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How to publish a novel

How to publish a novel

I'm going to tell you something a bit strange. Three years ago, when I left Paris, I went to live in a small village in the Alps, very close to Geneva, in Annecy. As soon as I settled there, I visited the enormous church in the middle of the forest, visible from all over the village, La Visitation, whose single tower reaches heavenward. And I discovered that the body of a certain Saint Francis de Sales rests to the left of the altar.

The name sounded familiar, from the Salesian centers, but nothing more. Reading about the church, I learned that Francis is the patron saint of writers. And I was very moved! I'm not at all religious, but I have a mystical side, perhaps from having grown up on the same streets of Úbeda that inspired Saint John of the Cross, and I took advantage of it. So I made the pilgrimage to the church several times to tell him how my budding novel, The Peninsula of Empty Houses , was progressing. Until one day I decided to take him flowers and ask him something: "Francisco, can you grant me the Montserrat Roig scholarship? It would give me a great boost in my career, which is completely stalled." Two weeks later, I won it!

“I prayed to the saint to win the Montserrat Roig scholarship; my career was completely stalled; two weeks later, I won it!”

However, I wasn't sure if it had been a coincidence. Only the habit creates the monk. So I decided to ask him for something impossible to see if he was helping me or not. The day before submitting my project for the Leonardo scholarship, I went up to the temple again and this time meditated for an hour in front of the saint's relics, and I hid beneath his remains, elevated in a chest, the thousand pages I had drafted for the future novel. Benoît, my French ex-husband, ridiculed me, since I had spent a fortune printing the manuscript—the printing press in the small Alpine village is doing a lot, and the saint doesn't have a USB slot... I meditated and proposed a deal: "Give me the Leonardo scholarship and, in return, I'll wear a medal of yours every time I write and I'll tell everyone about you"—here I am. And the miracle happened! I was awarded the Leonardo, the same year as the Montserrat. So, being a man of my word, I kept my word.

Medal of Saint Francis de Sales

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Two weeks later, I searched an online antique shop for a Francis de Sales medallion. I found one from the 19th century and bought it. However, when it arrived, I discovered it wasn't half a centimeter as I thought it was, but larger than a two-euro coin. So now I wander around the world carrying the ostentatious medallion, resembling the elder brother of a brotherhood. But everything has a price! And while I know that scholarships are the fruit of many years of sowing and work, I don't just write about the real and the magical, I also like to believe in it.

As they say in my town: We don't know if God exists, but our patron saint, the Virgin of Tíscar, does! Well, that's it. I already told you the easiest way to publish, because Sales also granted me the interest in Siruela, and more things are on the way. Amen!

lavanguardia

lavanguardia

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