January 19th, 2018

I've been in bed, sick with the flu, for 6 days straight now. Six Freaking Days!  Who's got time for that?  If I'd been in bed, writing for 6 days that would have been fun-- I'm currently working on the second Petronella book, set up at Flathead Lake in Northwest Montana & there' water dragons and Pegasuses in it. But NOOOOOO, instead I've got the darn flu, with the sore throat and head ache and chills and fever and . . .you get the idea. I've re-read all the Harry Potter books but the last (which I'll read tomorrow) and watched three seasons of Once Upon a Time (damn you Evil Queen!).  
     So, what's my point?  Fair question. I was checking Amazon for Season 5 of Once Upon a Time and, as always happens when I log into Amazon, my author page came up. And today that page gave me a surprise. I've got another book coming out. Who knew?  
    Well, I did. I guess. I told you, I've been pretty sick This is a novel I wrote for the Mentoris Project via Barbara Foundation Publishing. The project's founder, an Italian-American, was sick and tired of Italians and Italian Americans always being represented in Television and movies as thugs and mafia dudes. So he created this foundation and publishing company to promote books of notable Italian-Americans. Which is pretty cool when you consider that Italian Americans, like MANY other immigrant groups, have long been discriminated against (make your own leap to current events NOW). If you're interested, the web site for the project, with all its books and authors (incluce Me!) is: https://www.mentorisproject.org/author-bios-1/​
    So I got to write about Louis Palma di Cesnola, a guy I'd NEVER heard of when I agreed to write him. Turns out he was pretty cool.In his teens he fought in the First War of Italian Independence, in his twenties he fought in the Crimean War and in his thirties he fought in the American Civil War, where he was a Colonel in the cavalry. Horses and swords dudes! Midway through the war he was captured and spent ten months in the Libby Prison, a now infamous Confederate prison in Richmond. The guy ended up the first director of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, which is also a pretty cool deal. It was a fun book to write and the best thing about it was that the publishing company liked it so much they offered me another book deal. This summer I'll be writing about Angela Bambace, a union organizer that made a huge difference in textile worker's lives in the mid-20th century. 
   You can see the Cesnola cover at Amazon, or at my the home page of my web page. If you buy the book and read it I'd appreciate it if you left a review.  Getting Reviews turn out to be the hardest thing about writing.
    Thanks for reading this. I appreciate your time. And if you've had the flu . . . isn't it awful?  Egad!