The First Spark

(Day 4 of 30 – story crumbs from the world of Loveandpizza.it 🍕 )

Note: there’s a link to a bonus post inside this post where you can read the original 1st chapter of Loveandpizza.it that didn’t make the final cut… If you find it and read it, leave a comment there to let me know you found it. 😉

Every book starts with an idea. A feeling. An image you can’t get out of your head. A question that won’t leave you alone.

In my case, I didn’t have a plan, nor an outline, nor a little pitch. Mine started with a broken heart. Though not my own. It came with a good dose of anger, too – and a fierce desire to get revenge for someone I love deeply, even if the man I wanted revenge against never knew a thing about it. Because he was never really the point. She was. She was the one who needed to know she’d be more than okay.

A phone call in a Napoli internet café

Picture it: 2008, the Quartieri Spagnoli. My husband and I had recently moved into a little flat right in the middle of the action. There was an internet café just down the street, and once a week I’d wander in to call my parents, because this was the age before a video call with home lived in your pocket.

One afternoon, walking back from my classes, I stopped in and rang my mum, and she told me the news. My little sister, who was 25 at the time, had just been through a horrible breakup. The kind that properly flattens you. The kind that has you swearing off love for the rest of your natural life.

And there I was, thousands of miles away – heck, a whole ocean away! -, useless with distance, wishing I could do something, anything, to make it better.

So I did the only thing I really know how to do when words fail: I reached for more words.

“I’m going to write you a revenge novel”

I decided, then and there, that I would write my sister a revenge novel.

Now – before you picture anything too dramatic – not that kind of revenge. Not the keying-his-car, burning-his-jumper kind (tempting though it was, given what he’d done 😏). The best kind. The living-well kind. The sort where a woman who’s been completely flattened by love gets swept off to the most gloriously alive city on earth, dares to start over, and discovers that the finest answer to heartbreak isn’t getting even – it’s getting a whole new life.

Because here’s the thing my sister and I both knew, even through the tears: the best possible revenge on someone who breaks your heart is to go off and be outrageously, unapologetically happy without them. In my head – and in hers – every good thing that came my heroine’s way would be a small, gleeful middle-fingered salute to the man who’d hurt her. 😌

So I told her. I said, “I’m going to write you a novel, and I’m going to get your revenge for you, through a character called Carolina.” And she laughed and said, “Go for it!”

She has been such a sport about the whole thing ever since. I pestered her with questions the entire time I was writing, trying to capture her nature, her humour, the way she’d actually think and speak. We even “argued” now and then – she’d read something and protest, “I would never do that!” – and that’s when it slowly dawned on me that somewhere along the way, Carolina had stopped being just my sister and became a bit of me, too. The two of us, quietly amalgamated into one fictional woman. (Sorry, Xuxu. 😄)

(For the record: Loveandpizza.it itself isn’t a revenge story at all. It’s a proper feel-good one; warm and funny and absolutely stuffed with pizza. “Revenge” was just the cheeky little seed it grew from.)

Why Napoli chose itself

The setting? That part I didn’t have to think about for a single second. I was already living in it, and already head-over-heels for it (you heard all about that yesterday 🍕).

And here’s the lovely, slightly eerie part: so much of Carolina’s world is stitched straight from mine. My flat in the Quartieri Spagnoli became her flat. The pizzeria down the road, the pizzaiolo behind the counter – all real, all folded lovingly into the book.

And the landlords! We had two, and honestly, you couldn’t make them up. The first, out in Chiaiano, miles from everything, which is partly why we moved, was a bit creepy. And then, once we’d made it into the Quartieri – closer to work, and right in the thick of the action – we landed the second: a man who was the spitting image of one of my father’s sisters, and about whom my husband and I would invent the most elaborate stories, each one casting him as a member of the Camorra. 😳 (He wasn’t, I hasten to add. Probably. 😌)

Note: they both made it into the novel. Naturally. Some characters are simply too good to leave behind. 😌

So where else would I possibly send a heartbroken heroine to be gloriously, chaotically reborn? A tidy, sensible city would never have managed it. She needed noise and heat and pizza and a bit of beautiful chaos… a city that refuses to let anyone stay numb. Napoli practically volunteered for the job.

The question that wouldn’t let me sleep

So there it was. A woman far from home, a city that wouldn’t let her hide, and one stubborn question that kept me up at night:

What if you ran all the way to the other side of the world to get away from love… and it found you anyway?

That was the seed of the whole thing. I didn’t know how it ended (I genuinely didn’t, but more on that particular adventure later in the month 🫠). I just knew there was a woman, a city full of heat and chaos and noise and pizza, and a heart she was absolutely determined to keep locked. And the more I tried to ignore it and get on with my sensible life, the louder it got.

(Cookie, lying at my feet right now, and who has heard this story approximately four thousand times, is thoroughly unimpressed. 🐶)

The idea you’re probably carrying, too

That’s the funny thing about a good idea: it doesn’t care whether the timing is convenient. It just sits there, glowing away, waiting for you to be brave enough to do something with it. And here’s why I’m telling you all this: I think a lot of us are carrying one. A story. A project. A something we keep meaning to start and keep finding very good reasons not to: the timing, the money, the “who am I to?”, the laundry.

If that’s you, consider this your sign. You don’t need the whole plan. You don’t need to know the ending (clearly, neither did I). You just need to follow the spark and see where it takes you. Mine took me from an internet café in the Quartieri Spagnoli to… well, to this, all these years later. And I wouldn’t trade a single second of it. (It’s exactly the sort of thing we help each other get out of our heads and onto the page in The Writing Shed Club – if you’ve ever fancied some writing company and a friendly nudge.)

And my sister? Don’t worry. She’s absolutely fine now. Better than fine. Though she did get a whole novel out of the deal, so I’d say she came out rather ahead. 😉

So tell me: what’s the spark you keep meaning to follow? Pop it in the comments. I’ll be your very enthusiastic cheerleader. 💛

Dani. x

P.S. Want to see where it really started? I dug out the very first words I ever wrote of this story: the original opening, from years before Naples, back when even Carolina’s name was different. It’s a bit of a secret, but you can peek at it right here. 🤫

P.P.S. Loveandpizza.it is coming back in English, Italian and Portuguese. Save your slice and you’ll be first to know the moment your edition’s ready. 🍕