Loraine Despres is a novelist and recovering screenwriter. Her first novel, The Scandalous Summer of Sissy Leblanc was a national best seller, a Literary Guild Selection and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick. It’s now in its 25th printing. It engendered The Southern Belle’s Handbook, Sissy Leblanc’s Rules to Live By. She followed Sissy with The Bad Behavior of Belle Cantrell, set in Louisiana in the turbulent 1920s.
Before writing novels, she wrote screenplays, pilots and numerous TV episodes, but is best remembered for that icon of pop culture, the “Who Shot J.R.? episode of DALLAS. Loraine taught screenwriting at UCLA for seven years and worked as an international screenwriting consultant in Germany, Spain, Sweden and Canada. She lives in Beverly Hills with her husband, writer-producer Carleton Eastlake, where she continues to enjoy bad behavior.