Author Christine Conrad appears on Fascinating Authors Podcast

SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA – The Fascinating Authors Radio Show (www.fascinatingauthors.com) continues its podcasts with the most interesting and relevant authors and books by holding an interview with Christine Conrad, author of Mademoiselle Benoir, an unusual love story that reveals a look into French mores and traditions and can be downloaded at: http://fascinatingauthors.com/authors/podcasts/christine-conrad/.

Fascinating Authors is one of the first radio shows to feature both new and established authors, but you won’t hear this show on your favorite local radio station because it’s beamed to your favorite MP3 player as a podcast, playing across the world via cyberspace. Using podcasting, Fascinating Authors brings a limitless audience to the authors who engage, enrich, and entertain us.

In Mademoiselle Benoir, thirty-four-year-old Tim Reinhart exchanges the bustling pace of New York City for a rundown farmhouse in the relatively undiscovered Lot Valley in southwest France. When the stunning - and much older - Catherine Benoir enters his life, their burgeoning romance faces a torrent of emotional and cultural complexities.

In writing Mademoiselle Benoir, Conrad drew inspiration from the real-life story of a friend's son who had moved to rural France and had fallen in love and married a beautiful, much older woman from a local aristocratic family. Eventually Conrad traveled to France and met the newly married couple at the woman's family chateau. "I was completely enthralled by their romance and the extraordinary strife it inspired, and I knew immediately that here was a one-of-a-kind tale, one that resonated for me with that writer's sensation: This is my kind of story."

Conrad did extensive research on French culture and history to create an imagined story about the personal and cultural struggles of a couple in such a situation. She describes her writing process as "a slow alchemy of imagination and research that would transform the bare outlines of a story into a work of fiction that was completely my own."

"Love is the 'glue' of life and its greatest mystery," says Conrad. "Who can say why we fall in love, or why we choose what to others can seem the most unlikely of mates?" Her characters Tim Reinhart and Catherine Benoir would certainly agree.

Written in form of letters and diary entries, Mademoiselle Benoir is truly an unexpected love story.

Christine Conrad has enjoyed a dynamic and varied career. She has worked as a NYC film commissioner, a book editor at Warner Publishing, a screenwriter (Junior, a 1995 comedy starring Schwarzenegger, DeVito, and Emma Thompson), a best-selling author and advocate for women's health (Natural Woman, Natural Menopause, A Woman's Guide to Natural Hormones), and most recently, Jerome Robbins, a pictorial biography based on her long friendship with the choreographer. Mademoiselle Benoir is her first novel. She lives in Los Angeles.

Fascinating Authors is the brainchild of Penny Sansevieri whose company, Author Marketing Experts, Inc., has successfully harnessed the power of the Internet to promote its authors. She has long been intrigued by the idea of creating an Internet radio show for and about authors. “I really envisioned a place where I could interview whomever I wanted, not just the authors everyone wants to interview but the authors who live to write. Maybe they’re on your radar screen, maybe they’re not, but often, these are the most fascinating people of all.”

Fascinating Authors is syndicated in 16 markets as well as on iTunes.

The Fascinating Authors Radio Show launched with a bang in 2006, presenting interviews with mystery writer Hallie Ephron and New York Times bestselling authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Fascinating Authors is one of the first radio shows to feature both new and established authors. Get the story behind the story! Fascinating Authors takes a closer look at your favorite authors, what drives them, what inspires them and why they just can't stop writing. Whether you're a fan, an avid reader or aspire to become a fascinating author you'll love this show.