bruce Springsteen, Thunder Road

And here's the December Paris Letter, which is also the last one... as in ever. Incroyable! When I sent out my final letter of the Paris Letters series, I felt the usual relief at being done a giant pile of mail, but also peace, like the air around me was thick with loving kindness. I don't know if it was emanating out from me or me coming into contact with something, but there was SOMETHING in the air. I thought I'd be more sad about it. The grief might arrive in January when I prep to send out a letter and... do not have a letter to send.Gulp.Sending letters is the best job ever. And to be the first who made it a success on Etsy, well, that's a feather in my cap as well. Now people are sending out all kinds of fun letter subscriptions.Why would I end this wonderful thing?Simply to do other things. It takes a lot of time to whip these out. I'm focusing on learning these days. Education. Oh rapture!I am offering online courses on all kinds of creative pursuits. I've often wanted to teach writing, creativity, hatching evil plans, but the learning platforms were clunky and tiresome. Now, technology has caught up to my vision. It's fan-ecourse-tastic!I'd also like to get back to blogging. It's funny how life works. A blog starts, it becomes a platform for a letter writing business that gets so big that the blog goes quiet. I'd like to just blog even though some say it's all sooooo 2015, but I don't care. I love it. And in this modern age, I created a letter writing business with letters sent in the mail, so I'm kind of into reverse technology.Thanks, reader. You're the best.Check out the writing courses here.