An American family, a French chateau, and a story being written in real time.
Let me set the scene.
I’m Kamille. Outside my window right now: two medieval towers, an ancient chapel, a river that has been running through this exact spot since before electricity was invented, and a forest that very much predates the United States.
How did I get here? That’s the whole story. And I’m writing it in real time, from inside it, which feels both very brave and very stupid. It would probably be wiser to wait until I had perspective, but that has never really been my genre.
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The Short Version
I grew up on the West Coast of the U.S., dreaming about castles the way you dream about things you’re fairly certain will never happen - like growing wings, or finding a parking spot at Trader Joe’s. Castles were for royalty. For people who said things like “we’ll summer by the Italian lakes.” Not for musicians living in Southern California with two kids and a working knowledge of grand estates that began and ended with Downton Abbey.
And yet.
Almost three years ago, my husband Sean and I looked at our life in California - the housing costs, the pace, the cost of a single avocado, the relentless networking-as-personality-type social culture - and decided it no longer fit. Sean and I are both musicians, which is a gentler way of saying we’re constitutionally allergic to lives that feel purely transactional. We weren’t running away. We were running toward something: more space, slower days, fresher food, seasons, history woven into the walls of everyday life. Room to make things without the constant pressure to monetize the making.
So we moved to France. Rented first, because we’re not total maniacs. Explored regions, learned the culture, figured out whether we actually liked living here versus just liked the idea of it.
(spoiler alert: we liked living here.)
And then, bit by bit, with careful planning, some creative financing, and the kind of stubborn optimism that makes sensible people nervous, we bought a French chateau.
Not a Versailles situation. More storybook than statecraft.
What This Substack Is
I write two things here, and they serve different hungers:
Life in France, Unfiltered is for anyone who has ever wondered what it actually looks and feels like to uproot your American life and land somewhere radically different. I write about the culture shocks (glorious and humbling), the French way of doing things that will make you question everything you thought you knew about time, appointments, and the appropriate hour to serve wine, raising kids in the French countryside, the language barrier and all its comedy, and what it means to slowly, awkwardly, deliciously become a local. Some posts are free. The full story lives on the paid side.
Castle Diaries is one of the places the paid subscription goes deeper, and it is not a glamour reel. It’s the behind-the-scenes renovation archive: the working document of two people restoring a historic property without fluent French, a local contractor network, or any prior experience that would qualify us for this. What things actually cost. How we got a French mortgage without a job in France. How you manage a major renovation across a language barrier. The ten thousand small decisions nobody talks about, but everyone attempting something like this desperately wants to know. If you want not just the beautiful parts, but the actual mechanics of how this life is being built, that’s what paid is for.
Where to Start
If you’re new here and slightly overwhelmed - welcome, that’s correct, this is a lot -here’s your map:
Come for the stories.
Start with Life in France, Unfiltered if you want the culture, the characters, the chaos. The neighbors alone are worth the subscription. (There is a man in the old mill next door who sends us face swap photos of himself and his dog. I am not elaborating further. You’ll have to read it.)
Come for the blueprint.
Start with Castle Diaries if you have your own version of a wild dream and you want to understand, practically and honestly, how a thing like this actually gets done.
Come for both.
This is what I’d recommend, because the truth is they’re the same story told at different depths. One is the feeling of this life. The other is the architecture of it.
After that, wander.
A Note on Why I’m Writing This
I’m not writing this because I have it figured out. I’m writing this because I spectacularly don’t, and it turns out that’s the more useful story anyway.
Our French is improving. The château is revealing itself slowly, like it’s deciding how much to trust us. Our kids are growing up bilingual, acquiring in real time what many adults spend years paying to fumble toward.
Here’s what nobody tells you about making a dream happen: the dreaming is the easy part. It requires nothing but imagination and a certain willingness to ignore practical people at dinner parties. The living of it is something else entirely - messier, funnier, harder, better.
I’m writing it all down. Buckle up.
À bientôt,
Kamille
If this is the kind of story you want to follow - the real version, not the highlight reel - I'd love to have you along for it.