Interview - Catherine Delors, author of Mistress of the Revolution

Today's 5 Q&A is with Catherine Delors, author of Mistress of the Revolution.






1.) Who are you?
I was born and raised in France. I got my law degree at the Sorbonne and became an attorney in Paris at the age of twenty-one.

Later I moved to the United States and became a member of the State Bar of California. I worked at a few large law firms, then, after the birth of my son, set up my own practice. I now split my time between Los Angeles and Paris, two wonderful cities, each in its own right.

2.) How much fun was it to write this book?
A lot. Indeed for over a year, most of the fun in my life was focused on writing Mistress of the Revolution. It was a time when I was very unhappy and many things seemed hopeless. I discovered that writing brought me the joy, the freedom, the security, the sense of purpose I was otherwise missing. Once I began to find those things again outside my novel, I was hooked! Now I cannot imagine life without writing.

3.) Did you come to love your characters, as they developed?
Absolutely. I love those characters, even those who are not very nice. I enjoyed creating them all. I am thinking in particular of Gabrielle’s atrocious first husband, and also of the Count de Villers, a great favorite with my early readers. In a way, I even felt that those fictional people had too much of a grip on my mind after I stopped writing Mistress of the Revolution. The cure was easy: get run along with a new set of characters, those of my second book.

4.)Did you go to the geographical locations you describe in Mistress of the Revolution?
I know and love those places. I could not write about them otherwise. As a child, I spent all of my summers in the little mountain town of Vic, where Gabrielle, my heroine, grew up. Also, like Gabrielle, I fell in love with Paris as a teenager, and I am still in love today.

5.)What's next?
I am currently putting the finishing touches to my second novel, a historical thriller about a terrorist attack in 1800 Paris, at the beginning of Bonaparte's reign. And of course, beginning to work on Book 3, a prequel to Mistress of the Revolution.

Thanks so much, Catherine!