The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Reincarnation of Marie: A Love Reborn in Paris From the Pages of History by Jim Woodman

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

The Reincarnation of Marie: A Love Reborn in Paris From the Pages of History by Jim Woodman https://amzn.to/3LKi4LO Mariethestory.com For anyone who has ever felt the sting of loss or dared to dream of a love that could last beyond a lifetime, The Reincarnation of Marie is a journey through time that is sure to resonate. Facing enlistment in the Algerian War in 1950s Paris, French Army officer Yann Roussel had a heart heavy for the future. Seeking solace, he found The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff, the diary of a late French-Russian artist who’d lived in Paris in the late 1800s. The first woman's diary to ever be posthumously published (to bestselling success), its sensual details of a bohemian life cut short fascinated Roussel. But soon, fascination gave way to near madness when he found himself in love with the spirit of a dead woman. The Reincarnation of Marie, an epistolary, historical romance by Jim Woodman, tells the story of how Roussel’s obsession led to a doomed love affair with Marya, a haunted young art student with uncanny similarities to Bashkirtseff. Convinced he'd discovered Bashkirtseff’s spirit reincarnated, Roussel found the impossible love he'd been looking for—just on the eve of his leaving for war. Loosely based on a true story (and hints that author was the one fell in love with Marie), The Reincarnation of Marie is a rich narrative blurring historical reality with supernatural love. In the end, readers are left with one question: can love truly conquer all—even death?

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LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Voss, Chris Voss, one of the TikTokity, and chrisfossfacebook.com, all those crazy places on the interwebs in the sky. As always, we talk about stories. We love stories on the show.

People are the sum of all the stories they collected on their journey through life, and they're the fabric of who we are, and whether they're fictional or non-fictional. It's how we learn. It's how we entertain ourselves and all that good stuff. We have an amazing author on the show. We're going to be talking about his book and everything that went into it

and the amazing story and how he's trying to get it put out there on the big streaming channels and get it picked up for the, I think, the mid-screen, the small screen, or the big screen. Whatever screen you can get it on. Damn it. We're just trying to do that. The title of the book is called The Reincarnation of Marie, A Love Reborn in Paris from the Pages of History. June 8th, 2024, it came out.

Jim Woodman is. So welcome to the show. Give us your dot com so people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah. Sorry. Jim's my dad. I'm Henry. And the dot com is mariethestory.com.

Don't worry about it, Chris. I won't ask you for money. There you go. At least we know people know how to Google it. So you're Henry Woodman. That's right, baby. By habit. So tell us just a little bit about you. All right.

You know, I started my sort of, I was an entrepreneur, sort of a hedonist, opportunistic entrepreneur. But when I graduated college, I moved to Los Angeles and I thought to myself, yeah, I want to produce and direct movies. That's what I want to do. And of course that didn't happen. But while I was there, my dad, who was an author, wrote a memoir to a friend, sort of a tribute. And he's moving.

My sister picks it up and she says, what is this? And he explains it's a love story. Now, keep in mind, dad did not write love stories. So she said, wow, can I read it? She reads it. She loves it. She says, can I send it to Henry? Yeah.

So she sends it to me. She goes, this is amazing. It would make a great movie. Of course, I read it. I fall in love with it. And I'm thinking, dad, I got to buy this. He says, love with a book that my father wrote. I mean, please. So I call a friend of mine who at the time was producing a movie. I said, can you read this and just tell me what you think? So of course, he comes back three days later and he goes, this is amazing. We are meant to do this. Let's do this. Life gets in the way. He goes off into real estate. I go off doing travel films and game shows. Then I start a tech company, recently sold a tech company, and now going full circle saying, all right, now we're ready. Of course, 40 years later, we're publishing the book, which we just did. And then we're going to springboard that concept into a TV series that we're developing. Nice. There you go.

Nice TV series. Everything is streaming nowadays. So there's room for everything. And people love these romance novels. Is it a romance novel per se? Yeah, pretty much. And it's the opportunity, too. I mean, had I tried to do something 40 years ago, it was a handful of distributors, right? Yeah. Studios, and that was it! Right now, of course, there's a plethora of options on where this

thing can go and how it can get distributed so because of streaming there's a lot more content production it is a paranormal romance with historical fiction there you go there you go historical fiction people love this too it's very romantic because you know the history sometimes is more romantic than current day so give us a 30 000 overview what's inside the book so the book marie is actually a real person her her name in the late 1800s is marie basherseff and she was an artist and a writer. She did some paintings that are in museums around the world to this day. She wrote a book from 14 to 24 when she died.

She was young. She died of tuberculosis. Her book was called I Am the Most Interesting Book of All. And it was her journal that she wrote every day. And so two years after her death, her mom publishes the book and it becomes an international bestseller. It's about the thoughts and feelings of a young woman talking about things that, you know,

at the late 1800s, you just don't talk about, you know, masturbation and sexuality and virginity and things of that nature. That's Fridays. Yeah, no, that's taboo. So what happens is, you know, let's say 100 years later, a young guy picks up the book, the journal, he reads it and he falls in love with the written word.

He falls in love with Marie. He visits the place that she had visited. He finally gets the courage to go visit her tomb. She's in the largest tomb in Paris. And he finally realizes, you know what, this is crazy. I'm in love with a person who died 100 years earlier. This cannot happen. It's ridiculous. And of course, as the story goes, he finds her reincarnation. And that's the premise of the story is the fact that this soulmate connection whether it's through books or real life and do you reincarnate

there you go that's probably the whole reason i've been single all my life i've been seeing i've never married and i've been saving up for the divorce is half the reason i've been waiting and then i just never got tired of being happy so that's the other problem anyway so i just never married anyway that's that might be my problem my soulmate's on a different timeline that's right different metaverse or something who knows i probably need to die and then go into some other timeline and then i'll bump into her or probably probably with my luck she'll be in it the wrong timeline it's it's going to take us a few lifetimes to finally get together maybe explains everything that's going on right now so there you go well you know people

people like this fantasy of of soulmates why is soulmate so important to people why do you think that's such a draw for people on that subject of finding love finding their soulmate you know i think it's a draw because there's always the question that we ask as humans okay is this all there is and is there such a thing as soulmates or are we just destined to live this little teeny blip in time and history? So those questions, obviously, we don't answer the questions. Who knows? But it makes the question, are there other people out there? And the reason I'm publishing the book is really as a springboard for the television series, which does a far deeper dive where the working title now is slipping. We are slipping

through time. But the concept is there are people in your life today who may or may not have been part of your previous life or lives. And what's the deal? Are we paying back karma because we did something to them before? Are they paying us back for something good we did, you know, the sins of the father, the karmatic retribution, all of that stuff. And we also are exploring the concepts of time travel or, you know, this metaverse concept of, you know, every decision I make, I go in a different direction, right?

Had I not done that, where would I be today? Or had I not read the book and found that she is part of me? Had I not been looking for her? So does he read the book and start looking for her then? He does. He doesn't really look for her, but he fantasizes about her. He obviously dates women, and he compares those women to his dead romantic writer, you know, Marie. He finishes the date. He goes back to his place, and he reads her book, and imagines what it would be like with her.

So he's trying to see if that gal that he took on a date is the one? Yeah, not so much the one. She's not right for me and i don't know why then read the book and i'm like this is my my perfect match there you go i think i think a lot of people have that thing nowadays where they where they where they have a list of what they're looking for or person that they're looking for and they just never can find it because i don't know the list is pretty hard yeah i'm sorry chris i also think that marketing is telling us we have to meet this person we're going to be eternally happy with and

live happily ever after okay that's kind of a bit of a stretch in marketing jargon but really i'm going to meet the woman i'm going to be passionately in love with and we're always going to be happy and we're never going to have any issues and we're going to live holding hands forever we can be friends and we can understand and live but nothing is perfect yeah i mean what if she smells bad no i'm just kidding that's not women or don't do that it's usually men who smell bad the but you never know she might have like a really bad habit like leaving the toilet seat down or something. See what I did there? I don't think we explore that concept, but thanks for the thought.

Yes. If you write your second book, you put that somewhere in the series if you need content. But no, everyone gets told, your soulmate's going to come. And I'm 56. I'm like like they better hurry up and bloody get here because i'm running out of time eh so we we explore the concept a little bit more and much deeper in the tv series as i mentioned now what happens in her real life marie the the person who was from the 1800s she also had a pen pal

love letter relationship with another famous writer called ma pasal but she wrote as anonymous he did not know that she existed this is true in the series they happen to meet up and they have a a challenged encounter where he violates her. And what happens is he doesn't know it's her because they're in this love letter relationship. And so she writes in her journal, I will find you. In time, I will find you. This is true. So we in the series look at it like, okay, she needs to find him. Our protagonist in the series look at it like okay she needs to find him our protagonist in the series is a reincarnated mon parson and she's trying to right the wrong meaning she wants to get back at him even though they might be soul mates you know that adage that love and hate are two sides of the same coin? It's not that she doesn't love him, but she needs to straighten out the issue or right the wrong, if you will.

This is probably what's happening with my soulmate. She's out for revenge because I owe her money or something. That's part of what it is. I broke her lamp. You owe her in a previous life. I broke her lamp in a previous life, and I said I'd pay her back, and I never did. And she's hunting me for revenge. It's not going to be love when she finds me.

She's probably just beaming over the head with that. Now, that's showing your age. That's an I Dream of Jeannie thing. Yeah, that sounds like an I Dream of Jeannie thing. Is there a lamp in this book at all? An astronaut? Yeah. So when you read this book what made it stand

out to you as a as a terrific story what what was it that drew you to it when i read the first of all you know dad was a travel writer he's a great writer but never wrote this type of passionate love story which was very odd for my sister was shocked as was I so when we read it it was a departure but what was standing out was the the incredible passion and emotion that you get I mean I read it 40 years ago and I was in tears I read it a couple of months ago before I published it and I was was in tears again. And I've given it to several friends of mine. And every time I'm thinking, okay, maybe, you know, the world has changed. I get so many responses with this emotional attachment of, wow, I can feel the emotion

and the passion. And one of my mentors actually wrote me and he says, you know, I had to put it down towards the end because the emotions were too strong for me. Wow. That's a hell of a testament there. Yeah. He lost his wife a year and a half ago. But, you know, the fact of the matter is there is some, it's a very well-written, passionate little story about love and sort of that begging the question again, is there that somebody and, you know, is it, and obviously, if there is such a thing as soulmates, do we pass through times and not actually get together? Or do we make decisions like Chris and not find them? Or we've found some and we've walked away? Or we find somebody when we say yes to pretty much anything because we're in that frame of mind and we missed the opportunity yeah you didn't know so it happened

to me man i slept in on a saturday or something didn't go to starbucks and she was probably like in the car ahead of me and we just we just two ships passed in the night at barry manilow song or something yeah now they're all on social, so they're never going to find each other. Never going to find each other, yeah. It's just too busy. I'm probably on all the wrong lists. So there you go. But people love romance.

It's set up in Paris. I think that's always a romantic place to set a book, isn't it? Yeah, and Marie, the reason for the book, who wrote the journal 100 and some odd years ago in the late 1800s, she was a Ukrainian aristocrat whose family moved to Paris when she was very young. Right. So she was brought up in royalty. She was very much a feminist of her day you know she was very upset with the fact that she was a great artist and she wouldn't be allowed into a lot of the art academies and schools in Paris because she was a woman and it was it was vexing to her that the women didn't

get the the respect that she thought they were due so it was a it was a big deal. And then Paris for her was her hometown, you know, and that was where our protagonist reads about her, goes to the cafes where she went and the parks where she would paint and the apartment building where she had lived and just imagined what her life was like. There you go. It's quite interesting. In fact, it's over in France right now

as the Olympics being held. There you go. And the book was acquired by our protagonist. And in real life, you know, they have, this has been a decades long thing where along the Seine River, the one that they're saying is a bit polluted to swim, but along that river, they have these stalls of booksellers that in many cases sell these old

vintage books and so if you're an avid reader of these types of books it's like a treasure trove and maybe like a flea market where you're treasure hunting for the ideal stories because they're all there there you go so now what's the series what's your plan on the series it sounds like you kind of have it planned out a little bit i imagine if someone buys it they're probably sure the rights to do whatever the hell they want you know how they are sometimes so the concept we we sent the pilot to a crit you know there's a place called we screenplay that does the critique of pilots. And it said it was in, obviously, the top 5% of concepts because the concept of falling in love with somebody

who doesn't really exist through their writing, who then you find, and then there's this interplay. So what we've done with the series, or what we're doing with the series, better said, is we're doing a far deeper dive into her life our main character's name is Jonathan his life how he believes he has slipped through time as a kid and seen things that happened where you know she died of tuberculosis and he's seen her in a sanatorium but he wasn't sure what he was seeing. And so we get these pieces of

a puzzle throughout this series that come together in the end. And we then start to understand whose life in a previous timeline is now intertwined with lives in the current timeline. And what that means for us, is it the soulmate that we believed it was, or does it twist and turn and we're paying back karma for something we did, a sin that we had in a previous life? So those explanations sort of weave us through this timeline. And, you know, we don't know what the spirits are doing to us if they exist. We don't know what they're doing to us now if they affect our lives they go man what a crappy break that was i wonder how that happened or what a great break you know i'm lucky my guardian angel is looking out for me that's what i need

a guardian angel maybe that's what i should do maybe that is my soulmate a guardian angel right there up on your shoulder. Yeah, there you go. They're both devils, actually. That's the problem. Lifetime or the Hallmark Channel, this might be a great thing for them. Do they buy shows and make them? Everybody buys shows. It depends on how you do it. There's definitely an audience for a paranormal kind of a

spirit not not so much spiritual as it is sci-fi history romance i mean look at this a thing called outlander that was a huge success in the last several years and it's a story about a woman who you know somehow touches a tree and is transported through time and finds her love in another timeline she goes back and forth and that's kind of this paranormal romance concept that is appealing to a lot of people it's it's interesting how people just fall in love with this stuff but you know women love it we have a lot of romance novels on the show and everything i mean it's just it's just something people love i mean what do you and listen it adds another dimension of okay if i'm chris voss and i haven't found and i'm 56 and i haven't found my love is that me i'm gonna get one in another lifetime or did i do something

wrong in a previous lifetime that they're punishing me now or actually rewarding me because i feel pretty damn happy you know i would hope so because i feel ripped off at this point yeah but there's that audience of people who ask the questions you know we will constantly ask why are we here what's it all about is there somebody for us are these things that we hear about about you know sins of the father and karma do they exist and if so how does it play into my life yeah i probably just didn't like my soulmate that's probably what it was i was like no i don't you're on the hate side of the love and hate side yeah they're probably they probably were on the hate side of the love and hate side of the club. Yeah, they probably were on the wrong political party, and I was just like, I don't get to be my soulmate.

I can't be on your side of the whatever. It's probably like that or I don't know. They like Starbucks, and I like Dunkin' Donuts, and we just never met. That's probably the problem. Just never met. We just never got there. So do you see, since your dad wrote the book

i mean do you see any future maybe the story or the characters taking them on to future books i don't know if the book would go on as much as the tv series which i think has more opportunity because the book really is a springboard to the tv series. And the series essentially can go for multiple seasons because let's be honest, these are souls that can be reincarnated anytime in place that we want, right? So the fact of the matter is, if it does well, and they go, man, what a great concept, I love it. And people are really into this whole interweaving of lifestyles and how they affect past and present okay in a future or a past or a different time or location what do we find right whether it's in you know here's what we're going to see them finally getting together because if you know they've

righted the wrong and now we're trying to get back so that we can have that utopian life that's where the opportunity for multiple seasons go and because my dad wrote it and i haven't changed a word then it goes pretty much that's where it is this is the springboard and ironically when i spoke to the publisher i said listen i need i'm lazy and i don't like to read and i'm sure there are people like me do i get a voice talent for the audio version and she says you know you have a pretty good voice you should do it you should do it and i'm like yeah you know i'm really not an actor or voice talent or anything but you know what for as a tribute to dad let me do it so there's an audio book and sadly you'd have to listen to me for that period. In addition,

there's a piano little transitions from Chopin that was mentioned multiple times in the book, Chopin pieces that is done by my nephew. So the father wrote it, the son published it and the grandson does audio and, and voiceover. And the grandson does the music transitions. There you go. Now you just need a Holy ghost, the father, son, the Holy the music transitions. There you go.

Now you just need a Holy Ghost, the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. You've got to try it. There you go. Family affair, baby. Family affair. What haven't we discussed or covered about the book that you want to tease out to people to get them to pick it up? I think the big thing about it is, as I've mentioned multiple times, is the concept of

reincarnation. Some people believe that exists or the concept of time travel or slipping through time or, you know, nowadays with the metaverse and we're starting to find these interesting concepts of, is there another me? And I kind of went left when I should have gone to the guy that went right.

He ended up with my soulmate, and do I have to wait another life? So these concepts are ever-present as we start to explore our mind and our world, that we're such a tiny little speck in the universe, right? How do we grapple with that concept? Now, the book does a good job of grappling with a very slim area of reincarnation. The TV series will go far deeper. And, you know, listen, Chris, if you or anybody else wants more information on where we're going with this, there's the website mariethestory.com. And it outlines a book, my dad is the author, and the tv series with my partner doug there you go marie the story.com

you got it yeah i mean you could just this could be an endless series because you know you could just hop around timelines and skip around and and don't they do that with highlander the movie they do it with a lot of things and and the other thing that you can imagine is you can also incorporate listen there are so many historical fictions or historical figures out there that you could create this fiction around because you know i i imagine most of us have not heard of marie barsker seth but if we lived 120 years ago her book was a bestseller. She was a phenomenon, right? And it was all the rage.

So you have to know there are people around the world in different countries that have done amazing things that would make for a great story incorporated into this type of genre. There you go. People love these stories too, women they love we have a lot of i'm very two or three hundred romance novels on the show they you know these books sell it's hot cakes so they especially beach reads so there you go so give us your final thoughts as we go out the dot com where people can pick up the book and final pitch out to people as we go out sure obviously the the book is called the reincarnation of marie the dot com is marie the story dot com the tv series that would will be springboarded off or the concept from this is now called slipping but who knows somebody's going to change that into something else they want so all of those things follow the same general premise you know is there such a thing as soulmates and if there is how do we find them are they through time is there such thing as

reincarnation is it time travel what's it all about obviously we don't know the answers to all of that, but we pose them in a very eloquent and passionate way. There you go. And I won't even tell you how it ends because that's for the leaders to figure out. That's the one thing about novels. We can't ever give away the middle

and the ending because you got to buy the book, darn it, people will find out so there you go it's been wonderful to have you on the show thank you for coming on we really appreciate it thank you chris i appreciate it thanks to everybody who got this far there you go thanks for tuning in order the book where refined books are sold it's called the reincarnation of marie a love rebornborn in Paris from the Pages of History. Jim Woodman was the author.

Mr. Woodman was the father. It came out June 8th, 2024. Get it wherever fine books are sold. Go to goodreads.com, FortressCrisfoss, LinkedIn.com, FortressCrisfoss, Crisfoss1 on the TikTokity and all those crazy places on the internet. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe.

We'll see you guys next time. And that should do it. Peace out.