Upstairs, downstairs

The views are different and connected

I’ve just returned from ten days spent generously tucked into a fascinating group of people from Anchorage/Washington DC/San Francisco/Paris, all of us staying at Chateau de Thauvenay in Sancerre, France.

I was able to make a writing retreat of it, both researching the history of the village and its people for a potential new book, and also finishing off my work in progress (An Unlikely Prospect, August 2025).

With the plot finished, I needed to get up high to see the general shape of things, so I could fix the parts that didn’t connect, adding missing steps. (Above you see the view from my landing, a picture taken by Lynn Tsao.)

I also needed to go underground, to la cave, the chateau’s basement, to look more carefully at what was below the surface of my characters’ behavior, their history, the source of their fears. It was darker there, but not without light. It was damp.

Below, I saw evidence that my characters really worked and lived full lives before the events in the through line of the novel. And that this experience continues to shape the way they react in the novel’s present.

From their past, I saw different views on the world, which sometimes contrasted with the view from their current through line.

I learned that one past experience led to another, to different causes of their behavior.

Many rooms led away from the main corridor. I couldn’t enter them all. I didn’t have time. And frankly that limitation was not a bad thing. You can never explore every conceivable opportunity.

I’m not finished with this process. It continued in the airports, on the planes, and continues now at home as I write this newsletter. But soon I will have to stop, to pass it on to the editors.

I hope what you read in the finished novel conveys at least a little of what Thauvenay has revealed to me.

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Happy reading,

Shelley Blanton-Stroud