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ROMANCE BOOKS 4 US BLOGSPOT
June 10, 2011 Hi everyone, my name is R. Ann Siracusa. I’m a new author to Romance Books R Us. I go by Ann, and you’ll just have to guess what the initial R stands for. Thank you for stopping by my first RBRU blog. So, Who Am I? Here’s the short―just give me the facts, ma’am―version. I’m retired from a 37-year career as an architect, urban planner (which makes me older than dirt) and have been married to the same man for 48 years (an Italian policeman from Sicily whom I met at the Fountain of Love on my first day in Rome). We have three grown children, eight grandchildren and one great grandchild. I’m well-published in my profession of architecture/urban planning, but my first work of fiction (a mainstream mafia thriller) wasn’t published until 2008. Since 2009, I’ve been writing humorous romantic suspense novels published by Sapphire Blue Publishing. I live in San Diego, and write full time. Ho-hum. If you want to know more boring stuff, look at my resume under Bio on my website: http://www.rannsiracusa.com The Juicier Version After I graduated from UC Berkeley, my architecture degree tucked in my suitcase, I tootled off to Rome, Italy (via some time in London) to take a doctorate in Urban Planning. Instead, on my first day in Rome, I sat next to a very handsome Italian at the Fountain of Love in Piazza Esedra, and the rest is history. (Actually, I sat there on purpose…no accident there). I didn’t speak much Italian, he didn’t speak much English, and a month later I had to look up the word fidanzata in the English-Italian dictionary to find out I was “engaged.” I did attend the University of Rome but basically audited classes because final examinations were oral, and I didn’t speak Italian fluently enough to pull that off. When I told my parents I planned to marry an Italian policeman from Sicily, my mother showed up in Rome, without warning, to take me home…and I hadn’t even told them he was a widower with a three-year-old daughter. I was 24 at the time, and probably not the brightest bulb on the tree. Scary, isn’t it? Exercising my independence, I refused to go and promised, if I didn’t have a job by the end of the year, I would come home. My mother left the plane ticket, which I cashed in immediately, borrowed a hundred dollars from my ex-boyfriend in New York, and Luciano and I got married in a civil ceremony. P.S. Ronnie, if you’re still out there somewhere, I’ve been trying to find you to pay you back. Okay, now here’s naïveté for you. I had this great plan: If I didn’t get a job, I would return to California, work for six months, save up some money, and convince my parents I hadn’t turned into a raving lunatic, then go back to Italy and live HEA. He was going to wait for me. Yeah, right! This would never get past an editor who would say, “It’s too unbelievable. The heroine is TSTL.” The week before my scheduled return to the US, I got a job as an architect with an Italian land development firm. Lucky for me, because I was already pregnant. Being a policeman in the Guardia di Pubblica Sicurezza (the national police), Luciano needed official permission to get married. Since I wasn’t Catholic, and since we planned to marry in the Catholic Church to please his family, I took instruction while we waited for the police to do the security checks and so on. It took many months. So there I was, six months pregnant (but not showing much) meeting twice a week with a priest at the American Catholic Church. I did fine until we got to the part about birth control. Then we had a major confrontation. When he explained birth control was a sin because it was a perversion of a natural function, I pointed out that using antiperspirants also perverts a natural function, but I didn’t see the Church taking a position against that. Oh, boy. Long story short. I was willing to convert to Catholicism for my husband’s sake. The Catholic Church said, “Thanks, but no thanks. Just sign this promise to bring up your children up in the Church. We’d rather you remain an Episcopalian.” How’s that for rejection! Clearly, Fate was preparing me for a career in local government and for writing novels. It took quite a few years for me to understand why that happened, but eventually the light dawned. My daughter and oldest son were born in Rome, where I worked for the Societá General Immobiliare, an Italian planning and development firm, as an architect/planner for several years until we returned to the United States. Luciano and I, his daughter and our son, and then our second son (all five of us) lived with my parents for a full year. You can’t begin to imagine! But that’s another story. What Inspires Me To Write? My two passions (after sex, of course―well, you wouldn’t expect me to lie about that, would you?) are traveling the world and writing fiction. I combine those loves into novels which transport readers to exotic settings and immerse them in romance, intrigue, and foreign cultures…and make them laugh. Being an architect, my main interest in travel began initially with curiosity about ancient cultures and the ways in which those cultures manifested themselves in structures, buildings systems, and design. I never imagined my interest would eventually blossom into a major source of inspiration for writing novels. But it has. Now, when I travel, I look for the unique features of the country or for pieces of information about the culture that spark a story idea. Sometimes just a word, a phrase, a street scene, an historical event, etc. can spark a full storyline, other times they provide incidents to enrich a novel. I believe unless you experience the culture, breathe the air, taste the food, inhale the smells, watch the body language, you really can’t write about another culture. My current humorous romantic suspense series features a young tour director, Harriet Ruby, and a handsome Europol spy, Will Talbot, with a dark and troubled past. And what do you know? Every adventure takes them to a different part of the world where I have traveled. What a coincidence! Get Ready To See The World I’m going to be blogging on the tenth of each month and, in some of those blogs I’ll take you with me on adventures to other countries. |
 Piazza Esedra (Piazza della Republica)
Carrie Ann Ryan's Blog Tour
August 31, 2012 An Italian / American Love Story R. Ann Siracusa Everyone has a story, and for many people that story is a romance…although not all of them have happy endings in real life. That's one of the wonderful aspects of the romance novels. You can become anyone, go anywhere, and experience every emotion, without leaving home and without risk. And you experience the joy of H.E.A. This is my romantic story. After graduating from UC Berkeley in 1963 with a degree in architecture, I went to Rome to study at the University of Rome. I arrived via London, where I'd spent a week with a friend from Berkeley. Only July 26, my first day in Rome and at the Fountain of Love in Piazza Esedra (also called Piazza Della Republica), I met the man I married and am still married to. I’d just arrived by train that afternoon, and had eaten nothing all day. Once I found a place to stay for a few days, I went looking for an American Bar that I remembered from my first time in Rome. I was dying for a hamburger after a week in England. The café (I can't recall the name anymore) wasn't far from my rooming house near the train station, located on Via Nazionale, which intersected with Piazza Della Republica. However, there were, and still are, at least five streets traversing that piazza. I planned sit down by the fountain in the center of the piazza to figure it out.  Marcello Mastroianni
In those day (long before air conditioning), during the hot summer afternoons, the Italians sat around the rims of the fountains seeking cool relief from the heat in the light fountain spray. The only cool place around. When I got there and waited for a break in the traffic to cross the street, I noticed, sitting on the rim of the fountain, a good looking man who made me think of the Italian actor, Marcello Mastroianni.
 Luciano Siracusa
Pretty cool. I didn't delude myself that it was the actor, but the man looked a lot like him. That was good enough. I skipped the street, dodging cars and motor scooters in my three inch spiked heels, and sat down next to him. After a while, he started talking to me (HeHeHe), but I don't remember how we communicated. He spoke a little English, I spoke a few words in Italian from one semester of the language at Berkeley.
Despite the communication problem, I learned he was a Guardia of the Pubblica Sicurezza, a state policeman, who worked in the passport office. And when he invited me to dinner, I accepted. Oh, yeah.
We found other ways to communicate, as young people usually do. Things got very friendly on the steps of the Palazzo Della Civitá, but it was dark by then—thank goodness— and we were up a million steps from street level, under the arcade. 
Under other circumstances, I probably would have slapped his face (that's my story and I'm sticking with it) and left, but I had no Italian money and didn’t know where I was or how to get to my hotel. Well, I was young, inexperienced, and not the brightest bulb on the tree.
When he returned me to my pensione late that night, we made a date for the next afternoon. A date I almost missed because I had to register for Italian classes at a language school. I met two other American girls who wanted to share a room, and the time slipped away. I had to run all the way from the bus to the rooming house to catch him before he left. After that, I was smitten. A couple of months later, I had to look up the word fidanzata in my Italian-English dictionary to find out I was engaged., and in December we got married in a civil ceremony at City Hall (the Campidoglio). But that's just the beginning of the saga. I'll save the rest for another time. |