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.

 

Author Spotlight no.102 – Bobby Logan

Complementing my daily blog interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the one hundred and second, is of Bobby Logan.

Bobby Logan lives in North Port, FL.  Bobby, a self-admitted anglophile, is also interested in mystery novels, rock music and the paranormal, and has combined these interests in “Rubber Soul”, which is a novel about a New Jersey college student in the early 1960s who remembers a past-life in Liverpool, England, where the Beatles were still a bar band, and he decides to go to Liverpool and investigate that life.

And now from the author herself:

My best friend was the first person I met.  I knew her before I was even born.  I think it is quite possible that I picked her out myself. I still consider her to be the nicest, warmest and most loving person I have ever met.

At school age, I realized just how special she was when I was introduced to nuns and school children.  My first grade nun hated me and so did the other students.  I’m not sure how much influence the former had on the latter, but I doubt that it helped.

I was a smart child, but for a reason I could not yet understand, my processing was slow, which led other people to think I was not.

My best friend, AKA mom, was always there for me.  She had had problems with her peers when she was young and so was very understanding about the problems I had and how much it could hurt. She refused to let me believe any of the bad things that people said about me.  I don’t know what I would have done without her.

When I grew older, it was hard for me to find a field to go into.  I still had the processing delay and I was very insecure.  I went to college for Psychology and graduated with a Bachelor of arts.  I went on to graduate school for social work.  I had a field placement in a community center. I loved it there, but one night when I was playing pool with a young boy, I had a Grand Mal seizure.  I was diagnosed with an Arterio Veinous Malformation in my brain.  The doctor said that it was not safe to operate and that I had a 50% chance of dying or becoming crippled.  My mother was right there to comfort me.  She was devastated.

I was not able to finish my masters degree social work program due to being heavily medicated, not being able to drive, and my processing delay which I now knew was caused by the AVM.  I didn’t know what I could do with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology.  I looked into my possibilities, but meanwhile took a job as a cashier in a supermarket. The bosses criticized me for being too slow.  They timed our rings per minute and I was the slowest cashier of all.  I worked there for three years and then my family moved to Florida, where I got another job in a supermarket and had the same problems with being slow.  They took me off the register and made me bag groceries.  I was miserable.

My Mom first got sick a few years after we moved to Florida. She had Breast Cancer and I was very relieved when I found out that the doctors were able to remove the Cancer.

Everything was fine for about ten years and then she was diagnosed with Lung Cancer.  The doctor operated and she was on Chemotherapy for a while. The Chemotherapy made her so sick and I hated to see her that way, but she did eventually get better.  It was a relief to my whole family until a short time later when she developed Colon Cancer.  She had multiple operations and was in the hospital for a long time.  She was so happy to get out of the hospital and we were so happy that she was doing better and then she started feeling sick again.  This time she had Liver Cancer.  She was on the Chemotherapy and feeling so sick.  She started to lose her hair and to lose weight.  I tried to get her to eat, but she just didn’t have much of an appetite.  She started getting sicker and we took her to the hospital.  The doctor said that we should put her in a hospice.  I must have been in denial because I kept telling myself it was going to be okay.  I finally realized how bad it was when the doctor told us that she only had a week to live.

I was devastated.  I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her.  My birthday was coming and I knew that if she died on my birthday I would never want to celebrate it again.  We celebrated my birthday in the hospice in my mom’s room.  It was a very difficult experience for me.  She died at 12:45 a.m. on Aug 31 only 45 minutes after my birthday ended. My brother in law suggested that knowing what a loving, selfless person that she was, that she probably held onto life and her pain until she knew my birthday was over.  I wouldn’t be surprised at all.

It was very hard adjusting to her death.  We lived in the same house and now I was going to be alone.  I went to grief counseling and the grief counselor suggested to me that I write a book.  I had always wanted to so I thought It was a great idea. I wanted to write my memoirs, but I ended up signing up for a class in fiction writing.  I had always wanted to write a fiction book as well and I ended up getting so interested in the class that I put the memoir on a back burner.  One of my classmates told the class about a book called “No Plot No Problem” by Chris Baty.  It was a method of writing a book in 30 days and I thought it sounded great so I bought a copy.  It ended up taking me  longer than 30 days but I didn’t care because I ended up writing “Rubber Soul” and getting it published.  It was such a tremendous feeling of accomplishment for me and I really felt that I had finally found a way that I could use my brain without having somebody standing around timing me.  I dedicated it to my mother of course.  I’m very sad that she can’t read it but I hope that wherever she is, she knows about the book and about how her passing lead me to write it.  When I looked up the available dates to do this project, I noticed that July 14th was available.  This would have been my mother’s 84th birthday.  Happy Birthday Mom!!!!!

A hard day for you, I’m sure. The last thing my father said to me (and the last time my mum, brother and I had visited him, on my 34th birthday, in hospital – he had dementia) was “You are a lovely lot”. Most of the time he was either asleep or not aware of who we were so that’s very special to me. Thank you, Bobby. 

You can find more about Bobby and her writing via… www.rubbersoulbook.com.

The blog interviews will return as normal tomorrow with the four hundred and thirty-first 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… 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.