Tag Archives: a song in the storm

Quick opportunity announcements!

Posted on by under Books, Generic Rant

There are two opportunities coming up imminently that I want to share:

100th Anniversary Celebration!

My paternal grandparents, whose story inspired my novel “A Song in the Storm”, were married on September 11, 1921. We’ll be celebrating the 100th anniversary of their marriage with anyone who wants to join us at the Old Mill Coffee House in Chelmsford, MA, from 1-3 PM.

We’ll have a cake to share and delicious coffee (or so I’m told; I don’t drink the stuff 🙂 ) and baked goods will be for sale in the shop, as will their usual assortment of excellent locally made products. Do I need to say that copies of my books will also be available for sale?

Support the battle to destroy MS before it destroys anyone else!

On Saturday, September 18, I’ll be doing my annual fundraising bike ride to fight the scourge of multiple sclerosis. If you’d like to support me or my team in this effort, click on one of these links:

Support Rick

Support The Vineyard Square Wheelers

As you’ll see on the web site, this ride, normally held on Martha’s Vineyard in the spring, will be in Concord, MA, because of Covid.

Covid or not, MS continues to ravage lives, so we don’t take the year off. Please consider sponsoring us as we ride to destroy this destroyer of lives.

Meet Calandra

Posted on by under Original writing

Hey, why write twice when I can recycle, reuse, regurgitate, oops, I mean repurpose a passage I’ve already written and in the process shamelessly promote one of my books? In the spirit of the aforementioned shameless self-(or, rather, self’s-book-)promotion, I hereby introduce you to someone who, despite her status as a fictional character inspired by a genuine human, is more real to me than many people I’ve met.

Meet Calandra, protagonist of my second book, A Song in the Storm:

ALTHOUGH CALANDRA KNEW the ancient walls surrounding her home city of Lucca had stood as they were for centuries, they seemed to be growing higher and closer, more constricting, more suffocating, with each passing day. She knew it was impossible—colossal earthen walls have a tendency to stay put—but she felt it all the same.

Barely 18, Calandra Agostini’s dark eyes burned with the intensity of her unfulfilled dreams. Lucca’s walls couldn’t contain those dreams. They were built to keep the city-state’s enemies out, but to her it felt as if the enemy had breached the ramparts and conspired to keep her in her place, a place in which she never felt completely at home.

Most people considered Calandra a beautiful girl. Indeed she was, but a photograph, had her family been able to afford one, could never have captured her beauty. In her presence, young men with smooth tongues stammered and suitors with shrewd tactics were forced to rethink their plans. Her allure was a revelation to those who knew her only from a distance. She was, in the most literal sense of the word, attractive, not because of her physical appearance alone, which was lovely in itself, but because of her strength and confidence tempered by an unaffected humility.

Then there was her voice.

The walls of Lucca today.

What a character!

Posted on by under Books

It’s not a revolutionary statement to say everyone is different. It’s made patently obvious simply by looking around. I believe one difference is how we approach our reading. Some concentrate on plot, some on prose, and others on message, with lots of other facets in between and plenty of combinations thereof.

I’m starting to think I’m a character guy. (It’s not just the fact that so many people have said I’m a character. That’s a coincidence. Maybe.) In every novel I read, I seem to be drawn first to its characters. As I wrote before, though I can’t explain why, I care deeply about what happens to these fictional people. It makes no sense, but there it is. If a book’s characters annoy me, there’s a better than even chance I won’t care for it, no matter how well regarded it might be.

It turns out that maybe that characteristic has carried over to my writing. More than one reader has commented on my protagonists, Fania in A Slippery Land and Calandra in A Song in the Storm. (Both are young women. Go figure.) I expect myself to be obsessed with my characters, but it’s a supreme compliment when I hear things like:

I can’t stop thinking about Fania.

Fania is a great role model for my daughter.

I agree, but I have a different perspective. Hopefully, Calandra will have a similar effect on readers.

It’s not just the leads, but even the minor characters get under my skin. That makes the writing and reading so much more fun. And since of necessity I read my own books many, many times in the revision and proofing processes, it’s good to know I’ll be spending time with people, er, characters I care about.

I hope you care as much as I do. But maybe you’re a plot person. Hopefully I’ll have you covered, too.

“A Song in the Storm” is here!

Posted on by under Books

As threatened, er, I mean, promised, my new book is finally available.

The story follows a young woman living in Lucca, Italy, in 1924. Gifted with a magnificent singing voice, she is on the verge of fulfilling her dream of becoming a professional singer. Her dream is crushed when her father tells her she must go to America to marry a man she’s never met. Her odyssey takes her from an ocean crossing, through Ellis Island, to Boston’s North End, with a lot of twists and surprises along the way.

While the story is fictional, it is inspired by the true experience of my grandmother, who was from Italy and lived through a similar situation. It also realistically represents the difficult road traveled by Italian immigrants in the early 20th century, a reality not much different from other ethnic groups before and since.

Click on any of the following links to buy a copy of the paperback or Kindle version:

Amazon

My Amazon author page

CreateSpace store

Kindle version

For some reason, the Kindle version hasn’t been linked to the paperback version. That kind of thing sometimes takes a few days and it might be fixed by the time you read this. In any case, you can get any version you want.

Like my last book, A Slippery Land, this one started as a screenplay. Like that screenplay, this one had received some good notice. One of the most highly respected screenwriting instructors in the world had the following comments about the movie script:

There is so much to like about A SONG IN THE STORM it is hard to know where to begin.

Calandra is exactly who you want your hero to be. She is in a world she is unfamiliar with, searching for her dream while fighting off a life forced upon her.

And the endearing ending you provide just tops the great story off so well. Super job!

I hope you have a chance to read the book and have the same reaction. If you do, let me know what you think. Also, if you read the book, I would greatly appreciate it if you would add a review to Amazon and/or Goodreads.

Thank you for your support of independent authors!

Coming soon!

Posted on by under Books

A girl with a gift…
…a forced marriage…
…and a favor that will change a family’s history forever.

Coming soon:

A Song in the Storm

Watch this blog for details and availability.