Mia Olivier
Sunny, Weird and Not That Glamorous:
Mia Olivier's Riviera Rebirth and The Ugh Project
From Ghosted to Ghostwriter's Revenge: Starting Over in France with Limited French, Taming the Paperwork, and Publishing a First Novel.
" It's sunny and
you have a lot of weird people.
There's a lot of darkness here too. That's kind of why I love it."
When the work stops
In California, Mia had always worked for herself; freelance projects, small businesses, her own ventures. In France, that professional life went quiet. "I didn't, is really the truth. I had my professional life in California, and then I focused on raising my kids." She doesn't regret the pause; she regrets the terms. "I just wish I'd had a much firmer agreement with my ex-partner so that I didn't end up in the situation that I'm in during our divorce."
Starting projects inside a bad marriage proved nearly impossible. Then came the administration. She calls French paperwork "absolutely unhinged" and "soul-destroying", and describes the mentality around it as one that quietly discourages creative people from finishing things: "If you want creative people to do their thing, it needs to be easy to start and finish things, and I think it's quite heavy in France."
Three separate times, she paid people to handle her admin. Three separate times, they took the money and did nothing. "You call them out on it, and they just don't care."
One decision led to the next
Mia Olivier is a pen name, and also a character. The woman behind both was born in Sweden, moved across Europe as a child of a father whose work kept relocating the family, and spent years in California building a creative career and raising children. The South of France was never the plan. "It was more just this desire to go back to Europe. We don't come from the same country, so there was no back to go to. So we chose another place that we thought was a good idea."
That good idea became something more complicated. Once the marriage ended, the move stopped being a shared choice and became a circumstance. "It's both by choice and by circumstance that I'm here, I suppose." Finding a spot really high up and going there at night to watch the stars, she says, is the most iconic thing you can do in the region "that is not the most Riviera thing you want to hear probably."
The language of a place that doesn't need yours
Her French was limited when she arrived, with small children and no time to immerse herself. What she found was a paradox: the international community here is so large that you never actually have to learn. "I felt a little bit stuck between wanting to learn it, not having time, but also not really needing to, to be honest."
She also met an attitude she has only encountered in France: "I've had to explain to people that I'm not stupid because I don't speak their language. And that's not an enjoyable conversation to have." Years on, she gets by day-to-day, but deep friendships in French remain out of reach, and she still gets insulted when her French isn't good enough. "In those moments, I just want to scream at them, like, should we do it in one of my other languages then?"
Photos and visuals courtesy of Mia Olivier. All rights reserved.
The book that had to be written
Like so many women, Mia left her marriage during COVID. Then came a pause, the dating scene, and what she calls "some really interesting experiences" in new constellations. She began writing them down. Somewhere around 75,000 words, she found herself standing at the edge of a cliff with a single thought: "I need to write this book."
"I sat down, and the words started pouring out of my hands, and they just kept pouring out."
The novel took six months. She didn't research how to write one. Her background in performance art and "new genres" taught her to learn what a project demands, not the other way around. The editing was brutal: around 50,000 words cut from the final manuscript. The trigger to commit fully was almost comically on-brand: a business partner ghosted her mid-project. "I thought that was hilarious, and I thought, wow, this is my sign. There's nothing left to lose, I'm just gonna write."
There was also a quieter motive. Her late father always dreamed she would become a writer. "Wherever he is, I hope he's excited."
"I like it when the villages are a bit grubby, when they're not fully developed and when they have a lot of flaws, because then they're real."
Publishing on her own terms
Finished manuscript in hand, she researched every publishing route and chose a hybrid publisher, a collective of European creatives, to keep full artistic control without going it alone. The novel is called The Ugh Project, "because I think dating is ugh, and most people who date would agree." The French title is Beurk, suggested by a friend, and she can't even pronounce it, which she finds perfect.
The Kickstarter funded in under two hours, after months of stacking announcements, and some truly shameless self-promotion where she went back onto the dating apps, in character, to promote the book. She got banned from most of them. "I decided to do a lot of creative publishing stunts on the dating apps. I got banned."
"I've come to appreciate the multitude of currencies: time, sunshine, friendships, winter swims."
What starting over teaches you
Looking back over Sweden, California and France, Mia is clear-eyed about what relocation costs and what it gives. "I don't think starting over is something you should be afraid of, but I think realising that there's going to be components of loneliness and struggle and it's not necessarily easy finding your people." Close friends, she says, are easy to find; the peripheral community that makes you feel like a person somewhere is the hard part, especially in a place this transient, where friendships can move away mid-investment.
Publishing the novel has been the biggest project of her life, and the most clarifying: "There were moments almost every day that I felt: this is what I want to do for the rest of my life." More books are coming: Mia the character will get a past and, possibly, the happy ending a friend keeps lobbying for.
Her advice to a woman arriving today, unsure whether to stay?
"I don't think you should stay if you're not happy. I think you should find what makes your heart happy."
About Mia
Find Mia's book:
Kickstarter: Mia Olivier's "The Ugh Project"
Publisher: Drishti Publishing
Instagram: @miapocalypse
Mia Olivier is the pen name of a Swedish-born artist and creative consultant who has lived and worked across Europe and the United States. After years in California, she relocated to the South of France with her family. Her debut novel, The Ugh Project, a funny, dark and sexy chronicle of dating after divorce, was published by Drishti Publishing and funded on Kickstarter in under two hours.
A French edition, Beurk, is in the works.
Follow her on Instagram @miapocalypse or via her publisher, Drishti Publishing.
A full transcript of Cecile's conversation with Mia is available here.
More Women Who Create Their Own Path
Mia turned the messiest chapter of her life into a novel. But she's not the only guest who rebuilt a working life around creativity, in one form or another.
If her story of reinvention through creativity resonates with you, you may also enjoy Lizzy, whose jazz career continues to light up Riviera nights, Nita, who carried her highly regulated architect's practice across borders and relearned a whole new way of working, Roberta, who traded film production in Brazil for superyachts in Barcelona before settling in France, Suzanne, who reinvented her career with every move from air hostess to cake artist, and Faye, who found love on the Riviera and swapped film sets for the yoga studio.
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