When I was researching my novel, not only did I trace my ancestral roots, but I fell in love with everything Italy. That was the start of watching TV shows in Italian. Those shows, in turn, introduced me to new dishes I never heard of. Throw X/Twitter in for good measure and – well let’s […]

Crafting authentic characters for Emerging From Etna’s Shadow meant piecing together the past to uncover my maternal grandparents’ personalities, despite knowing little about them initially. How could I incorporate their personalities into the story when I knew barely anything about them? As I did my research, looked at old photos, and remembered stories we were […]

Pasta alla Carrettiera, or Cart Drivers’ Pasta, was a dish mentioned in my book. When a friend asked me about it, I figured I would share what I found here. To be honest, I’d never heard of this dish before. But it caught my attention during my research when I discovered that my great-grandfather’s occupation […]

Of my four grandparents, all who immigrated from Italy to the USA, three of them came as young children. They attended school in New York and fully assimilated to their new country. They only spoke English around their children, so my parents didn’t speak Italian. My paternal grandmother had a Brooklyn accent so thick, you […]

Christmas time brings many different memories for people – some good and some bad. Personally, I like to focus on the good memories: Going to midnight Mass and walking home at 1:30 in the morning. remembering the excitement of my children on Christmas morning when they were young, being together with family, and Christmas cookies. […]