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Novelist writes what she doesn’t know

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For novelist Michelle Gable, it’s not write what you know but write what you don’t know. Research is a favorite part of the job.

The San Diego native’s first book, “A Paris Apartment,” was based on a true story and became a New York Times best-seller. Her new one, “I’ll See You in Paris,” is based in part on a real person.

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She will be at Warwick’s at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and at the West Grove Collective in South Park at 6 p.m. Thursday.

Q: Both of your novels have something to do with Paris. Why Paris?

A: The first one was based on a true story about an abandoned apartment that was found in Paris that had been locked up for 70 years. I do travel to Paris quite a bit for work, and I’ve gone for fun as well, and it seemed like a natural kind of setting. What better place to tell a tale? Your readers get lost in that city.

One of the central items of that book is this portrait that Giovanni Boldini painted that was found in the apartment and sold for 2 million euros at auction. I researched every person that Boldini ever painted, and I stumbled across Gladys Deacon, the Duchess of Marlborough. She was so interesting, she had this crazy background, and I knew I had to feature her in another novel.

Q: What about her did you find so interesting?

A: She was widely known to be one of the most intelligent people in the world, and also one of the most beautiful. She was very independent, lived alone. She bought an apartment in Paris at age 20. She didn’t marry for the first time until she was 40. She consorted with all sorts of interesting people. (French novelist) Marcel Proust was her best friend. She was engaged to the crown prince of Prussia. They broke off the engagement, but some people believe that had they married, it could have prevented World War I because it would have formed a very important German-American alliance.

She would do these crazy things, like bring a gun to the dinner table just to keep her husband in line. She was just kind of funny. Her husband died, and she disappeared from her palace in the 1930s and turns up in the English countryside in the 1970s. She was in this dilapidated mansion. It was all so evocative to me, and it just seemed like a great story to build on.

Q: I got a chuckle out of your author’s note where you say that you found the craziest stories to be the most believable.

A: Yes, exactly, and they are. My mom read an early copy and said, “That didn’t happen.” No, those are the true ones!

Q: I guess that’s one of the risks of writing historical fiction. People may assume you are taking more license with certain things than you really are.

A: That’s why I did the author’s note to give some context. And I use a lot of her actual quotes. She kept diaries, wrote letters. Someone wrote a biography of her in the late ’70s. So yeah, the craziest stories in my book are the ones that are true. I promise you that.

Q: Both your books have something to do with hidden treasures, secrets waiting to be unraveled. What draws you to that kind of thing?

A: I like a little mystery, even though neither of the books are mysteries. But there is a mystery element to them. I like exploring the secrets that people keep from each other and then the secrets that are in the world, just waiting to be discovered.

Q: Are you somebody who sits down with particular themes in mind when you start to write? And if so, what are the ones you wanted to explore in this one?

A: No, I don’t generally have themes in mind. I do plot out my books, but I make changes as I go along. Usually the themes present themselves, and once I go back through editing I kind of enhance those if necessary. This time I knew I wanted a close mother-daughter relationship — close, but with some element of holding back between them. And I wanted the contrast with the duchess herself, who had very stormy relationships.

A big chunk of the novel takes place in the ’70s, sort of the tail end of the Vietnam War, which was very much out of favor. The more modern-day storyline is right after 9/11. It’s very much “Let’s go to war, let’s get those guys.” That juxtaposition of one war that was very supported and one that wasn’t was very interesting to me.

Q: How long have you wanted to be a writer?

A: Pretty much my entire life. My dad (Tom Gable) used to work at the Union-Tribune, and he was a writer. He gave me a book when I turned 10 called “Someday You’ll Write,” because he saw I was interested. I started writing then. My parents still have in their house horrible manuscripts I wrote when I was in junior high. I went to college (William & Mary) and studied accounting, because of course that’s what writers do.

Q: I was going to ask you about that.

A: It’s kind of funny because it does seem very different. I did know that I wanted to live in San Diego, and so I was going to need an actual job and not be a starving artist. But I think ultimately it actually helps with the writing because you do have to have structure and balance in your writing, and that’s very much part of accounting and finance.

I accidentally got put in an accounting class in high school at Torrey Pines, and I ended up loving it, so that’s what I decided to major in. I knew after college I was going to need to support myself. I could always write on the side. Many, many years later I decided to do something with it.

Q: You have a day job here in San Diego (investor relations for a software company) and a family with kids. So are you an early riser or a night owl when it comes to your writing?

A: I’m definitely an early riser. If I’m doing something at night, it’s usually my other work. I was reading something in a writing magazine recently, some advice thing, and it was saying something along the lines of how being very busy is good for writing, because then it feels like an escape rather than a chore. And for me that’s so true. It feels like a treat to me. It is an escape. My husband plays golf; I write books.

Q: What do you enjoy about doing it?

A: It’s so hard to say. It’s just fun for me. I like thinking about the characters. I like exploring different topics. And I can get so wrapped up in the research. That’s probably my favorite part, really. Any book that sends me Googling to find out more — I love that, and I hope the books I write send the readers Googling, too.

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