There is Magic Here - Update

Annamaria on Monday

I am updating this post, which I wrote in January 2016. Back then, I was learning the history and working on a first draft of a historical mystery/thriller that takes place in my ancestral city of Siracusa in Sicily. And I was also continuing along with the Vera & Tolliver series.

By 2019, I had what I thought was a worthy draft. My then agent was happy with it, and she found two editors who were quite interested.

Then came the perfect storm: a publisher in breach of contract, a book launched without ARCs going out, my wonderful agent facing a family catastrophe, and COVID.

And so the book, eventually named La Magica, went into limbo, which turned into purgatory, which threatened to turn to hell. The difference between purgatory and hell is that hell is permanent, purgatory is temporary. my story now stands on the cusp. 

Just now, La Magica is resurfacing. I am polishing the manuscript, and it is with my agency. Hope is on the horizon.

 Here a peek at what I had to say about the story nearly 10 years ago.

Period map of the area, found, of course, in the peerless New York Public Library

What would you call it, if a thing you saw in a dream was suddenly before your eyes and real?

My work in progress, which I began at my desk in New York, takes place in Siracusa, Sicily in the late 17th century and involves the life a young widow, mother of baby son, both of whom are threatened.  I had been to Siracusa a few times before starting to imagine how the tale would unfold.  But there was no certainty that the places I imagined were plausible, much less realistic.

The tale begins with the heroine on the roof her palace across the piazza from the duomo of Siracusa. From there she can see the harbour and the the moon reflected in the water.  But did the geography of the place allow that?

Here is the reality.  It seemed completely magical that what I had imagined was exactly right:

The Piazza del Duomo, and there at the end my Marchesa's palazzo on the
left, just across from the Duomo.

The facade of the palazzo, with no buildings behind, nothing to block
my character's view of the port.

Evening view from my room--the same point of view as from the palazzo's roof.
There, barely visible in the upper center, is the new moon.  And across the water,
the other arm of land that forms the port, which you will visit with me below.

An ensuing scene takes place in the duomo itself and involves the chapel of Santa Lucia, the patron saint of the city.  A revered statue of the early Christian martyr and resident of Siracusa graces the chapel, but I had never seen it face to face.  It is ordinarily enclosed.  I didn't know that it is kept on view for a month after the saint's feast day--December 13th.  By chance, I got there just in time to see it in person.  And to discover some more grist for my imagination's mill.

Santa Lucia in her niche, open and on view just when I needed her.

A close up of the martyr, nicely gruesome for local color
in a historical thriller.

On the left of this ancient Greek column, you see the entrance
to the chapel of Santa Lucia, and behind it....

 

...the perfect hiding place for a kidnapper.  I planned the
scene without knowing how perfect the layout of the
Duomo would turn out to be.

A grave in the church floor, just where I imagined it.

The following two days in the Ortigia afforded a close look at places I had chosen from a map.

Just enough room for a man on a horse.

My main character has a wise, old grandmother who lives in a castle at the end of the other peninsula that forms the great harbour of Siracusa.  I needed a way to put my feet on the ground over there across the water.  But I was off to visit my cousins in Solarino, a small hill town overlooking Siracusa.  At another time, I will tell you in detail of the warmth and joy that has always greeted me when I visit them.  For now I will concentrate on two darlings, who like a fairy godmother and godfather gave me a fabulous view of everything I wanted to see and much more.  I did not even have to ask.  They came to greet me and offered to take me anywhere I wanted to go.

Antonello Martorana and Anna Puglisi, teachers and warmest of cousins.
For me on this trip they were magic makers.

We spent a gorgeous, spring-like day investigating a place I had seen only on maps.

In trying to imagine what my characters would be eating in December and
January, I gave them oranges, not knowing if such would have been in season.
And here in January, I saw them ripe and ready for picking.

From the coast road, the two sides of the port entrance.

I had imagined that from the south arm of the bay, one might see the Ortigia
clearly enough to pick out the buildings.  And you can!

What I did not know is that you can also see Etna.

There is an old lighthouse just at the end of south arm of the bay.

I told Anna and Antonello that in my story there is a castle where the lighthouse now stands.  When I was finished photographing everything in sight and waxing ecstatic about how perfect everything was, they drove me along the coast road where my characters travel--a road I imagined but did not know existed.  We continued north, beyond Siracusa, to a town called Brucoli and parked next to this: 

It is the castle of my imagination.  I had no idea there really were castles like
this in the area.  It is the same size as mine and made of the same stone.

And it occupies a position on the edge of the sea!

And has a view of Etna!!

With my soul satiated with what I had seen, we then repaired to a gorgeous
restaurant just across from the castle, where we ate a FABULOUS fish dinner,
with wonderful wine.  

Here I am, as happy as I ever was!  And grateful to have such generous and wonderful
companions with which to share my joyful day.

On the Camilleri Trail

Annamaria in Montalbanoland

If you have not been introduced to the greatest ever Sicilian crime writer, let me do the honors. 

Andrea Camilleri was born in the southern Sicilian coastal town of Porto Empedocle.  When he died six months ago at age 93, he was still writing. During his life, he was a screenwriter, stage and film director, and professor film direction.  His first novels, published when he was 43 and 45, received little notice.

Then, twelve years later, he wrote a best-seller called La Stagione della Caccia (The Hunting Season), which he followed up with the first of his Commissario Salvo Montalbano mysteries.

  After that, according to Camilleri, Montalbano would not leave him alone. 

He had to write a Montalbano story every once in a while or Montalbano would hound him until he did.  I fully understand this.  I don't like to be away from Montalbano for very long myself.

Fortunately for those addicted like me, RAI - the national television company of Italy, has produced a series based on Camilleri's stories, where the Commissario of the fictional town of Vigàta is played by Luca Zinagaretti.  

Zingaretti has the acting chops needed to portray the complex Montalbano, giving him both the sense of humor and the relentlessness of Camilleri's creation.  I love even the opening credits of the shows - a helicopter ride over my beautiful ancestral part of Sicily.

On TV, the fictional setting, based on Camilleri's native town, is played - largely - by the South Eastern Sicilian city of Ragusa, which I visited on this trip.  One of the characters in my WIP goes there, and after writing those scenes from memory, I wanted go back to check out the details.  I found myself in the both the historic setting of my story and in Montalbanoland.  What fun!.

With the Commissario in the picture:

My shots: 

Trapani: Unsung Jewel of Sicily

Annamaria on Monday

From a 17th Century atlas in the NYPL

Ordinarily, you would not find Trapani listed among Sicily's superstar tourist hits: Siracusa, Taormina, Agrigento, Palermo.  I am here today to try to change the world's mind about that.

People have lived on the Westernmost tip of the Sicilian mainland since the Early Iron Age.  Of the earliest inhabitants--the Elymians--we know very little but ancient myth.  Once the Greeks arrived nearby sometime around 400 BC they started telling some of their fascinating tall tales about the place.

This detail from that same atlas 

They honed in on the shape of Trapani's harbour and imagined that the when Demeter rushed to rescue her daughter Persephone from Hades, the frantic goddess dropped her sickle and it became Trapani's peninsula.  That's the female side of the story.  The male side is not so benign.  Saturn, it seems, used a sickle to eviscerate his father Uranus, the god of the sky.  The instrument used in the gruesome father-son interaction fell into the sea and formed the harbour of Trapani.

Sickle shape memorialised in a 17th century tile floor, now on display
in the Museo Pepoli.

The fountain of Saturn

The Carthaginians seized the city in 260 BC, but then lost it to Rome in 241 BC during the Punic Wars. After that, as occurred throughout Sicily, every gang of barbarians in the Eastern Hemisphere had a go at Trapani: Vandals, Ostrogoths, and then after a civilised interlude with the Byzantines and the Arabs, in 1077 the Normans rolled in.

The Trapani coat of arms

  

Eventually, a great number of Trapani's monuments were bombed by the British and the Americans during World War II.  Fortunately, some still remain.  

Here is what I saw there on two visits, one in 2010 and the second two weeks ago.  

The Medieval architecture knocks me out.

The cloister of the Museo Pepoli

The baroque is also gorgeous.

A statue in the Museo Pepoli, with my friend Agostino, to the right.

Many of the monuments have delightful details showing Trapani's connection
to the sea.

And everywhere in Italy there are lions.

On display in the museum, a miracle of medieval miniaturist
art, with Agostino's pinky finger in the picture, for scale.

Part of the salt-making industry in the Trapani.

Sunset on the Stagno, a bay so calm they call it "the lake."

Nearby to Trapani are some of the most fabulous reminders of Greek Sicily:

Selinunte and Segesta:

The Greek temple at Selinunte

Segesta's ancient theatre.

Another view to show you its spectacular position.

Segesta's jewel of a temple

Erice:

Here is the view from Erice, which sits on a mountain top.
You get up there on a cable car.

Piazza in Erice

On of Erice's medieval streets.