Loraine Despres is a best-selling novelist and screenwriter. Her first novel, The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc, set in rural Louisiana, was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick, and a Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club featured selection. It engendered the spin-off The Southern Belle ‘s Handbook, Sissy Leblanc ‘s Rules to Live By. Her next novel, The Bad Behavior of Belle Cantrell, about intolerance and love, was set in New Orleans and rural Louisiana 1920, the year women got the vote, prohibition became law, and the revived Ku Klux Klan spread across the country as a money-making pyramid scheme. She has written for many of the top network TV shows including The Highlander, The Equalizer, Crime Story, Chips, Family, Knots Landing, Dynasty, The Walton ‘s, and Love Boat, but she is best remembered for writing that icon of pop culture the “Who Shot J.R.?” episode of Dallas. She has taught screenwriting at UCLA and internationally and has served on the boards of numerous non-profits. She can be reached through her website www.LoraineDespres.com where she always answers her mail herself and continues to enjoy a little bad behavior.