I'm slowly allowing myself to get excited for the trip to Verona next week. I've had my head down, trying to finish projects or at least get them to a good holding place so that I can disappear for a week and just revel in the fun of travel and friends, old and new. I'll be seeing film-maker Anna Lerario and her husband Antonio, my erstwhile editor Marina Bonomi, my Italian publisher Gianni La Corte, and hopefully be able to visit with my first Veronese friend, Antonella Leonardo. As an added bonus, I'll be able to catch up with Chuck Dvorak, who's stationed in Germany. He played Tybalt for me back in 2008.
The trip is front-loaded, with lots of book-promotion and such. There's talk of Italian TV, which frightens me. But on Friday I'll be getting up in front of a crowd at the Castelvecchio in Verona (where the statue of Cangrande is lodged), and talking about how the series came to be. Then I hop a train to Torino for the Torino Book Fair, where I'll be signing copies of the new Italian edition of The Master Of Verona.
But best of all, this has turned into an impromptu third honeymoon. Jan and I went to Europe in 2002 just after we got married, and spent 3 and a half months traveling – Athens, Crete, Delphi, Brindisi, Pompeii, Napoli, Rome, Floernce, Ravenna, Verona, Paris, Dublin, Edinburgh, Bath, Stratford, and London (among others). It was a fantastic tour, with over a month spent in Italy alone. Then in 2005 we went back with my parents and brother, who had never been, and did the Italian leg again, with the addition of Venice. So we added a few days to the back end of this trip, allowing us to bum around Italy for a few unhurried days, taking in favorite sights and finding new ones.
I'll post whenever I'm able. Be sure to check my Facebook page and also on Twitter. And when I return, we'll start gearing up for the release of The Prince's Doom in June!
