Excerpts from an Interview with the Author
Interviewer : Authors are usually advised to write about “what they know”. Why did you choose a story during the run-up to the French Revolution?
Forrest : I’ve been hooked on the French Revolution ever since I saw A Tale of Two Cities when I was a child. It was really scary. Later, when I got my history degree, I had an opportunity to study it in detail -- that was toward the end of the Vietnam War – and the events during those years in college gave us all a taste of what it might have been like to live in such a turbulent time as the Revolution. There were protests (some violent), oil embargoes, rising food prices, and a general feeling that things were out of hand.
Interviewer: Not unlike today!
Forrest: Exactly. The French peasantry simply got fed up with an inept government that overtaxed them and provided very little; the rich got richer and the poor got poorer; famine occurred due to several continuous years of drought; general discontent; scandals. That could be on the front page of any newspaper today. And perhaps should be a cautionary tale.
Interviewer : This doesn’t seem to be a typical romance novel. Will readers of that genre like it?
Forrest: They have so far. There is a compelling dual love story in Anne-Marie’s passion for David Weston, a man forbidden to her by society and birthright, and her love for Louis Philippe, a natural soul mate but an impossibility for her in the scheme of things. She’s independent and daring, and I think most women would certainly fantasize trading places with her if they had the chance.
Interviewer : How did you come to create your Anne-Marie?
Forrest: That’s complicated. The dedication in the book is to a man by the name of Bill Kase. He died in 1990 and was a practicing psychic for most of his life. He was also a very good friend who once gave me a “reading” that my interest in the Revolution stemmed from my having lived during that time. It all ended badly apparently, which was why my subconscious, or whatever it was, kept leading me back to it. He suggested that I “rewrite” the story and give it a better ending. So I did.
Interviewer : So you are Anne-Marie?
Forrest: Not hardly, although writing her journals and memoirs in the first person sometimes made it seem like I was! She was certainly inspired by what Bill suggested, as well as many of the characters and locales I used. But most of the characters in the story are historical figures, and I have stayed as true as possible to the timelines of actual events of the period.
Interviewer: Especially the Queens Necklace?
Particularly the Queens Necklace. Anne-Marie is inserted into that affair as an observer and witness to expose the story, and Jean Claude de Moreau is fictional but a hidden force. Once the action begins, the events of the scandal are so incredible on their own that they do not need further embellishment. Prior attempts at movies and novels based on the necklace have often fallen short because the authors try to turn the real life actors like the Countess de la Motte and Marie Antoinette into heroines or martyrs. It doesn’t really work primarily because they all acted to stupidly – or there really were others behind the scenes manipulating their actions as I suggest.