“While writing, I let go of everything, I cried a lot”

When we arrive, at 6 pm, the aperitif started without us. Aurélie Valognes, 38-year-old successful author, has taken a step ahead, in this case a few sips of red wine whose dress illuminates the stemmed glass which she holds with a firm and delicate hand. She has good news to celebrate with her editor: in three days, her latest novel, The vortex of life (Fayard, 288 pages, 18.90 euros), which tells the story of the last summer of a grandfather with Alzheimer’s disease with his grandson, has already sold 17,000 copies. Another box that promises to be. It is not the pandemic which will stop the meteoric rise of the “bestseller”. In seven years, she has established herself in the top 10 of the biggest sellers alongside Marc Levy, Guillaume Musso, Michel Bussi and others.

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Each year, she releases a novel at the end of March. In 2020, Born under a lucky star was published when bookstores closed. That did not prevent Aurélie Valognes from selling 150,000 of them. This year, she had decided to wait until April, but the Covid-19 is facetious and here she is publishing again in full confinement. She’s not complaining, obviously she already has “So lucky”. The young woman with diaphanous skin and blond hair that gives it an air of Goldilocks evokes, withholding a few sobs, the launch of her new opus by screen interposed in front of the booksellers who support her: “It was so moving. “ Aurélie Valognes is very sensitive, she cries a lot and easily, which sometimes causes embarrassing moments. But we are not there yet.

Quality of tapas

For now, she greets us by speaking with a machine-gun flow, as the great timid do, drowns us under information of varying importance, the birthday present her husband gave her – a karaoke microphone, her “Dream” -, her train journey from Dinard (Ille-et-Vilaine) where she lives with the said husband and their two children, her fed up with home schooling, the quality of the tapas arranged in ramekins in front of it. All while swallowing pickle on pickle between two sips of wine – we hope she doesn’t have a fragile stomach – and pulling on her striped skirt in blue white red, her lucky outfit, the one she is wearing for weddings.

The novelist receives us in the living room of a hotel in Saint-Germain-des-Prés that the owner has opened especially for her. They have become close. This is where“Aurélie”, as the boss calls her, writes her books. Or more exactly his first draft, folded in fifteen days at the rate of twelve hours a day. Yes, she is like that, Aurélie Valognes, not the type to bite her nails for ten years in front of the blank page, take the seed, friend writers. Obviously, when she arrives in Paris in mid-August to get started, she has already worked hard. “Once I have the idea – usually someone who is experiencing an injustice – I spend four months taking notes on my characters, I do research on their professional worlds or the themes that I approach, then I build a very detailed scene by scene plan with a twist in each chapter to keep the reader in suspense. “ An organization to the line for a result of formidable efficiency. If she writes so quickly, it is because for a long time she did not “Not had the luxury of having time” working forty hours a week while looking after her children, she explains.

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