“I don’t like depressing stories. I don’t like depressing art,” says Danielle Steel, the gallerist and ultraprolific author of two new summer books, Daddy’s Girls and Royal, both out from Delacorte Press. “I like art that you look at and you feel good.” She splits her time between her San Francisco home and her Paris apartment.
In Paris, where she spent months in pandemic-induced isolation, her penchant for mood-lifting environs has created an eclectic mix: a formal sitting room in which Japanese and Chinese antiques abut zebra-printed furniture picked out by an ex-husband; a bedroom brimming with small items that remind her of her children; and a desk, dotted with heart bibelots, where she spends much of her days writing on an Olympia typewriter. “The underlying theme in a lot of my books is hope,” she says. “Hard things happen to the people, but they’ve survived them. That’s really the message that we need right now—that this is really hard, but we will survive it.”
“I’m a lousy cook. I always have been. But I make a fabulous peanut butter sandwich.”
Illustrations by Alexandra Compain-Tissier.
“I do the outline by hand and then I type it twice to refine it down. Then the whole book. I do five drafts in all.”
Illustrations by Alexandra Compain-Tissier.
Steel’s Chihuahuas, Lili, Blue, and Minnie. “I travel everywhere with them.”
Illustrations by Alexandra Compain-Tissier.
“There’s so much here that gives me pleasure. Things that have no value, things that have great value.”
Illustrations by Alexandra Compain-Tissier.
“I’ve always loved canopy beds. They’re like a nest.”
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