ABOUT THE BOOK
"Tarquini spins a haunting lyrical fantasy dealing with love, loss, and political turmoil..." ―Publishers Weekly
For fans of Paulo Coelho and Neil Gaiman comes a magical story by critically acclaimed author Mindy Tarquini.
In Panduri, an enchanted city seen only at twilight, everyone's path is mapped, everyone's destiny decided, their lives charted at birth and steered by an unwavering star. Everyone has his place, and Matteo, second son of Panduri's duca, is eager to take up his as Legendary Protector--at the border and out from under his father's domineering thumb. Then Matteo's older brother pulls rank and heads to the border in his stead, leaving Panduri's orbit in a spiral and Matteo's course on a skid. Forced to follow an unexpected path, resentful and raw, Matteo is determined to rise, to pursue the one future Panduri's star can never chart: a life of his own.
Brigadoon meets Pippin in this quirky tale of grief steeped deep in Italian folklore and shimmering with hope--to remember what helps, forget what hurts, and give what remains permission to soar.
Book Details:
Title: Deepest Blue, A Novel
Author: Mindy Tarquini
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: SparkPress, (Sept 25, 2018)
Print length: 303 pages
INTERVIEW WITH MINDY TARQUINI
Q: What’s the story behind the title of your book?
A: Deepest Blue is a fairytale based on folklore. In Italian folklore fairies are majestic. Their favorite color is indigo, associated with the twilight, and also the color of grief. In the story, the color comes into play in various forms, from the time of day to mood to even the color of a woman’s dress. Deepest blue represents the protagonist, Matteo’s, undoing, yet it is also associated with those emotions and events from which he draws strength.
Q: Who are you?
A: I am of good peasant stock. If I were born in any time other than the modern, I’d be planting tomatoes, stirring stew by the fire, and rolling out pasta on a marble counter.
Q: Where’s home for you?
A: Home is with my family and always will be. My daughter just moved to Colorado, so a lot of my heart is there right now.
Q: What’s your favorite memory?
A: It turns out to be the same as my daughter’s–we both remember jumping into the pool and having our dads catch us.
Q: What’s the dumbest purchase you’ve ever made?
A: An expensive piece of glass from Murano, Italy that I Pretty-Womaned at one store because another store thought that my Target clothing wasn’t upscale enough to be shopping there. The glass is magnificent, so magnificent I’m afraid to put it on display, lest a pet or a child send it crashing. Hence, it’s been sitting in a closet, packed in straw, for a decade.
Q: What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned?
A: Never buy expensive, breakable pieces of random art.
Q: Who would you pick to write your biography?
A: My daughter. She would get it entirely wrong, but it’d be funny.
Q: What do you love about where you live?
A: I don’t have to shovel my driveway, and groceries are cheap.
Q: Have you been in any natural disasters?
A: My twins started puberty at the same time. Does that count?
Q: Absolutely! What is the most daring thing you've done (besides having twins)?
A: Having twins was great, but if I were going to have twins again I would space them out a couple of years.
Q: LOL. What’s one thing that you wish you knew as a teenager that you know now?
A: Stuff doesn’t matter. People do. Let your hurts go and move on.
Q: What’s one thing you wish your younger writer self knew?
A: Beautiful writing is great, but without structure every story will fall flat.
Q: What is your most embarrassing moment?
A: You mean aside from the incident with the ketchup, correct?
Q: What makes you happy?
A: My children, my husband, and my lemon tree.
Q: What makes you scared?
A: Bears.
Q: What makes you excited?
A: Innovation! Precise thinking! Intelligence! Really good gelato!
Q: How did you meet your husband?
A: Over the internet, back in the caveman days when it was called the intranet, used only by nerds, and all forums were local.
Q: If you could only save one thing from your house, what would it be?
A: Aside from my family and pets, I’d save my grandmother’s hand-embroidered bedspread because if I didn’t, she’d come back to life and kill me.
Q: What brings you delight?
A: When someone tells me something interesting that I didn’t know. Especially when it sparks an engaging conversation.
Q: What’s one of your favorite quotes?
A: “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” -Lao Tzu
Q: If you could live anywhere in the world, where in the world would it be?
A: A large property on the Italian countryside, where I can cook cannellini in the kitchen and watch my grandkids play hide and seek among the fig trees.
Q: What would you like people to say about you after you die?
A: She never gave up. She never gave in. Not once, not ever.
Q: What’s your favorite line from a book?
A: “To survive, you must tell stories.” ― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before
Q: What would your main character say about you?
A: “She’s just so damn practical.”
Q: How did you create the plot for this book?
A: Painstakingly.
Q: Are any of your characters inspired by real people?
A: All are inspired by real people, and I’ll take those identities to my grave.
Q: Very wise. Is your book based on real events?
A: All my writing is based on real events from my sojourns to fairyland. Keep an eye out for my autobiography: The Accidental Novelist: Because Nobody Would Believe Me.
Q: Excellent title! Are you like any of your characters?
A: I’m like all the smart, good-looking ones who never make mistakes. Okay, that’s not true. I’m probably the character who can’t get her foot out of her mouth.
Q: One of your characters has just found out you’re about to kill him off. He/she decides to beat you to the punch. How would he kill you?
A: By running into the future to get the drop on me, but it wouldn’t work because she’s my character and I know what she’s going to do, so I’d erase all those paragraphs.
Q: Diabolical. With what five real people would you most like to be stuck in a bookstore?
A: Peter Mayle makes me laugh. Unfortunately, he’s dead. Italo Calvino inspires me. Unfortunately, he’s dead too. If they have to be alive, Margaret Atwood, Cormac McCarthy, and Daniel Pinkwater- because he makes my entire family laugh and he’s actually alive.
Wait, I just realized it didn’t have to be authors. So… Ellen DeGeneres, Trevor Noah, Michelle Obama, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and whoever invented the show Drunk History.
Q: What’s one pet peeve you have when you read?
A: When every character gets a name, a nickname, a name used only by inhabitants of one locale, another name used only by inhabitants of another locale, a sword with three names, a horse with two, and a backstory that the author insists on informing me in a deep and detailed prologue. When I see a glossary, I get nervous.
Q: Do you have a routine for writing?
A: Generally, I try not to cry.
Q: Where and when do you prefer to do your writing?
A: Anywhere that I can look at something pretty. I love a good view.
Q: What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received about your writing?
A: That the characters are so real, it feels like they’re following the reader around.
Q: Where is your favorite library, and what do you love about it?
A: At the seashore in New Jersey, because they have tons of events and workshops. I used to be there with my kids every few days, and they loved carrying my books,
Q: You can be any fictional character for one day. Who would you be?
A: Landroval, the eagle in Lord of the Rings so I can take that stupid ring to Mount Doom and save everybody a lot of trouble.
Q: What’s the worst thing someone has said about your writing? How did you deal with it?
A: That she or he has to pay attention to every word to follow the story. There’s not much I can do about that. It’s called reading. Although, I will confess that I put all the words there on purpose, but I limit them to only the words the story needs. I compost the rest.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Officially, I think it will be classed as a humorous Contemporary Women’s Fiction. Unofficially, I suspect there will be time-travel and resonating Crystal Worlds and good-looking guys named Sven.
OTHER BOOKS BY MINDY TARQUINI
Infinite Now
Hindsight
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mindy Tarquini grew up convinced that there are other worlds just one giant step to the left of where she’s standing. Author of the critically acclaimed and award-winning Hindsight (SparkPress 2016) and The Infinite Now (SparkPress 2017), Tarquini’s writing has appeared in Writer’s Digest, BookPage, Hypable, and other venues. An associate editor on the Lascaux Review and a member of the Perley Station Writers Colony, Tarquini is a second-generation Italian American who believes words have power. She plies hers to the best of her ability from an enchanted tower a giant step left in the great Southwest.
Connect with Mindy:
Website | Facebook | Twitter
Buy the book:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | SparkPress