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Archive | Books and Posts from Denis Ledoux

In this category (Books and Posts from Denis Ledoux), I share excerpts from books—published and unpublished—I have written over the many years I have immersed myself in memoir writing.

There continues, after all these years, to be something about the genre that I find creative and satisfying—whether I am writing my own books or ghostwriting for others. (I have several dozens of these co-authored tomes on my shelves by now! It goes to show that, if you show up every day for 30 years to write, before you know it, you have a long list of titles!)

The books and posts from Denis Ledoux

The many stories in this category fall into several subsections and are drawn from the following books:

  • Here to Stay [an unpublished history of my seventeenth-century Canadian ancestors],
  • We Were Not Spoiled [co-written with my mother whose story it is]. The book covers the early life (to age 30) of a representative Franco-Mainer in the middle of the last century. People have said, “You have written the story of my mother!”
  • In Another Century [my as-yet unpublished account of seminary high-school experience]. My education and life during these years in the seminary resemble the nineteenth century more than they did the twentieth century in which I was living,
  • Marie Bilodeau [these are family stories that are composed from my memory of my grandmother and from some research], and
  • My Eye Fell Into the Soup [drawn from both a journal of Martha Blowen, my dear companion in life and in work, before she succumbed to cancer and from my concurrent journals].

In conclusion

I hope you enjoy these stories under the title of Books and Posts from Denis Ledoux. They are dear to me, and I hope they will prove interesting to you also.

Showing up for my memoir

Showing up for my memoir– again!

DL: This is a reprint of a post that appeared in September of 2022. It strikes me as pertinent for many readers of The Lifewriter’s Digest. The final publication of French Boy took another year. I republish this both to present a proven process and to own that I have my challenges, too. I’m not […]

How to Develop a Memoir

Excerpt from My Memoir French Boy: I come into the world.

DL: “I Come Into the World” is an excerpt from my memoir French Boy / A 1950s Franco-American Childhood. The use of Canadien, the French version of Canadian, in this text as everywhere in the memoir is to distinguish an English-speaking Canadian from a French-speaking one without resorting to the term French Canadian. [When was […]

French Boy best seller screen shot

French Boy Hits #1 in Best Seller ‘New England Memoirs’ List

The category best seller status on Amazon is fleeting but there was at least one moment in the past weekend when French Boy was #1 in “New England Memoirs.” That feels good—in fact, very good! I want to thank everyone who has bought a copy. To others, I ask you to please help to keep […]

How to Develop a Memoir

Interview with Denis Ledoux French Boy / A 1950s Franco-American Childhood

DL: The following interview I conducted with myself is available to anyone wishing to reproduce it in a blog, on a website on in print media. We ask only that you let us know  you are using the piece.
Q. Can you tell our readers what French Boy is about and why you were impelled to write your book? What was driving you to spend the time, energy, and money to get this book out into the world?
A. I wrote impelled by a strong desire to record the life of my community—the Francophone Canadian-American community of New England. This is a book about life in Franco-America in the 1950s. It uses my life as an organizing principle. A good memoir is not only about the individual who is its presenting subject but it is about something bigger, about some whole that the memoir subject is part of. I want to celebrate our experience. I do not want the world to forget we were here.
 
Q. Can you tell us how long it took from the time you conceived the book to the time you had it published? How many years did you spend in active writing? Were there long breaks in between active writing periods? If so, what happened to get you writing again?

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https://thememoirnetwork.com/french-boy-a-1950s-franco-american-childhood/

Press Release: French Boy / A 1950s Franco-American Childhood by Denis Ledoux

NOTE: You are invited to the book launch for French Boy! The links to attend live or via Zoom are at the end of this press release.

Re: French Boy / A 1950s Franco-American Childhood / Denis Ledoux, Soleil Press, 2024, 345 pages, photos, $19.95.

Contact: [email protected]

Release date: October 16, 2023

french boy book cover

“It was a surprise for me to discover as a child that French was not the majority language in Maine, let alone the US,” recalls Denis Ledoux of his Franco-American boyhood in his new memoir French Boy / A 1950s Franco-American Childhood. “I came to realize that my language and culture were marginal and not appreciated by the larger society.”

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Denis-family-1

Writing more Deeply: The pain in telling the truth

My new memoir, French Boy (due out in the summer of 2023), is about my childhood. Much about this time in my life has a context that is unique and consequently different from that of my contemporaries. This memoir has a place in the world of memoirs, and I want it to find that place, but writing it has also brought up some pain which I did not want. Once again, I found out that there is pain in telling the truth.

My parents were thoughtful and loving people so their behavior towards me is not an issue. I am not writing about a reprehensible or shameful experience. I am dealing with a more average pain that is both little for the world and big for me.

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Self-publishing Means extroversion

Self-Publishing Means Extroversion!

I am committed to independent publishing—even if self-publishing means extroversion . Ever since I realized two things, this has been my mode of publication.

This is what I understood many years ago

  • I have a much more solid and true sense of my audience than any publisher could have. (My first book, a collection of short stories—What Became of Them and Other Stories from Franco-America—outsold what I had read was the average sale of a collection published by a NYC publisher.)
  • One day, I heard this statement: “No matter how much you pay for child care, no one will ever wipe your baby’s tush with as much love and care as you do.” I realized that was true of my book. No one would take as much care of my books as I would.

So, why am I feeling some sort of hesitation?

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end stage before publication

Beginning the End Stage Before Publication

Last week, I realized I needed to acknowledge to myself that I was in the end stage before publication of writing my memoir. For one thing, I finally came up with a name—French Boy / Growing Up Franco-American—that I’m likely to keep. (So many titles in the trash!) This title reveals the content of the memoir—a good title has to position a book for its audience. A good title says: “This book is for you.”

My natural audience

Since I am a self-publisher, I am super aware of audience. While I believe that anyone might enjoy reading French Boy—do I flatter myself that it is insightful in presenting its theme?—but I know its natural audience is the Franco-American (francophone Canadian-American) who grew up in the mid-century. That is the person who will go on a search for such a book. That person will say, “I’ve been waiting for French Boy.”

That audience has searched for my mother’s memoir, We Were Not Spoiled, and has downloaded it several thousand times. I find that incredible that so many people have downloaded the life of an ordinary (albeit lovely) woman whose memoir spans the years 1921 to 1952. (I stopped the story in 1952 and then picked up the thread in French Boy.)

The readers for my own memoir are largely the same and so I am confident about reaching them. While I hope many, many different people will want to read my memoir, I don’t want to take my natural audience for granted. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]

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