Painter of the Revolution
Date Published: January 13, 2026
Publisher: Acorn Publishing
The daughter of Parisian shopkeepers, Adélaïde dreams not of marriage or titles but of earning a place among the masters of French art. With Queen Marie Antoinette on the throne and a spirit of change in the air, anything seems possible. But as revolution brews and powerful forces conspire to deny her success, Adélaïde faces an impossible choice: protect her life—or fight for a legacy that will outlast her.
Inspired by the true story of one of the first women admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, Adélaïde: Painter of the Revolution is a sweeping, evocative portrait of ambition, courage, and resilience in the face of history’s fiercest storm.
Interview With Janell
Strube, author of Adélaïde: Painter of the Revolution
What is the hardest part of writing
your books?
Finding time to write has been the hardest, as
I also work full time. The second hardest is digging into the hard parts of
editing, but that, I think, gets better with time.
What are your most played songs?
When I was writing Adélaïde, I would put
on Egyptian meditation music. I feel that it brought me through the portal to
another world. I also listen to a particular sequence of Flamenco guitar music.
Do you have critique partners or beta readers?
I have belonged to several different read and
critique groups. They are invaluable to the writing process and learning the
craft of writing. I think for the next book, I will also involve some beta
readers.
What book are you reading now?
I just finished Laura Rader’s Hatfield 1677 and
Martha C. Lawrence’s Catch People Doing Things Right: How Ken Blanchard
Changed the Way the World Leads. I never read just one book at a time…but –
Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane is up next and there is nothing
stacked beside my bed just yet.
How did you start your writing career?
I would say it’s starting now, with the release
of Adélaïde: Painter of the Revolution – this time when I begin to
promote and sell my work and when I spend all my working time as a writer and I
began to think deeply about the timing of the next project. This is a very
different process than setting up a blog and blogging, writing poetry or even
spending hours writing a manuscript while being fully employed at a day job.
Tell us about your next release.
I have two
projects in the works: one, a memoir about growing up as an adoptee in the
sixties, as a child searching for belonging; the other, my second work of
fiction, on one of the characters in Adélaïde: Painter of the
Revolution whose life I am drawn to and
want to explore further. The memoir is in the editing stage, the fiction work
still in the planning stage – and I can’t wait to get to both of them.
About the Author
Janell Strube makes a mean barbecue sauce. She’s also a world traveler, a baker, and a bicyclist. But when she writes, her identity as an adoptee often steers her attention to topics of alienation, erased history, and displacement.
In 2024, a personal essay of hers was published in the anthology Adoption and Suicidality. Her work has also appeared in Shaking the Tree: brazen. short. memoir and A Year in Ink. Her short memoir, “Taking my Blonde Daughter to a Black Lives Matter Rally,” was selected for the 2020 San Diego Memoir Showcase, an annual live storytelling event.
While much of her writing is personal, she enjoys the freedom that comes with crafting fiction. Her desire to learn about forgotten female artists who shaped the French revolutionary period motivated her to write Adélaïde: Painter of the Revolution.
When not crunching numbers as a tax executive for a hotel chain, she can be found hanging out with Shiloh the Wheaten and plotting her second book.
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