A Garden Party, a Tequila Valentine, and Amazing Quilts
Meet Your New French Tour Guide
I want to tell you all about France with Véro. Véro is a French tour guide who lived in Seattle for 23 years but is now in Paris. When COVID hit, the tour guide business obviously evaporated.
So what did she do? She reinvented her business, started live-streaming walks around Paris and other parts of France as restrictions allowed, opened a Patreon account, and began teaching French lessons on Zoom.
It is not easy to reinvent your career at any stage. I imagine Véro to be about my age, with a few decades' experience doing one thing and another, and I know that it can get a bit tiresome, having to rejuggle and reshuffle and reinvent and hustle all over again to get a new thing off the ground.
And yet she's done it with so much generosity and curiosity and passion. Now she has a big following of devoted armchair travelers on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.
My dad is one of those devoted followers. It drives him crazy to be stuck in the house and unable to wander the streets of Paris, his favorite place in the world. Now he watches her YouTube videos every day, and tells me, "You know, it's almost as good as walking around France myself. Almost."
If you're longing for a trip to Europe, or if you'd just like to spend a pleasant hour exploring a new place with a knowledgeable and spirited local, then I think you will love Véro.
Spring is Coming!
Let's Have a Garden Party!
I'm so excited about my next big Zoom event on March 10. I thought that with spring on the way, I might do an event about my first book, From the Ground Up: The Story of a First Garden. But I love the idea of having two authors in conversation, and when I thought about who I'd most like to hold an online garden party with, Abra Lee was the first person I thought of.
Abra and I have only met in person a few times over the years, but I've always been blown away by her passion and brilliance. Here's why I love her, and why you will love her, too:
She's a Southerner like me (Southerners just gravitate towards each other.) She's outspoken and funny as hell.
She's a Longwood Gardens Fellow, which is an incredibly prestigious horticulture fellowship that also took her to FRANCE, if you can imagine anything as dreamy as a horticultural study course in France.
She cares about history and heritage. Through her fellowship, her online presence, and in an upcoming book called Conquer the Soil, she researches and writes about the lives of Black horticulturalists whose remarkable stories have been overlooked for too long. Here's a talk she gave recently that absolutely electrified me.
Between our shared interest in the plant world, and our shared interest in going back through history to tell meaningful stories about lives that might've otherwise been overlooked...well, I think we have a lot to talk about!
So please join us for a Zoom garden party where I will talk a little about my book, Abra will talk about....well, EVERYTHING, and we will chat with you! Go here to register.
Fancy hats optional. When you register, I will send you a flowery cocktail recipe.
I had such a good time talking to you writers in January! The next one is scheduled for Wed, Feb 24 at 5 Pacific/8 Eastern and, at your request, we're going to talk about the editing and revising process. These events are free and I'd love it if you'd sign up here.
Also at your request...the next live art demo will be a landscape! Also free, also fun, just sign up here. Wed March 3, 5 Pacific/8 Eastern.
Also, for those of you who couldn't attend the last Dear Miss Kopp event, here's another one on Feb. 11. It'll be just like the first one, only the lovely folks at Mystery Lovers Bookshop will be hosting.
Also, as long as I'm listing Zoom events, you still have time to join me and Teresa Sabankaya as we talk about my book Flower Confidential and all things flowery on Feb 9.
This David Hockney Documentary is Delightful
Do you have Kanopy? You might have access to it through your local library. It's a documentary film channel, and it's absolutely brimming with good things to watch.
I adored this documentary about David Hockney, who at the (then) age of 70-something is stomping around the English countryside painting landscapes, with help from his assistant and partner Jean-Pierre. (Jean-Pierre not only does the heavy lifting, he also shows up with sandwiches and tea at the exact right moment. I might be in love with Jean-Pierre.)
If you're not into David Hockney, check out Kanopy anyway. It's loaded with good stuff.
Will You Be My Tequila Valentine?
It's blood orange season, which means it's time for my favorite tequila cocktail. I am not a fan of margaritas, but this little darling is fabulous. And if you're not into tequila, go take a look at this mouth-watering list of blood orange cocktails and make one for yourself.
My Tequila Valentine
1.5 oz good tequila, mezcal, or other agave-based spirit.
.25 oz Campari
.25 oz sweet vermouth
.25 oz dry vermouth
Fresh juice of one blood orange (about 2 oz).
Stir with ice and pour into a glass filled with crushed ice or ice cubes. Garnish with citrus slice or peel if you are so inclined.
Have You Danced with DJ Cassidy Today?
If you didn't obsessively watch every minute of the inauguration festivities, you might've missed DJ Cassidy's joyful "Pass the Mic" with Earth Wind & Fire and Kathy Sledge. This kid (he's 39, everyone's a kid to me now) has gone from being a wildly successful DJ to a guy at home who hosts musical legends on his YouTube channel. He is a pure delight. We're all stressed out in all kinds of ways right now, and I just thought you might like to spend a few minutes dancing around in your living room. Find it all on his YouTube channel. I go there every time I need a pick-me-up.
If You Can't Leave the House,
You Might As Well Draw It
I just launched a class on using one and two point perspective to draw interiors. Whether it's the inside of your own house, that cool Airbnb in France, a cafe, a museum...we see all kinds of interesting interiors when we travel (and when we don't). Watch a video and read all about it here.
Asked and Answered...
Ask me a question, and if I answer it here, I'll send you the book of your choice! This month's winner is Rayna from Beaverton, OR. She asks:
How do you know when you’re done writing a book? Is it when you are perfectly satisfied, or when the publisher says it’s done, or when you’ve run out of time with a deadline?
Such a good question! Answered in the video above, and you can see answers to a lot of other art and writing questions on YouTube.
Ask a Question, Win a Book
Most of you know the drill by now. Ask me a question and tell me which book you'd like to win. If I pick your question to answer in the next newsletter, I'll send you the book you chose. Please head over here to enter, and if you've entered before, ask the same question or a different one! I love all your questions and hope to get to all of them eventually. Only 15 people entered last month. Your chances are good!
The Quilters of Gee's Bend Are on Etsy
My grandmother made quilts out of leftover things. My favorites were the ones she made out of worn-out housecoats, with their silly patterns of bunnies and daffodils. But the quilters of Gee's Bend, Alabama took quilting to a whole other level. If you've never seen these amazing quilts, you're in for a treat. Start here to read about the new Etsy shop initiative (and grab a quilt if there are any left!) and follow those links to read more. Here's a wonderful documentary about these extraordinary artists going to see their work hanging in an art museum.
New Art in My Shop
Beaches! Cocktails! Feel free to stop by my little art shop anytime and have a poke around. You can always see new stuff on Instagram, too.
Book Club Chats and Virtual Events:
No Zoom? No Problem!
As you are by now quite well aware, I have my own damn Zoom account now, so if your book club would like to have a chat about one of my books, but nobody has a Zoom account...we can host it on my account. I'm always happy to do an online chat with a book club, and these days I'm also doing actual presentations, like the sort of thing I used to do on the road in the Before Times. So if you run a lecture series or any sort of event series and you need a virtual speaker, you can go here to see four types of virtual events I'm doing now. Feel free to pass this on if you know someone who's putting on these types of events right now.
I Can Send (Some) Signed Books to You
Some of you have written to me and asked if I have signed books for sale. Well, I do have small quantities of a few titles...or rather, my husband does. Supplies are limited, so get them while they last, and thank you sincerely for your patronage. Go here to browse and order.
What Are You Reading?
Honestly, this is not my usual type of book, but it was available from the library when I was out of books to read and it has been a big hit for my publisher. Turns out there's a reason for that: it's a wonderfully novel-like memoir by a therapist about what it's like to be a therapist and to be in therapy. Seriously, this book is about 90% of the way to a Liane Moriarty novel, or maybe a Meg Wolitzer novel. It's gossipy and warm and chatty and I loved it.