Crossing the Loire is an important psychological moment, because France's most famous river is said to signal the climatic divide between north and south. But when Heidi Fuller-love and her French lover quit their respective lives - and comfortable centrally heated homes -in London and Versailles in the late 1980's, to live in a tiny French hamlet with twice as many cows as inhabitants, they discover they haven't just crossed a river, they have crossed over into a whole new way of life. Settling in an ancestral family hovel with no heating to speak of, just enough hot water to spit at and sadistic decorative elements and electrical facilities which would be the envy of Death Row, they struggle to survive in a world populated by colourful characters like Lenin-worshipping D'd, p're Renard whose wife 'no longer provides', Steamy Specs the Mata Hari of Mouzon, and Lulu, who lives with his brother, the 'little nutter' in the old house by the church and beguiles the village with endless accordion renditions of 'The Chicken Dance'. Initially treated with great kindness, when the young couple decide to set up their own business they find themselves pitting their wits against French bureaucracy and rural inertia, in a battle which threatens to drive them stark, raving barmy. Packed with twisted humour, sticky camembert and plumbing tales to make your hair stand on end, Crossing the Loire is a wicked, witty - and sometimes downright worrying - modern 'Clochemerle' about moving to rural France. Not for the faint of heart! Crossing the Loire 271 pages; Perfect bound; catalogue #04-0253 ISBN 1-4120-2425-0 If you enjoyed these extracts, you'll want to order "Crossing the Loire". You can order here: http://www.trafford.com/robots/04-0253.html List price: EUR$17.14 OR YOU CAN ORDER VIA PAYPAL AT SPECIAL REDUCED PRICE OF EUR$15.50 includes P&P for Europe here: For further information/extracts 'Crossing the Loire' see: http://monsite.wanadoo.fr/crossing.the.loire/

"Heidi Fuller-love has written a welcome antidote to all those jolly Frenchman books by Peter Mayle. This is a modern horror story about moving home, packed with wicked humour, sticky camembert and plumbing tales to make your hair stand on end. Definitely what I always secretly imagined was the true story behind all those jolly 'moving to France' tales." -- Tim (Pig) Storer, Pie manufacturer, Leicester "Well I'm French and I certainly recognise myself in this book -I suppose you could say that's the best praise anyone could ask for?" -- Marie Lamouroux, French housewife "Ms Fuller-love has taken French toilet humour to hitherto unconsidered heights." -- John Dunn, undertaker, Cornwall "Suffocatingly funny." -- Janet Astles, artist, Scunthorpe

Heidi Fuller-love was born in Kent, to a Dutch mother and an English father. After running a successful comedy cabaret venue near Lewisham, where the likes of Mike Myers (Austin Powers), and Jo Brand 'cut their teeth' - and guiding misguided Americans on tours of haunted London in her spare time - she moved to France in 1988 and opened a Chambres d'Hotes. Since then she has written and photographed features for hundreds of French interest magazines, both at home and abroad, and has regular columns in 'French magazine', 'Living France', 'Spanish Homes magazine', 'Design & Architecture' and many others. Her 'Notes from a Spanish Pueblo', a humorous account of buying and renovating a ruin in a tiny pueblo blanco lost in the heart of Andalusia, is a regular slot in 'Everything Spain' magazine. Heidi Fuller-love now divides her time between a charming hovel in Charente and a half-renovated ruin in Andalusia. Her next book, to be published shortly, is 'A Deadly Mix', the spine-chilling and highly evocative true story of the woman who inspired Flaubert to write Madame Bovary.

http://monsite.wanadoo.fr/fullerlove.freelance - this site showcases some of my recent freelance work http://www.travelintelligence.net/wsd/writers/writ_1166.html - this is a link to my travel features at Travel Intelligence http://monsite.wanadoo.fr/charenteliving - a parctical site about life in the Charente area of France.

Heidi Fuller-Love Heidi.fuller-love@wanadoo.fr