Introducing my new novel 📖 IN THE GARDEN OF MONSTERS!

A Gothic retelling of the myth of Hades and Persephone, but infused with the surreal genius of Salvador Dalí —but never fear, there is a LOT of food! 🍒🍷

Sep 14, 2023

Finally, I can shout out my news across the rooftops of the world! I have a new novel coming out with MIRA Books in September 2024!

Salvador Dalí , 1955, by Charles Hewitt, at Salvador Dalí s home in Portlligat, Spain. Everything about this photo is so weird and so strange and so jubilant.

See? It’s official!!

You’ll notice it says two-book deal (wooohooo!) which may have you wondering if my monster book, as I fondly call it, is related to the second book. Nope! Entirely new and very different. News on that in the future!

But back to In The Garden of Monsters. How did I end up writing a gothic novel about Persephone (although I use the Roman name, Proserpina) and how on earth did Dalí end up in it? Flashback to the middle of the pandemic when I was struggling to sell a novel about a Renaissance meat carver. “Renaissance books aren’t selling right now,” I was told (not long before Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait hit the bestseller list). I was discouraged. This sentiment also didn’t bode well for the book I was writing about the obscure Baroque steward Antonio Latini, whom I told you about last week. I was lamenting about the whole thing on Zoom with an author friend, Kris Waldherr. “If I were going to write something that would actually sell, what would it be?” I remember her tilting her head in thought. “Well, gothics are hot right now (says the author of the gothic masterpiece Unnatural Creatures).” And I thought to myself, hmmm. If I were to write a gothic, what would I write?

Immediately, the location came to me. And if you’ve read many gothics, you know it’s all about the location. I had been to the town of Bomarzo, an hour north of Rome, a couple of years before, completely on a whim only because it was near Caprarola, which I was visiting for my work on that Renaissance meat carver book. In Bomarzo is a spectacular Mannerist garden of sixty-six stone monsters called Il Sacro Bosco, or the sacred wood. It has a fascinating history which begins in the late 1500s, then pauses for nearly 400 years when the whole garden is abandoned and overgrown, then rediscovered by poets and artists in the early 20th century. In the 1950s a couple bought it and restored it for the public to visit. The garden is certainly beautiful, magical, strange, and somewhat creepy, but looming above it on the hill is the medieval palazzo, making it an extra perfect setting for this ghosty story.

One of those artists who visited the garden was Salvador Dalí. In the video thumbnail below, he is in the mouth of the orco, the ogre, and is considered to be a metaphorical entrance to hell.

When he was there, he filmed a tiny movie about it.

Inside the park are statues of all sorts of mythological creatures. I will talk more about the park in future posts, but if you want to see more, you can head here. Not only do you have the orco, or the mouth of hell, the demesne of Pluto/Hades, but across from it is Ceres (the Roman name for Demeter). Further along in the garden, there is a bench depicting Proserpina (Persephone). Ok, so that gave me the idea of doing something that revolved around the myth.

I didn’t initially want to write about Dalí because he is so over-the-top, narcissistic, and very controversial (he would have definitely been canceled in today’s culture). And besides, I didn’t even really like his art very much. But I figured I’d do a little research about him and it wasn’t long before I was really hooked. His life was pure drama, pure spectacle. He had a brilliant, curious mind. And the more I learned about his art, the more I realized how talented and highly influential he was.

“Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy —the joy of being Salvador Dalí— and I ask myself in rapture: What wonderful things is this Salvador Dalí going to accomplish today?”

He was a true Renaissance man, dabbling in various art forms, painting, sculpture, drama, and in addition to a couple of autobiographies, he even wrote a novel, Hidden Faces. He loved food, and in 1971, he released a cookbook and a wild tarot deck that was published posthumously. He was incredibly prolific, much of that due to his wife, Gala. And Gala? She is a story unto herself (more on that later!).

Dalí and Gala, likely taken in the 40s before he had his characteristic mustache. In the timeframe of my novel - 1948- he doesn't yet have it.

The more I learned about the couple, the more I realized I wanted to include them in my story. But how would I weave that in? It helped that Dalí already saw pomegranates as a symbol which he included in many of his paintings. And voila! That was it. I would tell the story from the point of view of a model he hires and brings to Bomarzo for a week to paint.

It’s a really wild book. There are ghosts, ancient gods, plus sex and romance. But don’t worry, if you are concerned that it might be a horror novel, it’s not. I don’t think it’s particularly scary—creepy and ghosty, but not scary! There is also tons and tons of food—more so than any of my other books. And yes, I’ll have a companion cookbook to download.

The bad news is that you’ll have to wait a YEAR for it. I know, I know. Publishing is a slow beast. I missed the deadlines for this fall, and given the type of book it is, it makes more sense for it to be published in the spooky fall season. September 2024 can’t come fast enough, right?

A Renaissance Recipe for You

This week, I had the great pleasure of hanging out with bestselling author Nancy Bilyeau in her newsletter and blog, sharing a recipe for Ciambelle (not the sweet cookies or cakes, but instead a precursor to the bagel!). Head to that link to check it out. Nancy also has a new novel, The Orchid Hour, about a librarian in Jazz Age Little Italy that you don’t want to miss!

What’s Bringing Me Joy This Week

This totally cracked me up. “In Italy we don’t say ‘Don’t Interrupt Me’.”She’s saying “Maledetta che tu sia, diabolica! Il diavolo ti sta governando.” Translation: “Cursed you are, diabolical one! The devil is ruling you!”
This kitten thinks he’s also a rabbit.
I’ve been super immersed in Starfield and expect I will be for a few months to come. It’s a massive game with endless amounts of things to do and ways to play it. Here’s a taste (but take the video with a grain of salt!🤣).
How cats sleep in Italy. Which makes me wonder if my cat is secretly Italian.