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Excerpt
The old woman hummed to herself as she crumbled bits of black paste into a little clay pot and added wine and water.
“Good Roman wine,” she said, as she stirred it with a wooden spoon.
“And honey,” she added, smiling, showing blackened teeth.“To cover the taste.”
She had told Ughetto and the other boys to call her Nonna. But she was nothing like Ughetto’s nonna. Ughetto’s nonna was plump and easy, with soft arms and warm fingers. This crone, this vecchia, was scrawny and dry and twisted, like a dead olive tree.
Ughetto knew what the black paste was. He had seen it often in his mother’s tavern in Trapani. The sailors carried it in their pockets, wrapped in bits of Chinese silk or Indian cotton. Their eyes gleamed with anticipation as they unwrapped their little bundles, opening them carefully on the wooden tables. They shaved the paste into clay pipes with small, sharp knives, and when they smoked it, the tavern filled with the pungent scent of poppies.
Bio
Since graduating from Clarion West in 1973, I've been most fortunate to publish thirteen books, with a fourteenth, Mozart's Blood, coming in July of 2010. A former concert and opera singer, I now write full time and teach writing for the Long Ridge Writers Group. Details of my bibliography and some teaching tools are offered at my website, www.louisemarley.com. There are also some supplementary materials for Mozart's Blood, including links to musical samples and a virtual tour of the people and places in the novel.
Publications
The Singers of Nevya, an omnibus edition, www.fairwoodpress.com
Mozart's Blood, Kensington Books, July 2010
Absalom's Mother & Other Stories, collected short fiction, www.fairwoodpress.com
Writing Description
My novels and short stories are informed by my first career in classical music. Nothing prepares a writer better to write novels than to be an opera singer first!
Goals
I'm on a short (for me) delivery schedule for my next book for Kensington, so my goal is to write five pages a day during the Write-a-thon. That should mean a completed first draft!
