Over the past few years, I’ve been targeted with advertisements to attend some rather glamourous writing retreats. You know the ones: a Byron Bay all-inclusive stay with sound baths and meditation; a river-cruise to ignite your next mystery manuscript; or perhaps even a three-month stay in a Tuscan Villa feasting on pappardelle and tomatoes that you planted, watered and harvested, all during the same retreat.  For me, the most appealing retreats are the ones that combine writing, wellness and...

Australiska Victoria Brownlee är matskribent och redaktör och är nu aktuell med debutboken Paris. Kärlek. Ost. 2016 tog hon sitt pick och pack och flyttade till Frankrike men funderar konstant på vart hon ska flytta härnäst. Här är Brownlees bästa weekendstad, favorithotell och plats i världen hon aldrig besöker igen.

Talking Location With author Victoria Brownlee – Paris to the Loire Valley... Deciding to set my first novel – Escape to the Paris Cheese Shop – in Paris was rather easy. It was a love story after all, and is there anywhere better to fall in love than in Paris? But where to next?

Escape to a French Farmhouse with Victoria Brownlee There’s never a wrong day to travel to France. But what about a visit to a farm? Deep in the heart of the French countryside. Just imagine. Well, now you don’t have to. Victoria Brownlee transports readers there in her latest novel.

From a young age, I’d always enjoyed writing. Whether it was notes to friends, love letters, emails, food blogs, essays or Christmas cards, I knew how to fill a page. And, like so many others, I dreamed of one day filling enough pages to write a novel. But it was such a daunting prospect. I was hung up on the idea that I needed a suitably big idea – something poignant and literary that I couldn’t quite determine – resulting in more than a few false starts ...

Cheese isn’t sexy. Nor particularly romantic. It’s not an aphrodisiac and it’s hardly beautiful (at least not conventionally). Eat too much of it and you’re guaranteed to feel pretty average. Feed it to your lover and enjoy that barnyard aroma that lingers on your fingers. See what I’m getting at? The unsexiness of cheese certainly poses a particular challenge when you’re trying to pit it at the heart of a romance novel, but does it have to be an unsurmountable one? And why persist ...

A Lazy Sunday in France Sundays in Paris are blissfully quiet. Early in the morning, there’s a sort of reverential silence that would feel out of place on any other day of the week. In an ideal world, the weather is sunny with a light breeze and I’ll fling open the shutters and enjoy the blue skies and the ringing of the church bells ...