Synopsis – Coincidentally in Venice
Best friends Ashley and Juliet, who’ve been made redundant from their marketing jobs during Covid, at last get to go to Venice. The long days of lockdown were made a little easier by looking at webcams of the deserted city. One day, Ash spied a man walking his dog in Campo Santa Maria Formosa. What would happen if she were to meet him for real?
Though Jules hits it off with a handsome waiter, and both girls take the opportunity to think through big career changes, things otherwise don’t go quite according to plan. And why is it that boring Joe from Accounts keeps turning up where he’s not supposed to be? Only, whoever falls in love with Venice won’t stay boring for long, and Joe unwittingly finds himself at the centre of a trade in faked artworks.
Coincidentally in Venice is a joyous celebration of love, friendship, vintage clothes to die for, Prosecco and spaghetti alle vongole. Oh, and not to mention a stolen gondola, a dog called Killer, ten thousand fictitious virgins and an old Grateful Dead t-shirt.
Author Bio
Author Bio – Kate Zarrelli is the romance pen-name of Katherine Mezzacappa, specialising in to die for heroes in lush contemporary Italian settings. Coincidentally in Venice is her third romance title with Romaunce and her first rom com. Writing as Katie Hutton, she is also the author of four sagas published by Zaffre, and under her own name two literary historical novels.
Social Media Links – https://www.facebook.com/katezarrellibooks/
Author Q&A
What was the inspiration for your book?
It was initially a sad one. During the silent days of lockdown I looked for webcams of European cities I couldn’t go and visit, and homed in on Venice. Covid regulation was pretty strict here – I live in northern Tuscany – to the degree that only one of us could even go to the supermarket for a strictly supervised shop, let alone take a train to Venice (my husband did the shopping). You could though take your dog out for a pee. We have cats, so that didn’t work for us. Looking at a deserted Campo Santa Maria Formosa in Venice, I spotted a man with his dog, and the story came to me. Best friends Ashley and Juliet, working in London in jobs in marketing that bore them, have postponed the Venice trip they’d planned. Ashley has split up from her boyfriend, having realised at last when deciding who to spend lockdown with, that she’d rather be alone. But Juliet has the bright idea that Ash and dog-man could one day be an item, except that when the two friends finally get to Venice, things don’t quite go according to plan…
What research did you have to do?
I know Venice quite well, but hey, a trip to find specific locations was a necessity. Over-tourism is a serious problem for the city, with the number of actual Venetians living there having halved in my lifetime. There are though some quiet corners, and one is the island of the Giudecca. There’s an art conservation institute there, the Villa Hériot. By coincidence – or is it? – the accountant from Ashley and Juliet’s company is using his redundancy money to retrain as a conservator. Everybody had thought poor Joe was pretty boring, but Venice has a way of making people who are sensitive to the place anything but dull. Joe even finds himself unwittingly snared in a plot involving fake art works. I thought I’d have to make do with what I could find out about Villa Hériot online and by taking furtive photos of it from the landing stage, but my husband spotted someone going in and spoke to her, and so we got inside. We pretended we were there to find out about courses for one of our sons, only we got the two of them muddled. Either the staff of Villa Hériot didn’t notice or they were too polite to say anything. We saw the public areas of the institute, including its library, but didn’t go into the laboratories, but I could sense the presence of people behind those closed doors, working in concentrated silence; conservation is painstaking work. I drew on my own background too. I studied History of Art at university years ago and for a brief period was a museum curator. Everything comes in useful for a writer eventually.
How important is the location when you are writing your books?
For me, it’s everything. I also write historical fiction, and most often (but not always) get started on a book because I am in a place that prompts me to think about the people who lived there and how they lived. It was a moving image – the webcam – that got me started on this book. I could have set it somewhere else, but Venice being a place completely given over to pedestrians or water-borne traffic makes it special. It also allowed me to introduce an incident involving a stolen gondola. This actually happened, back in 1981. Somebody called Rupert – a young idiot on his gap year who was staying in the same accommodation as me – nicked one and was rapidly bundled back home. It’s a serious business, as a gondola is someone’s livelihood.
Tell me something about your writer’s routine – if you have one.
I still have a job, though it’s very part-time now and I have a timeline for making a complete transition to writing full-time or doing writing related work alongside, like manuscript assessment. I write at the beginning of the day, before office hours start, usually in the company (on Zoom) of London Writers’ Salon. Then I do my job the rest of the morning (I have worked from home for years) and write again in the afternoon or late at night. I seldom work on one book at a time. As well as writing contemporary romances as Kate Zarrelli, I also write historical novels as Katherine Mezzacappa – The Maiden of Florence was published in April and The Ballad of Mary Kearney will come out in January. I also have four novels, historical too, published by Zaffre Books, writing as Katie Hutton.
What are you working on now?
I am finishing off the first draft of another contemporary romance, this one set in Umbria, called Dancing in Corciano. Corciano is listed officially as one of the most beautiful small towns in Italy and it really is. My other work in progress is a historical novel (writing as Katherine Mezzacappa) set at the Borgia papal court in Rome in the late 15century. My protagonist is a surgeon turned sleuth. Writing crime is a first for me, but my intention is that this book should be the first in a series (another first for me), in which my surgeon works in a series of Renaissance city states, on the trail of his nemesis as well as solving the crime of the moment. Their final confrontation, however, takes place in Venice.
