Author Christopher Moore's 'Bleu' period: Historical fiction tackles ...

Christopher Moore was studying Claude Monet?s paintings of haystacks at the Chicago Art Institute when he thought, "I?m going to write a book about the color blue."

He had written dark and comedic bestsellers about the story of Christ, the life of King Lear and vampires in San Francisco. He had penned hilarious tales about unfunny things, including death, Christmas and antidepressants.

"So why not blue?" he said to himself.

After more than a year of research and writing, Moore, 54, who lives in San Francisco and writes one national bestseller after another, has his 13th novel ? Sacr? Bleu ? which is part mystery, part historical fiction, part laugh out loud. The story revolves around a group of French Impressionists in the late 1800s and opens with a bang, as Vincent van Gogh apparently shoots himself to death, sending the painter?s friends on a mission to find out what really happened.

"I think all of the Impressionists? work has a blue tint," Moore said.

The characters in Moore?s story are the superstars of Impressionism: Monet, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Renoir, Whistler, Pissarro and Gauguin, and the book spans from 1863 to 1900. Moore researched their lives, and in many cases, retraced their steps. There is bawdy humor (Renoir says he likes "big butts") and trips to the brothel. The book takes a fabulist turn with a mysterious character named the Colorman, who deals in pigments for paint and possesses a certain mystical blue, an ultramarine more valuable than gold.

"I?m not afraid of getting into a subject I don?t know much about," Moore said, sitting in Caffe Roma in North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, where he has been known to spend time daydreaming about his characters.

He came out of his research and writing with an unexpected reverence for the work.

"All of these guys decided to paint in a way that was counter to survival, to making a living," Moore said. " These were artists who did not follow the track for painting, which was to go through the French Academy. It was like saying you were going to be a doctor, but you refuse to go to medical school. They were out on a limb."

Moore, who grew up in Toledo, Ohio, lived for 25 years in Cambria, Calif., near Hearst Castle. He was waiting tables (in a town called Harmony, population 18) when he got his first book deal for Practical Demonkeeping. He had spent a period in Santa Barbara, Calif., where he studied photography and sold insurance, and lived in Hawaii until he realized it was like having a supermodel as a girlfriend: "It?s so pretty! It?s so pretty! But God, I?d really like to have a conversation!"

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He moved to San Francisco in 2006, and has been with his "wife-ish girlfriend" Charlee Rodgers, who does hospice work, for 17 years. He is already at work on his next book, a continuation of Fool, about King Lear, and is immersed in Shakespeare. He makes a point of personally answering every email from readers.

The writing doesn?t get easier, he said, and doubt inevitably creeps in. At some point in the process, he will lament to Rodgers: "I am not qualified to do this." Then the story takes hold, and words fill the blank page.

"For me, it?s been very gradual," he said of his success. "Every book does slightly better than the one before."

The real fun, he said, comes in the moments when he gets to show off, to be lyrical, to spend days on a few hundred carefully crafted gems.

In the prelude of Sacr? Bleu, Moore writes, "Blue is the sky, the sea, a god?s eye, a devil?s cloak. It?s a butterfly, a bird, a spicy joke, the saddest song, the brightest day. ? Blue, she is like a woman."

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