Theasa Tuohy

Theasa Tuohy - novelist, journalist and playwright, has worked for five daily newspapers and the Associated Press. She is co-book author of Scandalous: The Musical, an award winning show about the life of DH Lawrence, and has written a memoir about renovating her home in France. “The Woman at la Gare de l’Est” is the first in a mystery series.

When I'm asked: How did you get the idea for your book? True story! Just as the main character, Sarah, I too was actually in a speeding taxi when I saw the woman, then spotted “The Woman at la Gare de l’Est” again a few minutes later. My question then, and still is, how did she get from standing on a Paris curb in front of the Sarah Bernhardt Bistro to the East Train Station faster than I did – me in a cab, her afoot?

I wrote the book, trying to figure that out. I still am mystified by the sighting. And no, it’s not true that you have to know the ending to a mystery before you begin to write. The how she did it is total fiction. The beginning is all true. The setting is true, several of the characters are real, friends of mine. One of whom still lives in Paris, some have moved back home to the states. They’ve all been eager to find out what kind of difficult and scary experiences I got their fictional selves into. That boiler-plate stuff about no resemblance to persons living or dead is not quite true in The Woman at la Gare, enough that they are recognizable, but nothing slanderous or libelous = just fun! The one character who is pure fiction is the one who saw the loitering woman. I saw her, but the zany character who spotted her is definitely not me. She’s an actress, I’m not. She’s never serious, I almost always am. But I certainly had a lot of fun sketching her!

The characters in my latest novel are based on real friends, even used their real names. A journalist for many years, I’ve happily turned to fiction. This is my third novel, but it’s got a special twist. Most of the main characters are based on friends of mine and I’ve kept their real names. Kind of a high-wire act.

She has this to say about the writing of "The Five O'Clock Follies": My career in journalism spans quite a long period of time. It is hard to realize now how difficult it was for women only a few years ago.

As a young woman I was the first female assistant city editor in the 100-year history of the Detroit News, one of the largest afternoon dailies in the country at the time. By the time I left the Associated Press, I would look around the headquarters newsroom in New York and marvel at the number of women. The Five O’Clock Follies is a fictionalized account of one woman’s early struggles as a journalist.

She is the daughter and namesake of a pioneering pilot who flew an old World War I "Jenny" with an OX-5 engine, and the inspiration to her latest book, "Flying Jenny", which tells the story of two women - a tabloid reporter and stunt pilot in the 1920s redefining gender roles and female empowerment.

A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, she lives in Manhattan.