Colette O'Connor

Stories of Love, Family, and Fun in the City of Light

“Sweet, hilarious, and smart”

Available now on Amazon

"The way to know life is to love many things."

— Vincent van Gogh

Stories of Love, Family, and Fun in the City of Light

“A love letter to a family and a city”

Available now on Amazon

"There is nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars."

― Jack Kerouac

Stories of Love, Family, and Fun in the City of Light

“Whimsical…captures the essence of a joy-filled time of self-discovery in Paris”

Available now on Amazon

"A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving."

― Lao Tzu

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."

― Marcel Proust

"Not all who wander are lost."

― J.R.R. Tolkien

About Me

A writer inspired by all things winning and wonderful, I am the author of essays expressing the joy of adventure, the fun of travel, and the endless delights of happy, new horizons. Family and laughing and France are particular passions – themes that repeat in my writing.

Whether I find myself at home in the beachy bliss of the Monterey Bay Area of California, or afar in some curious yet captivating place where escapades call, I am enamored of the people, pleasures and pursuits that propel my pen to remember the humorous and beautiful, the charming and disarming, the zany and amazing: All the stories I love to discover in our wondrous world.

My award-winning essays have appeared in a plethora of publications, notably the “Best Travel Writing” and humor anthologies curated by Travelers’ Tales.

Out now is my travel memoir, An Apartment in Paris, a book of love, family and fun set in the City of Light.

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Stories

Essay collections are where much of my published work is found, keeping happy company with other writers’ wonderful stories of trips, treks, and sometimes hilarious adventures that make for compelling reading. Find such sample anthologies below, with links at the end of my entries to, if you’d like, add the collection to your travel writing library.

Bruno in the Afternoon

Featured in the Iron Horse Literary Review, Bruno in the Afternoon tells the tale of the quintessential French lover.

Submitting to Shasta

Included in this group of winning travel-writing essays, Submitting to Shasta describes how being one of four on a rope on a slope is hardly like enjoying the poetic adventure promised.

Sun Valley with Dad

In this collection of the year’s best travel essays, Sun Valley With Dad highlights how an adoring daughter is shown just how it’s done, on the ski hill as well as in life.

How I Got My Oh-La-La

How I Got My Oh-La-La joins this anthology of outstanding travel stories to reveal how to go from frump to fabulous in a few important French lingerie lessons.

The Latest

Fifteenth Annual Solas Awards

The Solas Awards are the Olympic Games of travel writing, where each year publishers of Travelers’ Tales, the prestigious and popular story anthologies, award medals to “the best travel writing today” in various competitive events. In the Fifteenth Annual Solas Awards recently announced, three of my essays – set in Paris and included in my book, An Apartment in Paris: Stories of Love, Family, and Fun in the City of Light – were honored with medals. On the winners’ podium are:

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Coaching

Are you a writer at work wanting help? A writer stymied or stalled or simply desiring advice? Sometimes it takes only a little coaching to coax the story along. With a B.A. in English from UC Berkeley, an MFA in Creative Writing from San José State University, and editorial expertise gleaned from work as a journalist, editor, and college instructor, I am a Writing Coach keen on guiding you through your project’s perplexities. Working together let’s solve all conundrums and whip your writing into something wonderful. Contact me for personal coaching details.

Journal

A startling anecdote here, a comic vignette there, and everywhere a story: Sometimes a writer just has to report on the sight or delight of the day. In this Journal find my dispatches from life, as I share short tales of the occasional moment’s marvel, miracle or unexpected run-in with wonder.

An Apartment in Paris

by Colette O'Connor | Mar 1, 2018 | Journal

When Colette O’Connor’s thoroughly American mother, who in a previous life likely lost her head to the guillotine, given how thoroughly French she felt, in this life lost her heart to an apartment in Paris, what else could Colette do? She quit her job, pocketed...

What’s Really the Story?

by Colette O'Connor | Feb 1, 2018 | Journal

I am so often asked, what makes a trip a story, a trek an adventure – what makes even a visit to friends in a nearby city something someone can find interesting? As I so often reply, it’s not about the travel, exactly. It’s not about the flight, the sights, the...