Home cooking

As a writer, you make some assumptions about who your audience is. In the case of Fantasy in Florence, I imagined that most readers would be over forty and looking for a change in their lives.

Wrong!

Turns out students are reading the book, too. Here’s part of an email from a post-grad student who read the book as a break from her regular studies. I’ve left out her name, faculty and school.

“I just finished reading your book, Fantasy in Florence. I wanted to write to you to tell you how much I enjoyed it! I lived in Florence for 3 months after I graduated university, to study Italian and to experience life somewhere else. Many times as I was reading the book, I could picture exactly where you were writing about, as I had been there myself. I also loved your stories of the people you met while you were there – I think these are the best experiences. One of my favourite memories was a night that my friend and I went to a family dinner at the house of a friend we had made at the archaeological museum in Fiesole!”

That’s how it works in Florence, or Fiesole (which is only a few minutes up into the Tuscan hills), or anywhere else in Italy. You meet someone and they invite you home for dinner. Magnifico!