Author Spotlight no.132 – Olga Vannucci

Complementing my daily blog interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the one hundred and thirty-second, is of non-fiction author Olga Vannucci.

Olga Vannucci was born in Italy, lived in Brazil, and came to the United States to attend Brown University.  She lives in rural New Jersey with her beloved son, George.  When he was seven years old, she realized quite suddenly that she hadn’t been back to Italy in ten years, and she went, and took him along.  Then she went four more times, and she wrote a book about those trips, a mix of travelogue, personal history, and little anecdotes.

What’s a little different about the book is that Olga is both an Italian native and a tourist.  She captures the little everyday happenings that a tourist may not, and she also visits the major cities, though there too she tends to experience them in her and George’s own way.

She is currently working on two new projects.  She’s working on a book of travels with her son in the U.S.  The other project is around cooking with her mother, who is a fantastic cook, while everyone knows that Olga can’t boil an egg.  The book is built around her mother’s recipes, and around their relationship.

And now from the author herself:

I am a very shy and private person, and I have no idea what possessed me to share my thoughts with others!  I think I felt that what I had to say was a little bit different, with a view low to the ground.  What I find interesting is that my friends who have read the book say it sounds just like me.  It’s written in the present tense, so it feels like you are along and I’m talking to you.

One of the most rewarding things about writing is finding out more about myself.  There’s nothing like having to express a thought to help crystallize it.  The other reward is hearing from others about the things that spoke to them in the book, and they range from the more profound to the totally mundane situations.  Women will focus on the mothering aspects of the book, dealing with my son.  Men enjoy my description of how Italians give directions:  they start from a place you’ve never heard of, proceed vaguely, and stop well before your destination.  Apparently that’s happened to others…  They can relate, and I love when people tell me they can relate to something I wrote about.

It was hard to write about others and protect their privacy at the same time, particularly with my son.  I find him very amusing, but he doesn’t intend to amuse me, and he is sensitive to it.  He thinks I’m making fun of him basically.  So I’m always walking that line, writing about him, but trying to be respectful of him.

My favorite stories are the quirky ones, like the sheep stampede that almost flattened us—not really, it wasn’t that bad, but it was a funny occurrence.  We did so many different things, visiting with my ancient relatives, riding the bullet train to Rome, the only passengers without a snack, having coffee with my aunt in the morning, trying to dunk cookies in the little tiny cups, lots of hiking, with my son resorting to tears to make us stop.  One nice thing about the book is that it covers lots of different material, from the very simple happenings to the tourist destinations.

I don’t know that the Italian heritage speaks to my son all that much yet, but I believe (and hope, but I do believe) that the experiences he has had build his knowledge and interests, and that he will find value in it all later on.  A lot of my Italian-American friends relish their connection to Italy, and he will have had an extra special connection.  I hope and believe…  When he brings up something from the trips, I get all excited.  Yes, he was there, he was paying attention, he got it!

I have a little website at http://olgavannucci.com with some pictures and some snippets from the book.

I also have a Facebook page that can be reached via http://travelswithgeorge.com.  I update it pretty actively with some of the many photos I took during my trips.

And the book, both the printed and the Kindle versions, is available at Amazon.com.

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The blog interviews will return as normal tomorrow with YA thriller and suspense / romance author Daphne Olivier – the five hundred and thirty-eighth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, biographers, agents, publishers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything. You can contact me and find me on the internet, view my Books and I also have a blog creation service especially for, but not limited to, writers.

Unfortunately, as I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t review books but I have a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me reading it / talking about and critiquing it (I send you the transcription afterwards so you can use the comments or ignore them)  on my ‘Bailey’s Writing Tips’ podcast, then do email me. They are fortnightly episodes, usually released on Sundays, interweaving the recordings between the red pen sessions with the hints & tips episodes. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

Guest post: Florence Freakout by Lev Raphael

Tonight’s guest blog post, on the topic of public readings is brought to you by multi-genre author and interviewee Lev Raphael.

Florence Freakout

I’ve done hundreds of invited public readings from my books over the last twenty years, but the thrill hasn’t worn off.  Every reading feels new and I’m always a little keyed up.  It’s just like going on-stage, something I still remember from the plays I performed in as a college student.  The excitement is tinged with apprehension: what if it doesn’t go over well?  

But something different happened to me recently in Florence where I was reading from my Gilded Age novel Rosedale in Love. I had a panic attack, my first ever.

I had been invited to an international Edith Wharton conference because my novel retells the story of The House of Mirth from the perspective of its despised Jewish suitor.  Where Wharton makes him a stereotype of the vulgar, money-grubbing Jew, I made him three-dimensional, giving him a life, a family, a history, dreams and inspirations.

The day before my reading, I was in a small bright classroom of the college which was hosting the event, listening to an academic paper, when suddenly the walls seemed to close in on me and I felt dizzy.  It wasn’t the heat; I knew that in my bones.  This was something different.  When the paper ended and the applause started, I slipped out and hurriedly got a cab back to my hotel across the Arno.  In the cab, even though I was headed towards the quieter, less crowded part of the city (the Oltrarno), I started hyperventilating. I managed to keep my head enough to speak my travel Italian and get my receipt at the end of the short ride (Ho bisogno di una ricevuto).

Upstairs in my room, I took a bath to calm myself down, and a Valium, which I’d brought because I’d had to leave a very sick dog behind me at home in Michigan, a dog just diagnosed with cancer.  He wasn’t in danger of imminent death, but his life expectancy had just been shortened by years, and our family was in a state of shock.

 When I calmed down, I tried to figure out what was going on, and the answers came quickly.  Though I’d done readings in London, Glasgow, Paris, Vienna, and in twenty German cities and towns, I’ve never been alone abroad doing a reading.  On my tours, I’d either been with my spouse or had a host, sometimes more than one.  I’d also never read from my work at an academic conference, which is odd since I’d read at universities and colleges–not to mention book fairs, museums, libraries, synagogues and churches. 

Luckily the panic didn’t hit right before the reading.  It happened twenty-four hours beforehand.  I had plenty of time to calm down, sight-see, eat a splendid bistro dinner, sleep well, wake up to the Florentine sunshine the next day and have breakfast on the hotel terrace where one wall was covered in jasmine.  The beauty of the city worked on me like a massage, and as I spent the day preparing, I understood my panic even better: the stakes were higher than usual in some ways.  I was in effect a second keynote speaker, which definitely made the situation different from a typical reading for me.

More importantly, as a reader, I didn’t have the advantage I’d recently had on tour of reading a passage from a book I’d read many times before. Touring Germany, Canada and the U.S. from 2009 through 2012 to talk about my memoir / travelogue My Germany, I consistently read the Prologue.  It was short enough; had a clear beginning, middle and end; and people found it dramatic.  Sticking with the same text meant that I knew it very well in English, and could maintain lots of eye contact with my audience (and even improvise a little).  Readings are performances, and that one was different every time because I did so many of them and the energy was always different in each venue.

But in Florence I had a brand new play, in effect, and this was my opening night.  Even the setting was unique: the tiny Gothic Church of San Jacobo, the oldest venue I’d ever spoken in over the course of twenty years of readings.  It was a bit overwhelming to be surrounded by so much history everywhere I turned.  I was even trying something new for me: reading the text from my iPad.

So how did it go?  About half of the conferees came, which was surprising to me on a lovely evening in Florence.  And I’m happy to say that when it was done, one of the conference organizers came up to me and said, “That was perfect.”  You can’t ask for more than that, except perhaps a great meal afterward, which is what the conference had arranged a few blocks away at a gorgeous trendy restaurant.  I still had another full day in Florence before heading to Rome, and that next day I kept things quiet: visits to two beautiful but nearly-empty churches not far from my hotel, a siesta after lunch, and a dinner two blocks away.  I was my own host, making sure that I was comfortable. It was another new role for me abroad.  I liked it.

I’d like it too, although having only done local mic nights I can fully understand your trepidation. Thank you, Lev!

Lev Raphael is the author of twenty-two books that have been translated into nearly a dozen languages.

He’s been a radio talk show host, a newspaper columnist, and an academic. Widely anthologized in the U.S. and England, he’s done hundreds of talks and readings from his work on three continents.

His writing is taught at colleges and universities across North America, which means he’s become homework.  He grew up in New York, but got over it and has made Michigan his home for more than half his life.

You can watch the trailer for his latest novel ‘Rosedale in Love’ here.

***

If you would like to write a writing-related guest post for my blog then feel free to email me with an outline of what you would like to write about. If it’s writing-related then it’s highly likely I’d email back and say “yes please”.

The blog interviews return as normal tomorrow morning with novelist and short story author Guy Mankowski – the four hundred and forty-eighth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, bloggers, autobiographers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything… and follow me on Twitter where each new posting is automatically announced. You can also read / download my eBooks and free eShorts at Smashwords, Sony Reader Store, Barnes & Noble, iTunes Bookstore, Kobo and Amazon, with more to follow. I have a new forum, friend me on Facebook, like me on Facebook, connect with me on LinkedIn, find me on Tumblr, complete my website’s Contact me page or plain and simple, email me.  I also now have a new blog creation service especially for, but not limited to, writers.

Unfortunately, as I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t review books but I have a feature called ‘Short Story Saturdays’ where I review stories of up to 2,500 words. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me reading it / talking about and critiquing it (I send you the transcription afterwards so you can use the comments or ignore them)  on my ‘Bailey’s Writing Tips’ podcast, then do email me. They are weekly episodes, usually released Monday mornings UK time, interweaving the recordings between the red pen sessions with the hints & tips episodes. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.

 

Guest post: Settings by Barbara Quinn

Tonight’s guest blog post, on the topic of settings, is brought to you by novelist, short story author and publisher Barbara Quinn.

Settings are extremely important in fiction. Think about memorable scenes in your favorite novels and I bet you conjure up a picture so vivid you think you can smell and hear it. Whether it’s fantasy worlds such as those created in The Hunger Games or Lord of the Rings, the mansions and surroundings of The Great Gatsby, or the orphanage of Oliver Twist, memorable settings reel you in and deposit you on heady shores. They breathe life into a story and can become another character in the book, one that makes a reader want to visit in person and follow in the footsteps of the characters you come to know so well.

One of my favorite scenes in my suspense novel, Hard Head, is set in Siena, Italy in the stunning main square called Piazza del Campo.

Siena is a charming walled city with medieval roots. Its winding streets and sepia light beckon you to wander slowly through its mazes. The central shell-shaped square, Piazza del Campo, is a jewel.

After walking the winding streets, it is breathtaking to spill onto the Piazza del Campo from one of the tiny narrow streets that lead into it. As you enter from dark passages, you are immediately immersed into light and air.

Twice a year, once in July, and again in August, the interior of the square turns into a madhouse when the horse race called Il Palio is run and thousands of people manage to squeeze into the square.

In the Palio, jockeys ride bareback and circle the Piazza del Campo three times. They cover the inner square with dirt to provide some traction, but it is not uncommon for riders to fall off and horses to stumble. The race itself takes only a little more than a minute. Events leading up to it occur over four days. Ten horses and riders representing sections of Siena ride around the square at a furious pace. The winning horse does not even need to have a rider. Amazingly, the horses without riders still run hard. The participants do it all for the right to display a banner.

I’m not a fan of crowds and have never attended the Palio, but the spectacle of that race has been a draw for me since I became aware of it many years ago. I knew I wanted to set a part of my novel there. So when I was writing Hard Head, I steeped myself in every article, account, and picture I could find  to understand the rituals and pageantry. Incidentally, the title of the book, “Hard Head”  is a term commonly used to describe people who come from Calabria, the place of birth of my main character’s ancestors. She journeys to several places in Italy including Siena and Calabria.

I did eventually visit Siena and its gorgeous Piazza del Campo, not during a Palio, but during the fall season, when the walls were covered in a fiery orange from climbing vines. There’s something magical about the square, and the history associated with it. I was most content to sit in the Piazza and sip an espresso. The square was all I had imagined it to be and I could imagine the thunder of the horses and the shouts of the crowd.

Is there a magical setting or event like Il Palio that you’d like to visit?

Thank you, Barbara!

Barbara Quinn is a novelist and award-winning short story writer, and Founder and Former Publisher of The Rose & Thorn www.roseandthornjournal.com.

She is the author of four novels: Speed of Dark, 36C, Slings and Arrows, and Hard Head. The novels run the gamut from light women’s fiction to dark paranormal suspense.

She practiced law for ten years, and held many jobs from lingerie sales clerk to postal worker, cocktail waitress to process server.

Her love of travel has taken her to four continents and 47 states. She splits her time between Bradley Beach on the Jersey shore and Montebello, New York.

She and her husband have one son, Bret, and a grandson, Ammo. Barbara welcomes email at BAQuinn@aol.com and would love to keep in touch via http://twitter.com/BarbaraQuinn.

In Hard Head, Rosanna Sweeney defies her father’s deathbed order that she never go to Italy. She and her teenage daughter journey across Italy to the Calabrian town of her father’s birth. In their quest, they find romance, learn about one another, and uncover a past that links them to secret societies far worse than the Mafia.  Can they survive their dark legacy? Hard Head is available from http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Head-ebook/dp/B0075XR288 and Speed of Dark from http://www.amazon.com/Speed-of-Dark-ebook/dp/B005UI7B5E.

Photo of Piazza del Campo, Siena by Ricardo Andre Frantz

If you would like to write a writing-related guest post for my blog then feel free to email me with an outline of what you would like to write about. If it’s writing-related then it’s highly likely I’d email back and say “yes please”.

The blog interviews return as normal tomorrow morning with contemporary and historical novelist, non-fiction author and spotlightee Dorit Kedar – the four hundred and thirty-fourth of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, bloggers, autobiographers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me.

You can sign up to receive these blog posts daily or weekly so you don’t miss anything… and follow me on Twitter where each new posting is automatically announced. You can also read / download my eBooks and free eShorts at Smashwords, Sony Reader Store, Barnes & Noble, iTunes Bookstore, Kobo and Amazon, with more to follow. I have a new forum, friend me on Facebook, like me on Facebook, connect with me on LinkedIn, find me on Tumblr, complete my website’s Contact me page or plain and simple, email me.  I also now have a new blog creation service especially for, but not limited to, writers.

Unfortunately, as I post an interview a day (amongst other things) I can’t review books but I have a feature called Short Story Saturdays where I review stories of up to 2,500 words. Alternatively if you have a short story or self-contained novel extract / short chapter (ideally up to 1000 words) that you’d like critiqued and don’t mind me reading it / talking about and critiquing it (I send you the transcription afterwards so you can use the comments or ignore them)  on my ‘Bailey’s Writing Tips’ podcast, then do email me. They are weekly episodes, usually released Monday mornings UK time, interweaving the recordings between the red pen sessions with the hints & tips episodes. I am now also looking for flash fiction (<1000 words) for Flash Fiction Fridays and poetry for Post-weekend Poetry.