Returning to the Love Story
an introduction to this space for my latest subscribers
This is a post for the 100+ people who’ve decided to take a chance on if not, Paris in the past few months. Because while I might not know most of you in the “real world,” since we’re now connected in one of the most valuable communities I’ve ever known, it feels rude not to introduce myself.
My name is Samuél Lopez-Barrantes. I’m a Spanish-American twin born in the south of France. I grew up in North Carolina, spent my academic years in Vermont, and have been living in Paris for the past thirteen years. I tend to write about what makes people tick: I am fascinated by the human pursuit of meaning in all of its beautiful, strange, and sometimes terrifying forms.
the first novel—a bust
From 2010-2012, I wrote a shite first novel (story was decent; characters were flat; prose was canned) about a disillusioned American journalist whose fear-mongering government stokes real fears before subduing the population with mass-marketed anti-anxiety meds. Exactly three people ever read that book, but one day, maybe, I’ll have the stomach to look at it again and salvage a few tales.
the second novel—a “success”
I wrote my second novel in a frenzy without any hope or despair of publishing it, which is of course why it ended up being published in 2015 by Inkshares Press (San Francisco, USA).
Slim and The Beast is narrated by a bartender whose voice sounds like Sam Elliott in my head. It is a coming-of-age story about a disgruntled war veteran, an NCAA basketball phenom with a passion for cooking, and the importance of male intimacy (I was missing my twin brother a lot when I wrote that tale. He is an illustrator on Substack. He’s great).
Recently, I bought back the rights to Slim and The Beast because I wanted to be able to sell my own book without giving all the money to Jeff Bezos. If you’re so inclined, you can buy it here.
my life as a musician
Soon after I went on a small-but-profoundly-validating-book-tour, Slim and The Beast took on new meaning as an indie-pop band in Paris. My twin brother joined the group in 2016, and even moved to Paris in 2019 for the project (he’s still here by the way—my plan worked!).
Although our band’s paths diverged in August, 2022, it was a glorious, memorable journey; I joke that I reached the zenith of my music career playing in front of 5,000 people at Paris’ Zenith Arena on March 7, 2020, just hours before France banned large public gatherings and the world changed irrevocably, which brings me to
How to Fall in Love During a Global Pandemic,
an ongoing autobiographical novella I’ve serialized on Substack based on tens of thousands of text messages, diary entries, and writings from the spring of 2020.
On February 28, 2020 (Leap Day), I met Augusta, a New Orleans-based photographer, in my local Parisian dive. At the time, Slim and The Beast was preparing to go on a month-long European tour, opening for a killer band called Caravan Palace.
We’d worked hard to get to where we were. We were on the precipice. And in the words of John Lennon, life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.
During the first lockdown, Augusta and I texted daily about everything and nothing, me from my 20m2 apartment in Belleville, her from her apartment in the Fontainebleau neighborhood of New Orleans.
And then, slowly and surely (and according to many of our friends, impossibly), we began to fall in love via video chats and text messages without ever having held hands.
In early August, 2020, we decided to see if our digital love could exist in the real world. I packed a bag and flew to Newark, NJ, where we joked that it would be somewhat tragic if we didn’t like how the other one kissed.
We did. During the first two weeks of quarantine in a wifi-less cabin, me and
realized we were already building a life together, which is why almost one year to the day after we began texting, Augusta and I were married in her parents’ backyard in Connecticut before we flew back to Paris, where we now live at Bastille.Just exactly how writing brought us brings us together is the story of How to Fall in Love During a Global Pandemic. I will resume sharing serialized chapters in addition to more weekly posts—the novella’s first four chapters are free, and subsequent chapters are partially paywalled.
The next chapter starts like this:
Ch. 10:
March 20, 2020
20:19 - Samuél: Being able to speak to you daily is a godsend, especially as the days turn into weeks.
20:20 - Augusta: I feel the same really, glad to hear you do too. If it ever feels like you’re carrying me though and you gotta tune out just lmk. I figure you’ve got a lot of conversations going, and a lot to give. Don’t want to hoard it all to myself.
20:21 - Samuél: You're sweet. But you're not hoarding. I'm actively talking to you a lot because it makes my day better.
20:21 - Augusta: Ok. Fair. Good. You’re welcome, and thank you. I feel really lucky. Have a great night, Samuél.
20:23 - Samuél: Ditto. Although I'll surely bother you at some point before I go to sleep.
20:23 - Augusta: Please do.
Well, at least you got the first novel out of your way. I read that alot: that the first one is going to be really bad and is only for your drawer, if at all. Mind you, I'm still working on that one, the first one, the one which is just for my drawer.
Hey, happy I happened upon your stack. Huge fan of Paris here. Looking forward to reading your pandemic love story!