Allez Lens !

I came home a few hours ago from a soccer game in Lens, my favorite team. The game in itself was not the best, but they won 1-0 and confirmed their leadership of French "Ligue 2" with 4 wins and a draw in 5 games. More than what happened on the field though, the continuous support by the fans, the intensity of the cheering and the volume of the singing during the whole game are what makes Lens so special.

The team is just starting its third season in a row in Ligue 2. Needless to say, for a club like this one, three seasons below the highest level that is Ligue 1 is an eternity. But tonight, there was more than 30,000 people inside the stadium to represent what we call here the "twelfth man".

Other teams are impressed to come play in that arena. They know that they will have to play against more than eleven adversaries. The most ferocious and fearsome of all will litterally surround them during ninety minutes.

I love that idea. Keep going, supporters. Help your team go back in the elite of French soccer. They can do it, and you deserve it.

"Allez Lens !"

Introduction

I decided to start a blog a while ago. I just never took the time to actually do it. As it turns out, it's my birthday today, and I figured it was as good as any other day to finally give it a try.


My name is Kevin Martin, I'm 27. French guy married to my amazing American wife, Dixie, photographer. We live in the North of France, where I was born and grew up. I work there in a nuclear power plant.

My first motivation to open a blog like that is to improve my English writing skills. As I mentioned, this is not my native language and the regular practice can only make me better. Of course, there's a reason why for that: I am a writer. Aspiring writer, to be more precise. I haven't had anything published yet anywhere. I haven't even submitted anything. But that idea sprang up in me a long time ago, and the need has only been growing since then.

A few years back, I wrote a few short stories, in French. They were science-fiction stories, probably not very good (I lost them since). I absolutely love SF and Fantasy. Sadly, the market for SF is extremely small in France. And that's without reducing it to short stories or novellas. This motivated me to start writing in English and have access to a bigger market (and probably more competitive too). Competition doesn't scare me though. I know my stories will probably be rejected about a thousand times before I even have a real feedback as to how I could improve them. The reward is just even more sweet when one of them is finally accepted somewhere. 

This blog won't be entirely dedicated to my "writing career" though. It will be a way for me to clear my mind; I will also write about sports, mostly soccer, about books and movies I enjoyed (or not), about science, my everyday life, politics (I'm a libertarian), maybe even philosophical wonderings, etc. Anything that I will think can be worth sharing actually.

So enough with this short introduction, I'll leave it there for now. I'll conclude with one of my favorite quotation by Voltaire, that is actually apocryphal, but which sums up my position about Freedom of Speech :

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."