Something About Me

Yes, my name is Marie-Claude, not Marie-Claire (the better-known magazine), and I often go by Marie to make it easier if I am not going to see you again and again. Some friends call me MC, and I often sign my emails that way. Claude is both a French boy and girl’s name, and those of my generation often know it from the Olympic skier Jean-Claude Killy. Now that I have explained my name and established that I am a grown-up woman, and a proud grandmother, let’s move on.

The French village where I was born is so close to Switzerland that Geneva has been ‘my’ city, besides me living there for a few years. That’s where I fly to when I visit my family, from Vancouver where I live with my husband. From the time I was a teenager, I always wanted to travel, intrigued by the people who came from all over the world to work in Geneva’s international organizations, some wearing their traditional clothes at work and on the streets. And so, one should be careful about what one wishes for: I did get to travel a lot, including living in four countries. My little niece in France even thought I lived in an airplane. After all, I always came out of, and return to, the airport.

I studied English in England then German in Germany. And I tried to learn Swiss-German, but I barely understood it better than I barely ever spoke it. I also spent three months attending a school in Spain. It became useful when I lived there, part of the time. My tongue of choice for writing is English. Writing in a second language has advantages, perhaps helping establish my ‘writing voice.’ It also has disadvantages because there is no such thing as being totally bilingual. This might be why I consider myself a slow writer.

Like most writers, I have always enjoyed writing, perhaps because I read a lot as a child. Attending university in California, where we lived for seventeen years, revived that passion. After graduating, I enrolled in a two-year online course at the London School of Journalism. Then, from one tutorial book to another and learning how to write travel stories, I created short stories, some still in the works. I also began working on a novel until something happened, and I devoted my time to writing a memoir. It is finally ready to leave the coop for the world of agents and publishers. I will introduce it on this website, along with sharing what else but more travel stories.