My new book has launched — Here’s the story behind the stories
My latest collection, Short Stories About Love, launched on Amazon. As always, thank you for being part of my adventure. I couldn’t be more excited to share this book with you, including two stories that took home First Place at the Blue Ridge Blue Nib Awards (fiction and nonfiction) and 2nd Place at the Virginia Golden Nib Award (nonfiction).
This collection is raw, complex, full, and as surprising as love itself.
- What would you do for love?
- Follow a soul across time?
- Die for your country?
- Stay in a life that’s slowly destroying you?
These nine stories explore love in all its complexity. How it breaks us, redeems us, haunts us, and transforms us.
Every story has a backstory. Here’s a little of mine.
The idea for Blinky came from a friend living in Brooklyn who had a monkey.
After years of volunteering at a shelter, I thought it was a good time to discuss domestic violence. The Cup is a fictional story that explores how it happens and how to emerge.
Two Lives — One Soul is set in Lipari, Italy, my mother’s childhood home, and asks whether souls can find each other across time.
Connor and Birdie arrived in one of my dreams with their full story in hand. Two orphans born from the tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire end up at the New York Foundling Hospital—a place in my personal narrative.
The Fishing Trip is about a father, a son, and the time we can’t get back.
Grocery Shopping was born out of a shooting at a local supermarket — an ordinary moment that changed everything.
For the Love of Country draws on our current world and Orwell’s 1984, because some stories feel more urgent by the day, and heroes can be everyday people.
And Passages is the one closest to my heart — a nonfiction piece about what I witnessed volunteering in hospice, and the final lessons the dying teach us about love, regret, and letting go. Stories end. Love never does.
Short Stories About Love is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle. I’ve priced the eBook at $.99 so it is accessible. If you purchase, please leave a rating or review.
Written with love, sent out with hope. May this book find its way to you.
Thank you again.
Francesca