La Vie Creative

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

🎨 Join my 2026 Tour of Christmas in France 

https://tourwithabsolutely.com/celebrity-tours/christmas-in-paris-with-krystal-aka-miss-paris-photo-your-american-photographer-abroad/

Send us Fan Mail

Lisa Czarina Michaud is an American novelist. In 2009, she followed in the footsteps of her late jazz performing grandmother and moved to the City of Light. She has lived in many arrondissements in Paris before settling in a riverside village in the Seine-et-Marne region where she now lives with her husband, son, and cat Le Tigre. Her debut coming-of-age novel Slanted and Disenchanted came out last fall to critical acclaim and was named one of the best books of 2021 by A Book Wanderer.

Book blurb: 

She blew off college and started a band with that French kid. He ditched his girlfriend to go on tour with that girl with the bangs. And so it begins...

In 2001 when boybands and thongs assaulted pop culture, two college dropouts on Long Island form a band. In the basement. When Carla runs into Pete, the aloof French kid in town, the two form a secret connection that goes deeper than the music. Before heading out on their greasy dive bar cross-country tour, tragedy turns the world upside down forcing them to face adulthood and decide if the band is just a teenage dream or a gateway to freedom....and to each other?

Slanted and Disenchanted is the debut novel by Lisa Czarina Michaud. Told with conversational wit with quirky '90s pop culture references and rock snob winks, it's High Fidelity meets On the Road with elements of Patti Smith's Just Kids that explores sexual tension in friendships, the confusion of adulting, the love and chaos of family...and the soundtracks that get us through it all.

Links:
Lisa Czarina Michaud Author Website
Instagram
Slanted and Disenchanted at Barnes and Noble
Slanted and Disenchanted on Amazon

Support the show

🎨 Join my 2026 Tour of Christmas in France 

https://tourwithabsolutely.com/celebrity-tours/christmas-in-paris-with-krystal-aka-miss-paris-photo-your-american-photographer-abroad/

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

🎨 Join my 2026 Tour of Christmas in France 

https://tourwithabsolutely.com/celebrity-tours/christmas-in-paris-with-krystal-aka-miss-paris-photo-your-american-photographer-abroad/

Send us Fan Mail

Inspired by nature, our shared stories and the mythology of the world, Alana Clohessy creates her imaginings using graphite, paint and thread. Her interpretation of everyday things catapults the viewer to a world of whimsy and desire.

Alana was born in Ireland and to where her heart will always go back to. In 2012, she emigrated to Vancouver B.C. where she lived for seven years and worked internationally as an award winning Makeup & SFX Makeup Artist for Film and TV. She also holds a Masters of Science in Materials Science.

She now lives and works as a Visual Artist surrounded by bakeries, her plants and the Parisian light on the Left Bank in Paris, France.

Alana is currently working on a series in graphite, thread and photography exploring the folklore around the Irish Goddess Brigid as she moved through the ages and the impact society had on her standing in the community and the stories that were told. 

More About Alana's Work:

My work is part of a world that I want to be in. Memories of childhood, forests in Ireland and stories that were told, all feed the rich tapestry of my creations. As I have moved through the world each culture adds a thread to my inspiration. How words are formed in a foreign language to describe a mundane object anew. How people approach the world differently as you cross oceans. To travel is to be exposed to who you are and how little you truly know. Our differences expose us to our innate humanity and that connection strengthens our shared lives. I have always loved people and their multifaceted existence. Stories of who we are and how we understood the world. Mythology and folklore of our ancestors and the magic they once knew. I want to search the world for the magic that has been lost and rekindle a sense of wonder in those who have grown up too much to still believe. 

https://www.alanaclohessy.com/
https://www.instagram.com/alanaclohessyart/
https://www.alanaclohessy.com/newsletter-signup

Support the show

🎨 Join my 2026 Tour of Christmas in France 

https://tourwithabsolutely.com/celebrity-tours/christmas-in-paris-with-krystal-aka-miss-paris-photo-your-american-photographer-abroad/

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

🎨 Join my 2026 Tour of Christmas in France 

https://tourwithabsolutely.com/celebrity-tours/christmas-in-paris-with-krystal-aka-miss-paris-photo-your-american-photographer-abroad/

Send us Fan Mail

Gabrielle is a 27 years old artist.  After a fashion design school, she decided to experiment with

drawings by using any support she could find. Her long trips as a model were filled with loneliness and discoveries that she lays on notebooks, windows, and napkins of hotel rooms were her notebooks.

Cardboards, walls, and papers are covered by her imaginary world.

Her stories are light and authentic always led by spontaneity and sincerity.

She invites her audience to appropriate themselves to the tales she draws.  

https://www.instagram.com/gabrielle.rul/?hl=en

Support the show

🎨 Join my 2026 Tour of Christmas in France 

https://tourwithabsolutely.com/celebrity-tours/christmas-in-paris-with-krystal-aka-miss-paris-photo-your-american-photographer-abroad/

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

🎨 Join my 2026 Tour of Christmas in France 

https://tourwithabsolutely.com/celebrity-tours/christmas-in-paris-with-krystal-aka-miss-paris-photo-your-american-photographer-abroad/

Send us Fan Mail

Janis Commentz is a Mojave Desert painter known for her color-intense palette and loose brush strokes. She is a third generation Los Angeles artist who began drawing and painting early in life. As the daughter and niece of artists, she was surrounded by art materials and enjoyed trips to galleries and museums, as well as seasonal trips to the California coastal art colonies of  Laguna Beach and Carmel-by-the-Sea. She cannot remember a time when she was not drawing or painting. During Covid, some of her fondest art moments have been hosting a weekly Zoom painting group and encouraging other artists.

Commentz moved to the Mojave Desert after attending university to teach high school art and English. At the University of Redlands, she earned a B.A. in painting and British Literature and studied printmaking with John Nava, well-known for his tapestries at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. She holds an M.A. in Education from California State University at San Bernardino. She facilitated life drawing sessions for nearly a decade and teaches art classes locally and plein air workshops for the Joshua Tree National Park Desert Institute.

She exhibits in local galleries near Joshua Tree and Redlands. In February 2020, she opened her Etsy shop, French Press, a collection of paper goods inspired by her travel sketches and watercolors created in France where she fell in love with the City of Light and the French countryside.

Commentz has participated in the well-known Hwy 62 Open Studio Art Tours for 10 years and other local art festivals and fairs. Her artwork has been selected by local juried events such as the Joshua Tree National Park Juried Art Exposition, and she has been a gallery director in Joshua Tree.  She  lives with her husband near Joshua Tree, California, and they have two adult children. 

Janis Commentz blogs on her website at https://www.janiscommentz.com

Etsy Shop, French Press: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ArtbyJanisCommentz

Social Media

https://www.facebook.com/Janis-Commentz-Artist-396062120461462

https://www.instagram.com/janiscommentz

https://twitter.com/janisjtartist

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4B84hUf_aybphawObaxJSA

Support the show

🎨 Join my 2026 Tour of Christmas in France 

https://tourwithabsolutely.com/celebrity-tours/christmas-in-paris-with-krystal-aka-miss-paris-photo-your-american-photographer-abroad/

Send us Fan Mail

Support the show

🎨 Join my 2026 Tour of Christmas in France 

https://tourwithabsolutely.com/celebrity-tours/christmas-in-paris-with-krystal-aka-miss-paris-photo-your-american-photographer-abroad/

Send us Fan Mail

Lady Christina Consolé (Chrissy to her friends) is the creator and founder of Parisian Niche, your corner of the world for all things Parisian and French flaired.

A native New Yorker, whose main residence is still on New York City’s famously picturesque Upper East Side, Chrissy has been fortunate enough to have lived, worked, and studied in Paris and traveled extensively through France, Europe, and beyond.

​

Having worked for over twenty years in several leading French and Italian jewelry and accessory ateliers, as well as a leading American fashion house, Chrissy has developed an eye for detail, beauty, and luxury; where it can be found in the everyday and made accessible. Because Paris is for everyone.  

​

One of her main goals since young adulthood was to be fluent (and likewise, to be considered fluent by native speakers) in the French language.  After several years of intense and immersive linguistic studies, Chrissy is truly proud to hold a French B2 diploma from the French Ministry of Education (level set by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) and continues her studies and is on the path to obtain the highest level C1 / C2 diplomas.

Chrissy has been an avid and devoted reader since childhood and has parlayed this love into a successful book club, called Parisian Page Turners that is over 50 books deep (and still reading!)  This book club also enjoys the occasional “read aloud,” where Chrissy lends her own voice to the wonderful texts.  The book selections always vary in scope but remain faithful to one beloved setting – Paris and France.   

Passionate about all things Parisian and historical, Chrissy has never met a cup (or bowl) of chocolat chaud that she didn’t love.  She can’t wait for her many Parisian “cocoa crawls” as her first stop in Paris is always to indulge in luxurious, chocolatey goodness while overlooking the city.  And after all, isn’t a good chocolat chaud the ultimate gateway into Parisian gastronomic delights?

​

On the sporty side of French life, Chrissy is a lover of football (soccer) and considers herself a top fan of both PSG and NYCFC.  She can be found at many live matches on both sides of the pond.

Forever learning about the city, above all, Chrissy’s passion for all things Parisian has her constantly dreaming, planning, creating vision boards focused on Paris and travels, as well as looking forward to her next adventure “home to Paris.” After all, as famously penned by Lucy Maud Montgomery, in the words of her childhood literary heroine Anne Shirley, “looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them.”

https://www.parisianniche.com/

Support the show

🎨 Join my 2026 Tour of Christmas in France 

https://tourwithabsolutely.com/celebrity-tours/christmas-in-paris-with-krystal-aka-miss-paris-photo-your-american-photographer-abroad/