Danielle Steel is 157 centimeters, exactly what Prince measured. The American writer discovered this coincidence when she bought the singer’s Paris apartment and saw that her clothes fit like a glove in the wardrobes custom-made for the artist. But greatness is the only trifle in Steel’s biography, a woman of immeasurable life and work. She is considered the third best-selling author of all time, behind William Shakespeare and Agatha Christie, and has just surpassed one billion copies sold (more than Stephen King and JK Rowling combined). The publisher’s parent company, Penguin Random House, calculated that all the stacked copies would be equivalent to 60,000 Eiffel Towers and 45,000 Empire State skyscrapers. In 1989, “Steel” was inducted into the Guinness Book of World Records for having a title on the New York Times bestseller list for 381 consecutive weeks. All the figures are record-breaking: 180 novels – all bestsellers –, 18 children’s books and five non-fiction books, a collection of poems, 25 film and television adaptations, translations into 43 languages in 69 countries…
Talking to the queen of summer novels – love, luxury, tragedy – isn’t easy. He rarely gives interviews and rarely advertises his books. He always writes. By the end of this year, seven of his novels will have been published in the United States. Two of them, Palazzo and The Challenge, are currently on the New York Times bestseller list. Another, La aventura (Plaza & Janés), has just been translated into Spanish and is already available in Spanish bookshops. Eventually, after weeks of negotiations, Steel agrees to talk to EL PAÍS, but his agent makes some conditions: not revealing his age – although anyone can google it – or the years in which he wrote – his first novel, Regreso Home, was published in 1973 – you can’t ask her about her childhood – privileged but lonely – nor her husbands (five) or her children (nine) unless she mentions them in conversation.
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“I like being invisible. We writers have to be invisible,” he explains on the other end of the phone from his apartment in Paris. “I think a lot of writers get into this topic because we’re shy and we’d rather watch other people’s lives than star in our lives. When I was younger I felt compelled to go out because my kids’ parents were more social than me. I’ve been doing it very little since the pandemic,” he admits. He spends half the year in his apartment in the French capital and the other half in his villa in San Francisco, a Beaux-Arts-style palace similar to the Petit Trianon in Versailles. He spends 12 hours a day writing and an additional five to eight hours managing his business. “I used to be able to spend 20 or 22 hours at a time writing. But my literary agent of the last forty years passed away and now I have to do his job as well,” he says. It refers to the legendary Mort Janklow, who also represented Anne Rice, Sidney Sheldon and JR Moehringer. He only sleeps three to four hours at night. “Sleep always felt like a waste of time. My insomnia was a blessing. It allowed me to spend the day raising my nine children and the night writing my books.”
Danielle Steel’s desk, where the author writes 12 hours a day. Courtesy of Danielle Steel
Steel is an old school writer. He still uses the machine he used to write his first novel, a 1946 Olympia he calls Ollie. He has two identical ones in Paris and one in San Francisco. He does not use a computer except to send emails to his children and lawyers. “I am computer illiterate. Sometimes I write emails to friends badmouthing someone, and then mistakenly send them to the person I’m criticizing. I’m so bad at technology,” he says. She leads a life of self-imposed seclusion, accompanied by three Chihuahua dogs: Lili, Blue and Minnie. “My kids used to tell me, ‘Don’t become a crazy old lady living surrounded by chihuahuas.’ And that’s exactly what I’ve become.” For several years she has been very active in social networks, where she gives insights into her life as a bestselling author. “I hate being photographed and look at me I’m on Instagram now. It’s my worst nightmare. Social networks are like popcorn: fast, light and never full.
His spelling is unorthodox, to say the least. He usually writes four or five novels at a time, taking between two and three years to complete each one. She compares herself to painters who work on several paintings at the same time: “Artists start one painting, leave it, move on to another, and then return to the first.” My process is similar.” That’s how he managed to write 180 novels publish. Almost all of them are about a heroine who has to overcome all sorts of obstacles in order to be happy. “I try to pass my power on to others. It’s no secret that I lost a child and am not yet married to my first husband. Difficult things have happened to me, but I feel privileged. “My mission is to give my readers hope,” he affirms.
Steel, like the protagonists of their stories, had to fight against many elements to get to the top. His parents found it ridiculous that he worked. Her husbands did not like the idea of her becoming a writer. And her children haven’t read any of her novels. Her work could have a feminist reading, but she refuses to define herself as such: “Of course I’m for equality and against men who mistreat or underestimate women, but I don’t consider myself militant,” clarifies. She doesn’t want to call herself a feminist, but recognizes that it’s difficult to be a successful woman in a man’s world. “That’s why I’ve been without a partner for twenty years. For men of my generation, my success was menacing. They didn’t care about my fame, they cared about the fact that I was fine. Many thought she was a witch because a successful woman was supposed to be a bad person. Some of the men in my life were more successful than me and still felt threatened by me,” he says. Her last two husbands, Silicon Valley magnate Thomas Perkins and shipping company John Traina, were two of the wealthiest in the United States. “Successful men jealously guard their territory. And those who don’t succeed just hate you.”
Book critics – many of them men – have sometimes been unforgiving of her work, but she says she doesn’t read it. “I’m more interested in reader reviews on Amazon than book critics. I write for the readers, not the critics. I know I’m not Shakespeare and I don’t want to be. I prefer to be myself,” she says. Many have tried to emulate her, including Ana Rosa Quintana, who published a novel in 2000 that plagiarized fragments from Family Album, Steel’s hit 1985 title. Planeta eventually removed the copies of the Spanish presenter’s work, titled Sabor to gall, in the face of overwhelming evidence of appropriation. “I have encountered several scammers throughout my career. Once on the radio I heard a man claim that he was in a relationship with me and that he had love letters to prove it. I walked up to him and he said, “You’re not Danielle Steel.” “Someone pretended to be me,” he recalls, laughing.
Danielle Steel, along with two of her daughters, Vanessa and Victoria Traina, at the Chanel show during Paris Fashion Week 2009. Eric Ryan (WireImage)
Sales numbers have supported that for decades, but he says he’s increasingly concerned with staying on top. “It feels good to be number one. And I never take it for granted. Now the competition is tougher; Novels compete with many things that didn’t exist before. People have Netflix and don’t need me. For that reason, the fact that they keep reading me and not watching TV seems like a huge compliment.” Her books captivate millions of readers around the world because the stories she tells are about her. In Now and Forever (1978) she fictionally addressed her marriage to a man accused of rape. For “Loving” (1980) he was inspired by his childhood, a sad and lonely childhood. In Remembrance (1981) there are certain similarities with her third husband, a heroin addict who almost led her to ruin. In His Inner Light (1998), a non-fiction book, he recounts the life and death of one of his sons, Nick Traina, who committed suicide in 1997 at the age of 19. “I wrote it right after he died. It was a way of keeping him alive a little longer. And I did it for two reasons: to honor him and to make it clear that living with someone who has a mental illness is very difficult. “Now people are talking openly about what antidepressants they are taking. That was unthinkable two decades ago. Once at dinner I remarked that my son was bipolar and people were stunned like I dropped a bomb. His Inner Light continues to be published and taught in medical schools and psychiatric departments across the United States.
After the death of his son, Steel established a foundation that promotes medical care for people with psychiatric illnesses. “They didn’t want to treat my son until he was 20 years old. Eventually I found a doctor to take care of him and that changed his life for a while. But it was difficult for me to find the right professional. Now we are at the other extreme and three-year-old children are given medication,” he emphasizes. “I’m a big supporter of therapy. I have resorted to it in difficult moments of my life, although I have never taken any medication. It was suggested to me when Nick died, but I didn’t want the chemistry to ease the pain. He knew he had to suffer. It was hard. Life is hard but it gets easier when you write about it. And for millions of people, life is easier when he reads his novels.