Natasha Lester answers our Ten Terrifying Questions!

Natasha Lester is the New York Times bestselling author of novels such as The French Photographer and The Paris Seamstress, as well as Her Mother’s Secret and a A Kiss from Mr Fitzgerald. Her latest novel is The Paris Secret, an unforgettable story about the lengths people go to protect one another, and a love that, despite everything, lasts a lifetime.

Today, Natasha’s on the blog to answer our Ten Terrifying Questions. Read on!

Natasha Lester

1. To begin with why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?

I was born and raised in Perth, Western Australia, where I attended a Catholic school on the coast. My dad was an accountant and my mum stayed at home to raise me and my two brothers. It was a very traditional and strict upbringing and – surprise, surprise – I was the rebel of the family. If someone was in trouble, it was usually me.

2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?

I read Jane Eyre when I was twelve and decided my vocation in life was to be a governess – so long as my employer was a tall, dark and handsome Rochester. At eighteen, I’d thankfully matured somewhat, and I wanted to be a writer. But I didn’t know how to be a writer – none of the universities in Perth offered creative writing degrees back then. So, I did a marketing degree instead. At age thirty, I returned to university and completed a postgraduate diploma in creative writing because the universities finally offered writing courses and because I still wanted to be a writer. I’m very lucky that I’m now living my dream.

3. What strongly held belief did you have at eighteen that you do not have now?

That I wanted to be a heroine in a Danielle Steele novel. These days, I’m quite happy to be the heroine of my own life.

4. What were three works of art – book or painting or piece of music, etc. – you can now say, had a great effect on you and influenced your own development as a writer?

One: Jane Eyre – see above. I always joke that my penchant for dark-haired heroes in my own books is a throwback to my early, undying love for Rochester. Two: Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin. This is the pinnacle of literature to me and, while I know I will never even come close to writing anything as good, it keeps me striving to always write a better book than my previous one. Three: I’m going to broaden the definition of works of art to include fashion here and choose Christian Dior’s Venus dress. When I first saw this dress at the Met Museum several years ago, I fell in love and knew that every book I wrote from then on would have a fashion theme running through it.

5. Considering the innumerable artistic avenues open to you, why did you choose to write a novel?

When I was young, I loved the way that I felt whenever I was completely immersed in a book. I wondered what it would be like to be the person who could make readers feel like that. So that’s why I became a writer, and because I love to spend my days travelling to faraway places and into the land of make-believe where anything can happen.

6. Please tell us about your latest novel!

In The Paris Secret, my contemporary protagonist, Kat Jourdan, finds a wardrobe full of sixty-five Christian Dior gowns hiding in her grandmother’s abandoned cottage in Cornwall. There’s a dress for every year dating back to the very first collection in 1947. Kat has no idea how her grandmother could have come by such an astonishing collection of haute couture – and nor does she know why her grandmother would keep it in a derelict cottage.

She decides to find out more. Her journey for answers takes her right back to Christian Dior’s first showing in Paris in 1947 and onto the life of his sister Catherine, who fought bravely for the Resistance during WWII and who was deported to a concentration camp by the Nazis. That connection leads Kat to a group of female pilots who courageously delivered fighter planes for the RAF during the war and who are also, somehow, linked to her grandmother. The more Kat discovers, the less it seems she knows about her beloved grandmother. So, Kat has to decide whether she should keep searching, or if it would be better to leave the past alone.

7. What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?

I’d like them to want to find out more about the heroic women I write about, who are usually based on real people who have somehow been lost to history. I hope my readers will look back at these women with gratitude and admiration and will think about how we can stop today’s heroic women from becoming similarly lost to future history.

8. Who do you most admire in the realm of writing and why?

Margaret Atwood, who has been witty, intelligent and brilliant for decades. I admire her talent, her longevity and her activism.

9. Many artists set themselves very ambitious goals. What are yours?

Oh no, I didn’t have ambitious goals at all – I just want someone to make a movie from one of my books!

10. What advice do you give aspiring writers?

To stick with it, and to write what you love. Writing is a rollercoaster of ups and downs, of rejections and acceptances, of hard work – and, eventually, of rewards. You never know when your good luck is going to come so keep going, keep getting better, don’t stop and you’ll be ready when the luck arrives.

Thank you for playing!

—The Paris Secret by Natasha Lester (Hachette Australia) is out now.

The Paris Secret

by Natasha Lester

A wardrobe of Dior gowns, a secret kept for sixty-five years, and the three women bound forever by war... from the New York Times bestselling author of The French Photographer.

England, 1939 Talented pilot Skye Penrose joins the British war effort where she encounters her estranged sister, Liberty, and childhood soulmate Nicholas Crawford, now engaged to enigmatic Frenchwoman Margaux Jourdan. Paris, 1947 Designer Christian Dior unveils his extravagant first collection to a world weary of war and grief. He names his debut...

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