Francisca Matteoli is author of the new book World Tour: Vintage Hotel Labels from the Collection of Gaston-Louis Vuitton as well as an internationally published and award-winning travel writer, contributing to Condé Nast Traveler and National Geographic, among others. Chilean, with a Scottish mother, she resides in Paris. Her books have been published in more than ten countries and translated in several languages worldwide. She is also the creator of the popular blog franciscamatteoli.com/blog.

What inspires your stories? 

Everything. My family story – Funny, sad, wonderful things or experiences, people, places… Inspirations can come from unlikely sources. If it touches me, it’s a good start.

Has your background influenced you in becoming a travel writer?

Definitely. I’ve always been surrounded by travelers and also by adventurers. My Scottish mother and my Chilean father knew the golden age of travel and were also driven by an intense curiosity. Thanks to them, I have been used to thinking that I belong in many places and am part of the world. That is why in all my books, I always write about a lot of different places and not just one. I feel blessed being able to mentally adapt from one side of the planet to another. I am not attached to one single place,  it’s important to be able to move and not to stick to only one culture or one mentality. So yes, like everyone I think, I have been influenced by my background and as I come from South America where everyone likes to tell stories, it was kind of natural for me to mix stories and travels.

How you choose your destinations?

It depends on my mood, what I want to talk about, where I give my travel talks,  my curiosity, or boredom, just for the pleasure of being elsewhere and seeing something different. I went to Shanghai recently to give a travel talk, and I was totally amazed – in a good way. The audiance was fantastic. The organisation incredible.  I never saw so much energy and enthusiasm.  It was really a discovery for me and I wrote several stories on my blog about this experience. I’ll certainly include this trip in my next book and I hope I can return. I am very curious to see how it is going to continue opening to the outside world.

How did you get started travelling?

With my family, when we left Chile to live in France. It was not only a travel, but also an incredible adventure. Epic, tragic, crazy… not a picnic, I can tell you!

How did you ge started writing?

First, I published some stories for magazines but  I really started to write seriously after I went to Rwanda with the French doctors and did a story for National Geographic. I wanted very much to write something about this experience so I went to see the editor of the magazine and asked him if he was interested by a story. I had never written for such an important magazine before but I knew that very few people had been to Rwanda in those conditions and had the opportunity to see the country from that angle and I felt that it was going to be a once in a lifetime experience. The editor of National Geographic said he was interested in a story, he asked a photographer from Magnum agency to join me, and that is how I started writing real travel stories. That was my first real work as a travel writer.

What is the biggest reward of life as a travel writer? 

Being able to change the false impression that somebody has on a country and people.

What was your favorite part about working on World Tour?

The 21 stories related to different destinations that brought back so many memories. I could write about places in the world that are really very special to me and mix adventure, humour, colorful characters, and extravaganza of a crazy time when travelers could live real adventures and not waste all their time stripping in the airports!

Did any place change you?

Rwanda of course, and all the experiences I shared with the French doctors and also Brazil where I lived for a while. All of those places make me understand that people are extremely complex, that there are a million ways of perciving things and places, and that life is a kaleidoscope. We never get to see all the colors or all the sides because they are changing all the time and we are changing too. But, it is so exciting to try to catch most of it, no?

Favorite summer destinations?

Greece, on a boat, because I love to swim and feel the freedom of an empty sea. England and the gardens for the peace and beauty. Scotland, Chile and the Atacama desert. I try to go to places where there is action, and also where you can contemplate and recuparate. In fact, I always wanted to be like Mary Poppins and jump into a destination like into a painting.

What are you working on?

A new book of travel stories and also a novel. I have no idea which one will be finished first!

World Tour: Vintage Hotel Labels from the Collection of Gaston-Louis Vuitton by Francisca Matteoli is available now wherever books are sold.

Patricia Barey and Therese Burson are writers and filmmakers who own an award-winning media  company. Ardent fans of Julia Child, they discovered she had a passion for pussycats and a recipe for living the good life: find something you love and do it every day.  For these two authors, that something was writing a book about Julia and her cats.

Julia’s Cats: Julia Child’s Life in the Company of Cats explores the beloved Queen of Cuisine’s lifelong passion for pussycats, which she discovered along with the other great loves of her life – French food and her true vocation – when she and husband Paul moved to Paris in 1948. Minette came to help rid their kitchen of mice, but the “sly, gay, cream-and-mud-colored little thing” won their hearts and became an essential part of their household.

The former dog owners began to notice cats everywhere in Paris. Paul photographed them lurking in alleys and doorways, basking on windowsills and prowling the gutters. Julia gushed, “They were such interesting, independent-minded creatures. I began to equate them with Paris.” (My Life in France, 35)

After those magical Paris years, there were always cats in Julia’s life, but no children of her own, so some have speculated that her feline fixation was merely misplaced maternal instinct. But as we delved deeper into Julia and Paul’s voluminous letters and diaries and spoke with people who knew her, we rejected such facile conclusions. The Julia we came to know simply adored cats, and they her. As Paul once wrote “a cat – any cat – is necessary” to Julia’s happiness.

Julia and cats were kindred spirits.  In fact, all of the feline qualities that she found endearing could be applied to Julia herself:  confident, curious, commanding (one of Julia’s classmates said she could be “imperious”), playful, spunky, always hungry, and with savoir-fare to spare.

All of Julia’s cats answered to some variation of Minou / Minette, the generic French term for “kitty,” and she loved them equally.  The country cats who hung around her kitchen in Provence acquired simple descriptive names, le gros Gris, “the big gray one,” “le Petit Prince,” the pampered one, and Minimere, “the little mama.”  Julia doted on Minimere because she kept their household supplied with adorable kittens.

The fertile kitty once gave Julia a “Mother’s Day” surprise she and Paul would never forget. When they arrived at La Pitchoune, they found Minimere predictably pregnant, so Julia made sure her dish was always overflowing, while Paul fretted that the little mama was looking for a cozy cupboard or warm bed to deliver her brood. They both went on kitten-watch. One evening, as they were savoring a ragout Provencale, the wily cat managed to slink in and find a closet-cum- wine cellar for her delivery room.  While arranging her nest, she sent several treasured bottles crashing to the floor.  Initial alarm soon turned to hoots of laughter, a fond toast to the feisty mother-to-be, and a new Julia-ism:  There’s no use crying over spilled wine.

To all mothers, including the four-legged kind:  “A votre santé !”

Julia’s Cats: Julia Child’s Life in the Company of Cats by Patricia Barey & Therese Burson is available wherever books are sold. 

April has passed and so has this year’s National Poetry Month. That hasn’t stopped me, however,  from sending around a few bonus poems and tracks as habits–even recently acquired ones–sometimes die hard.

Since I started sending a poem-a-day (more or less) to the US and UK staff six weeks ago, having started a week early when I was in Bologna,  you’ve received around 40 poems from more than 35  poets.

Mostly, they’ve been poems that I knew or had discovered or poems that I came across by chance or by association.  They are poems that, for some reason or another, struck me or poems that I had stashed in a “drafts folder” on my laptop waiting to be sent or not sent if or when the mood struck.

Usually, I sent them early in my day, often before full morning light and before my senses were completely about me. And I was mindful that, before I over-edited my choices, or gave in to my hesitations, before I thought too, too hard about the audience (you) for the poems, in other words, when there still seemed to be some “risk” involved via misinterpretation or the desire that they be liked by all or hated by some, that a “first principle” of trusting my instincts and embracing that risk would be my guide.

Often the poems were really ways of having others more talented than I describe the world as experienced or imagined as in a picture or a painting, a photograph, a film a song, a conversation conjured in images, in lines, in stanzas, in verses, in  words.

At other times they were to just see what might touch whom and how and when and to have others, if  I was lucky, let me know why.

In the end, the poems are and were just sketches by somewhat unreliable narrators–with yours truly as interlocutor–and signs pointing toward where I or you or they had been. Or, of where we might be going, where we wish we’d been, where we wanted to go. I hope that through these poems, these sketches, these reminders of things you knew but forgot or never knew but perhaps were vaguely reminded or remembered you had a chance to imagine yourself in a world of your making.

Me–for better or worse, I’ve lately been beset with a bad case of the “Emilys” as I am both deeply in thrall of and horribly confounded by an ongoing encounter with the Belle of Amherst.  She, whose thoughts and sounds, syllables and images as always both entice and elude and leave me, in the morning, at noon, in the dusk of evening and in the dark, starlit night in awe of her words:

The Red—Blaze—is the Morning—
The Violet—is Noon–
The Yellow—Day—is falling–
And after that—is none–

But Miles of Sparks—at Evening–
Reveal the Width that burned–
The Territory Argent—that
Never yet—consumed–

Michael Jacobs is President & CEO of ABRAMS.

Creativity isn’t 24/7. It doesn’t occur 9 to 5. It doesn’t have a schedule. Creativity rarely sticks around when I need it the most. Creativity loves to play games with my head. It keeps me awake at night when I would love to be sleeping. It lies dormant for days on end when I’m trying desperately to work on a project. Creativity likes to elude me. It hides and laughs at me from dark corners, it taunts me when I’m missing it so, it tells me I don’t deserve it in my life.

We’ve had poems scattered throughout the office by four anonymous staffers and it’s been great fun to discover the new ones each week.

For some reason, the refrigerators are always early targets. The white paper in the center is a reminder to keep the fridge tidy, not a poem. Butter and Oysters, however, are.

And speaking of festooning, conference room B got garlands of stars with poetry about stars…and that is a Factory Window poem on the window.

A Scotch poem, in a scotch bottle in the hallway, by Robert Burns (the poem of course, not the placement).

Twelve little lines in six little boxes, in the Open Design area.

Poetry with little badges reminding us to remember to be civil spirits was sprinkled lightly through the halls.

Of course it all starts at the front door.

The month is nearly over! Walk around and be inspired!

Merle Browne is Executive Assistant to ABRAMS CEO, Michael Jacobs.

In celebration of 4/20 ABRAMS has asked Ryan Nerz, author of Marajuanamerica (out this month) to post about the demon weed. Alfred Ryan Nerz is a freelance journalist whose pieces have appeared in Esquire, the Village Voice, and Time Out New York. In addition, he has written for NPR and produced television shows on Spike TV and the Biography channel.

Of the myriad theories that have been used to demonize weed, none has been more stubbornly persistent than the “gateway theory.” This theory claims that marijuana use may not be so harmful on its own, but that its real damage is that it leads to the abuse of more destructive drugs like heroin and cocaine.

On the surface, the gateway theory seems to hold water. If you go to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, it’s true that many addicts will begin their drug histories with a story about experimenting with pot. And there is some correlation there. In MARIJUANAMERICA, I readily concede that I might never have felt comfortable experimenting with psychedelics like mushrooms and Ecstasy had I not first discovered I liked marijuana’s effects. (That said, the illegality of marijuana also contributed to this, as black market weed dealers were the first people to offer me mushrooms and ecstasy.) And according to a study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a person who smokes marijuana is more than 104 times more likely to try cocaine than someone who hasn’t tried weed.

But I’m not a cokehead. My point is: correlation doesn’t imply cause. Numerous studies (like this one) have debunked the gateway theory for this reason. The fact is, marijuana is by far the most widely used (and available) illegal drug, so it would stand to reason that people would use it first. Further, drug use studies have shown that most Americans actually try alcohol and tobacco before they try marijuana. And a very small percentage of marijuana users go on to actually become addicted to weed.

In the words of Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, “the gateway theory is an ounce of truth embedded in a pound of bull…The notion that we should try to reduce the number of people getting addicted to heroin by focusing on adolescent use of marijuana is like trying to reduce motorcycle fatalities by discouraging bike riding.”

Marijuanamerica: One Man’s Quest to Understand America’s Dysfunctional Love Affair with Weed by Alfred Ryan Nerz (Abrams Image, 2013) is available now wherever books are sold.

Today is national Poem in Your Pocket Day! According to the Academy of American Poets, today is a day to select a poem, carry it with you, and share it with others throughout the day. Poem in Your Pocket is a big day at ABRAMS —including a trip to The Today Show with the children’s group to share some poetry and spread the word, as well as pocket-sized poems on the desk of every employee. (This morning’s poem was “Exultation is the going” by Emily Dickinson.) But this particular holiday is just one small part of April, National Poetry Month. You can learn more about how ABRAMS is celebrating National Poetry Month (with Tumblr and the Academy of American Poets) here on our blog. A poetry bomb of our entire office is just one small part of all the joy and sharing of this month.

Here is a fun video from the Academy of American Poets about Poem In Your Pocket Day:

Poem in Your Pocket and Poem in Your Pocket for Young Poets are both available wherever books are sold!
 

Morgan Dubin is a Publicity & Marketing Associate for ABRAMS. 

WHY KNOT? How to Tie More Than Sixty Ingenious, Useful, Beautiful, Livesaving, and Secure Knots! Written & Illustrated by “Man on Wire” Philippe Petit is available now wherever books are sold.

About the book:
On August 7, 1974, Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire illegally rigged between the New York World Trade Center’s twin towers, where he performed for nearly an hour. During this history-making walk, and many others throughout his celebrated career, knots have always been indispensable components—the guardian angels protecting his life in the sky.

After years of hands-on research, Philippe presents WHY KNOT?, a guide to tying his essential knots. Philippe’s own practical sketches illustrate original methods and clear, clever tying instructions. Photographs in which special knots were used during spectacular high-wire walks, quirky knot trivia, personal anecdotes, helpful tips, magic tricks, and special tying challenges ensure that, if you’re not already nuts for knots, Petit will transform you into a knot aficionado.

What people are saying:
“In reading Philippe’s book we are cogently reminded that without the ability to secure a rope, or tether a goat, or make fast the sheets of a galley, much of the civilization that we take for granted would disappear as easily as a slipknot in the hands of a Vegas conjuror.” —STING

“Philippe Petit is an artist of knots: We get taken and sprung free at the same time. This is a dynamic book, eclectic, fun, and practical. From Nabokov to the World Trade Center to improvised handcuffs! Wonderful.”
—COLUM McCANN

“Read this book and pop it in your pocket. . . . One day it may save your life!”
—MELISSA LEO

“This is not your normal book for Boy Scouts. This is for those with a sense of poetry—the poetry and the mystery of the Bowline in the Bight, the Highwayman’s Hitch, and the Monkey’s Fist—revealed to us by a man whose life depends on ropes and knots.”
—WERNER HERZOG

“Petit’s distinct and deeply insightful philosophy through the guise of mere knots forever binds us to surprising new joys.”
—ELIZABETH STREB

Today we are excited to celebrate the release of In the Shadow of Blackbirds by debut author Cat Winters! Read on to learn more about the book and the author’s inspiration behind writing it.

In 1918, the world seems on the verge of apocalypse. Americans roam the streets in gauze masks to ward off the deadly Spanish influenza, and the government ships young men to the front lines of a brutal war, creating an atmosphere of fear and confusion. Sixteen-year-old Mary Shelley Black watches as desperate mourners flock to séances and spirit photographers for comfort, but she herself has never believed in ghosts. During her bleakest moment, however, she’s forced to rethink her entire way of looking at life and death, for her first love—a boy who died in battle—returns in spirit form. But what does he want from her?

In The Shadow of Blackbirds has received two starred reviews!

“Winters’s masterful debut novel is an impressively researched marriage of the tragedies of wartime, the 1918 flu epidemic, the contemporaneous Spiritualism craze, and a chilling love story and mystery.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“More than anything, this is a story of the breaking point between sanity and madness, delivered in a straightforward and welcoming teen voice.” —Booklist, starred review

1) How and when did you decide you wanted to write books for young adults?

I had been struggling to get my work published in the adult fiction market for close to fifteen years before I made the switch to young adult fiction. My novels never fit into neat categories like “romance” or “chick lit,” so even when editors loved my adult fiction, the marketing departments would pass on my work, saying it was too risky and unmarketable.

During my struggling years, I had written a manuscript involving WWI, the 1918 Spanish influenza, and Spiritualism, but it never went anywhere. In 2009, I approached my agent, Barbara Poelle, about revisiting that story, and she urged me to keep the setting but to go in an entirely new direction with plot and characters. She also felt I should write the book as a YA novel—an idea I absolutely loved. Some of my favorite novels about the world’s darkest moments involve young narrators, and the decision to place a bright, logical, scientific-minded teenager into an illogical setting really appealed to me. I’ve found that writing YA fiction is far more liberating than writing adult fiction, and I currently can’t imagine writing anything else.

2)  What is your process for getting in the teen mindset?

I think most of us can’t ever completely shake our teenage years. When writing In the Shadow of Blackbirds, I summoned all the restlessness, stubbornness, frustration, and optimism I experienced back when I was a teen and poured those emotions into my protagonist, Mary Shelley Black (named after the author of Frankenstein).  Mary Shelley is braver and much more outspoken and scientific than I was as a teenager, but I was teased for being a “brainiac” in school, just like she’s called “monster brain.” I was also precocious like her, and I had a bad habit of smarting off to my mom, which made it easy to write the scenes involving Mary Shelley verbally sparring with her aunt Eva (sorry, Mom).

3) Tell us about your writing process. Do you have a favorite spot to write? Is there one thing you can’t write without?

These days, I tend to write most when my kids are in school. We have a south-facing extra room in the house that I use an office. South is the direction you want to face to receive the most light and warmth during rainy Oregon winters, so this aspect of the room is actually pretty important. For a change of scenery, I write in my nearest indie coffeehouse, surrounded by paintings by local artists and eclectic old furniture. There’s nothing I absolutely need to have with me to write except my laptop.

4) How did you celebrate when you found out In the Shadow of Blackbirds was set for publication?

My husband and kids were extraordinarily supportive and encouraging during my long years as a struggling writer, so we went out to a celebratory dinner that very evening. I learned of the book’s sale right before Halloween 2011, and I bought myself a somewhat terrifying bird balloon that my local grocery store happened to be selling at the time. I think it scared the kids, but it was perfect for celebrating the sale of this novel.

5) The book takes places in 1918 during the Spanish Influenza, what drew you to that time period? How did you conduct your research for the book?

I kept stumbling upon references to the belief in séances and supernatural photos—and frauds—during the World War I era, which piqued my interest in the time period. I wanted to know what made WWI so especially horrifying, and why people were so willing to believe in hoaxes. That’s when I first learned about the Spanish influenza, which hit at the same time as this nightmare of a war and ended up killing millions of people around the globe. The desperation then made sense.

To conduct research, I used reference books that covered everything from food rationing in WWI to Harry Houdini’s encounters with Spiritualism. I also pored over archival WWI letters, personal accounts of the Spanish influenza, 1918 photos (ten of which appear in the novel), silent films, newsreels, and literature from the time period. I’ve included links to some of my favorite research websites and reference books—and shared 1918 images and movies—at http://www.blackbirdsnovel.com.

Photo credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ds-01290

6) There are moments in the book that give me chills. What was it like to write the creepiest moments?

First of all, I’m thrilled to hear you got chills! I’ve always loved ghost stories from a very young age, and sometimes after my husband goes to bed, I stay up late reading eerie books or watching shows like Ghost Hunters…and then I’m terrified to walk though my house in the dark. As I was writing scenes in which Mary Shelley is lying in bed at night, wondering if someone is in the room with her, I drew upon all my own physical reactions to late-night fear—the sound of my heart echoing against the mattress, the feeling that the darkness is a living thing crowding around me. I love scaring myself like that, so those moments were highly enjoyable to write.

The most draining, excruciating scenes were the ones involving real-life horrors. I’ll refrain from giving specifics to avoid spoiling anything about the plot, but at one point I was so exhausted after an especially intense scene that I was half convinced I had the flu.

7) The story takes places in San Diego, and as you’re a California native, I assume this isn’t an accident. How did the city and its landmarks inspire you while you were writing?

I grew up in Orange County, about an hour to the north, but San Diego was the city in which I experienced all my major firsts in life: my first post-college job, the first years of my marriage, my first house purchase, and my first child. The city is near and dear to my heart, and I thoroughly enjoyed researching the roles some of my favorite landmarks—Balboa Park, the Santa Fe Depot, Horton Plaza—played in 1918.

One of my old beach hangouts, Coronado, is full of glamour and sunshine, yet across the street from the white sands you’ll find atmospheric old mansions that look like they could belong to the Addams Family or Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester. The island seemed the perfect site for the home of the Emberses, the fictional family at the center of the novel’s ghostly activities. I used to belong to the San Diego Historical Society, and I loved visiting all the historic homes of the region…several of which are purportedly haunted.

8) Pick your poison (so to speak): If you were living during 1918, which of the following remedies would you have tried: garlic-flavored gum, onions, or sugar cubes soaked in kerosene?

I think I would have chosen the onions to fight off the Spanish flu, even though I can’t handle onions in large quantities. Garlic-flavored gum sounds like it would be disgusting, and sugar cubes soaked in kerosene just seems dangerous. Yet…people tried those remedies out of desperation.

9) Are you a wizard at anagrams like Mary Shelley? Solve this puzzle: New Star Tic

When I first read this question, I panicked and worried I was about to look dumb by not being able to solve it, but a second later my mind unscrambled the answer: Cat Winters! Thanks for the test. I wouldn’t say I’m a wizard at anagrams, but I enjoy them. I created the two major In the Shadow of Blackbirds anagrams on my own, and it wasn’t until I finished crossing off all the letters and devised just the right word puzzles that I discovered the existence of anagram-creating websites.

10) What are you working on now?

Another gothic historical young adult novel. I’m keeping details under wraps for now, but I will give one clue: I hope the book will hypnotize readers.

In the Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters (Amulet Books, 2013) is available now wherever books are sold.

Cat Winters, author of In the Shadow of Blackbirds (Amulet Books, 2013), was born and raised near Disneyland in Southern California. She is the creator of suburbanvampire.blogspot.com, and she runs corsetsandcutlasses.wordpress.com, a group blog featuring authors of YA historical fiction. 

Laura Mihalick is Associate Manager for Children’s Marketing & Publicity at ABRAMS.