The General's Mistress (53 page)

How closely connected do you think Elza’s development as a character is to her sexual exploits?

Very closely. As Michael says to her at one point, this is how she understands the world. This is the lens through which she perceives, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Each experience, good and bad, makes her more the person she is able to be.
The General’s Mistress
is about becoming, about how Elza begins her journey. It’s not the end of the journey. In this book she learns about power, but she’s not yet grown into her own. It’s coming, and Michel, like Victor, is a catalyst for that. Only unlike Victor, he is someone who can walk along the path with her, travel on a parallel course and understand her completely.

The historical Michel Ney came to a sad end: condemned to death in 1815 by the new French government. The novel is dark enough that readers might expect it to encompass that event, adding yet more pathos to Elza’s life. Why did you decide to end it on a cheerier note, with the two lovers kissing in the snow?

We’ll get there! There is much more of Elza’s story to come in later books. This is the first pause, two lovers kissing in the snow, having found each other for the first time. This is new love, love not yet tested by the years and by pain. They have a long way to go before 1815!

You are unsparing in your depiction of Elza’s darker side: her pragmatic approach to prostitution, her lack of attachment to her children, and even her proclivity toward violence. Did you have to resist a temptation to soften her up a bit and make her a more traditional, morally upright romantic heroine?

I had to resist the lure of cash!
The General’s Mistress
was turned down by four editors before it was bought by the wonderful Abby Zidle of Gallery Books—all four times because the editors hated Elza. The temptation was to make her into a more traditional heroine in order to sell the book. But I couldn’t do that. Elza is who she is, and she’s a real person. I have to write her as I see her, to tell her story with the same lack of apology and with the same boldness and lack of shame as she tells it herself. This is who she is, and turning her into a blushing ingénue would be awful.

Yes, absolutely Elza has a darker side. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t also be a suitable vessel for Michael. Sex and death are opposite sides of the same coin. Birth is blood and danger, beginnings encompass the potential of endings, and endings hold the seeds of beginnings. Elza belongs to that great Mystery, just as Gull did in my book
Black Ships
. It’s expressed differently in the eighteenth century than in the Bronze Age, but it’s the same Mystery. She always serves the same Mystery.

Elza’s friend Lisette commits suicide, but we’re not told why or what had happened to her. Did you intentionally leave that backstory vague—and what
did
happen?

No, actually that was cut for length! I needed to remove 14,000 words in order to bring the length down to something reasonable for a trade paperback. The backstory with Lisette was less necessary than a lot of other things, so it went. In the original version there was more of her drug habit and her violent relationship with her boyfriend. I don’t think she actually intended to kill herself this time—I think her overdose was a bid for attention, a cry for help as the cliché goes today, but no one saved her.

You’ve set other novels in historic epochs as well: the reign of Alexander the Great, Cleopatra’s Egypt, and ancient Troy. Where (and when) do you think you’ll go next?

Next up is the second book about Elza, covering 1800–1805, in which Elza takes on a new task and a new adventure. Tentatively titled
The Emperor’s Companion
, needless to say Napoleon is back! When Victor Moreau is arrested for treason (and he is guilty!) Elza is blackmailed by the Minister of Police into working as his agent to spy on her former friends and associates, including Therese Tallien. But when this blackmail requires her to betray Josephine, Elza has a choice to make—her life, or to be true to the deepest part of herself!

JO GRAHAM
is the author of three acclaimed historical fantasies, including
Black Ships
—a finalist for the Locus Best First Novel Award. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

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COVER DESIGN BY LAYWAN KWAN • PORTRAIT OF MADAME RECAMIER BY FRANCOIS PASCAL SIMON GERARD © GIRAUDON/BRIDGEMAN ART THE TRIUMPH OF VOLTAIRE BY JEAN LOUIS PRIEUR II © GIRAUDON/BRIDGEMAN ART • AUTHOR PHOTO © AMY GRISWOLD

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Gallery Books

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Jo Wyrick

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

First Gallery Books trade paperback edition October 2012

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Designed by Akasha Archer

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Graham, Jo, 1968-

The general’s mistress / Jo Graham.—1st Gallery Books trade paperback ed.

p. cm.

1. Mistresses—France—Fiction. 2. Man-woman relationships—Fiction. 3. France—History—18th century—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3607.R338G46 2012

813'.6—dc23

2012006866

ISBN 978-1-4516-6721-9

ISBN 978-1-4516-6724-0 (eBook)