"The Mystery Trilogy" and "The Devil's canvas"

Let's start with "The Mystery Trilogy."

I have no compunction in admitting it, deciding to write a book, in itself is already a gamble, starting with a trilogy then is completely insane, but to my detriment I confess right away that I had not started with that intent, in the absolute way!

The whole thing came by itself, exactly as the novels then wrote themselves.

The misdeed started from an interesting book by Igor Sibaldi, "Il frutto proibito della conoscenza" and especially from the image the Author provides of the "Devil."

Devil not seen as the "antichrist" or "prince of evil," but rather as the very ancient "Lord of the Gates," the embodiment of fear of the unknown and consequently of the new that we face. Fears strongly rooted in our souls. Sibaldi then also provided some keys to conquer this atavistic fear by discomfiting characters and testimonies that, starting from the Bible and the Gospels reached all the way to the fairy tale of Snow White, passing through Prometheus and Merlin.

At this point, however, I must make another confession, and reveal a deep religious upbringing of my own due to a series of colleges and religious institutions that involved me at various levels from first grade to high school.

So the word "Devil," and consequently the subsequent concept of the "Seven Heavens," were not only extremely familiar to me, but I had already dissected them several times from different perspectives...though not always orthodox.

Dealing then with the theme of the "Devil," as an expression of the unconscious fear that everyone has of his or her own secret passions and of having at the same time to confront the fears of the unknown, had intrigued me not a little.

Thus, little by little characters had appeared in my imagination that over time had taken on more and more solidity and consistency, and the idea of telling a story where very ordinary individuals, immersed in concrete everyday reality, were abruptly brought into contact with "spirituality," drew me into the barren valley of writing.

But by then I was on my way, and although almost immediately I had to admit that not only was I totally ill-equipped for that journey, but that I had not even the slightest idea where to go, I nevertheless kept going.

Thus were born the characters of Michele Barovier and his fiancée Vanessa Dalla Vigna, one a professor at the Liceo Artistico, the other a bank executive, about to consolidate their union and consequently to plan their future in the most reasonable and sensible way.

On the other side, however, I had to represent 'spirituality,' and since the Devil I had in mind was not really the one of the Gospels, I opted for an alternative spirituality, and contacts and experiences with the world of "Wicca," a well-known cultural and spiritual movement related to the fundamental values of nature, came to my aid.

And to represent it I pulled in Marija Gimbutas, a Lithuanian archaeologist and linguist who is an expert on Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of Ancient Europe, who had long before fascinated me with her books on 'Myth and Worship of the Mother Goddess in Neolithic Europe.'

But repurposing her in my novel made no sense, so I doubled her and brought to life the Jimbutas sisters, Carlotta and Lilith, followers of Wicca and profound connoisseurs of the unknown.

By now I had made the leap, and two witches had entered the novel, although they too were not exactly representative of the common concept of "Witch."

But this unbalanced the tale, taking it dangerously down the road of the occult.

So I balanced it with science! More or less.

I then plucked liberally from quantum physics, pulling in Hugh Everett III and his "many worlds" theory and Einstein with the 1943 experiment in Philadelphia harbor on the military ship Eldrige.D.E.173, paving the way for parallel worlds and time machines.

At that point I had created a balance between mystery, spirituality, magic, science and everyday banality.

More than one topic of discussion at my imaginary dinner party.

Satisfied, I then let the novel finish itself, and he, without any mercy, drew from the depths of the characters with full force, dragging fears, passions, sex, love, hate to the light.

In case you are interested in how the story ends you can always read it! The title of the first book is "The Devil's canvas."

At that point, however, I had, yes, in my hand a complete novel, but one that opened the way, however, to a subsequent reasoning.

I had initiated the unexpected encounter of very ordinary individuals with both the world of the occult and the world of science fiction, which as we all know increasingly ends up turning into mainstream science at the speed of light, and the question that came to me was, "but if I wrote a story where the characters first had to discover and accept 'different' realities and concepts, what story could I tell with the same characters when they are already aware of them? "

And there the idea of the trilogy was born.