Italy

No matter where in Italy the author finds herself, there is inspiration for more writing. It’s in the air. Like many places, it should be approached from the sea rather than from the air as we modern travelers take it. In a gigantic country, approach seems to come from land. But Italy offers every kind of welcome to the navigator. The water alone, with its varied colors in the ranges of green to deep blue, sets the mind afire with ideas of who and what swim there. What gods and goddesses watch us? More ancient Greek ruins are to be found in Italy than in Greece. The perfume of nature awakens the mind as the lemons of Sorrento hang in gigantic clusters from the trees from which they were once plucked by women only, wearing gloves, packed like truffles, one at a time. Every little town, it seems, has a beautiful theater in which the glorious sounds of Italian opera have been sung for centuries. We wonder what lies beyond those gigantic heavy doors as we walk in every street in urban Italy. Every spot sparks the writer’s imagination. We come ashore and wander inland, among the mysteries of the past and the future.

Roses

In Italy, I do a huge amount of my writing among my roses in Le Marche. I’m trying to add a photo of some of them in this blog post…we’ll see how that goes. I think it’s not going to work. That’s a pity.

Rose is not named Rose in this novel because of my roses. There’s another reason for her name. But it so happens that Rose is one of my favorite characters and her name calls up a bouquet of images. One blogger asked about Rose. I’ll leave the answer where it lies. Once you read the novel, we can discuss Rose!!

A rose garden is a rather unusual place in which to draw inspiration for a mystery or a thriller. You might say that. I could admit that. But there are the unexpected thorns…a little critter with a stinger…the unwelcome beetle in the center of the blossom. Little surprises, in other words. That works beautifully.

In the novel that I am sketching out now, there is a female lead character who bears the name of another of my favorite flowers. That Victorian habit of naming girls for flowers should come back.