Valentina’s Fiat 500 Book Launch Tour!

Sono molto lieta di avere la Fiat 500 della mia amica Valentina parcheggiata fuori dal mio blog oggi. Si è fermata per salutarmi e condividere con me e tutti voi, notizie del suo nuovo libro “The Road to the Top of the World.” (scritto in inglese). Questo è il quarto libro pubblicato da Valentina ed è una raccolta di storie suoi viaggi. La mia amica è nata in Puglia, ma ha vissuto in California per molti anni. Vive in un posto chiamato: “La cima al mondo” / “Top of the World California”. Non è una città reale, ma come dice Valentina, “è uno stato mentale, è dove vivo tutti i miei giorni in un posto dove le cose più belle e divertenti  possono succedere.

I’m pleased to have my friend Valentina’s Fiat 500 parked outside my blog today. She’s stopped by to say hello and share with me and all of you, news of her new book “The Road to the Top of the World.” (written in English). This is Valentina’s fourth published book and it is a collection of short stories about travel. My friend is a native of Puglia but has lived in California for many years. She lives in a place called “Top of the World, California.” It’s not an actual city, but as Valentina describes says, “it is a state of mind, that is where I live every day and where all the fun things happen.”

Quanto mi piace quell’idea! / I love that idea!

Valentina ed io condividiamo storie di vita simili, in quanto entrambi noi siamo designers e artisti: lei è una stilista di interni e io una graphic designer. Entrambi abbiamo iniziato le nostre carriere di scrittrici dopo aver deciso di aprire dei blog per condividere con il mondo le nostre passioni—lei per sue per argomenti di design e me per la lingua italiana. Le nostre carriere di scrittura sono iniziate in quel modo e senza rendercene conto, tutti gli scritti quotidiani che abbiamo fatto negli anni ci hanno trasformati in autori pubblicati! E non solo di un libro, ma molti!

Valentina and I share similar life stories, in that we are both designers—she an interior fashion designer, and me a graphic designer. We both began our writing careers after deciding to open up blogs to share with the world our passions—hers for design topics and me for the Italian language. Our writing careers started out that way and without realizing it, all the daily writing we have done over the years turned us into published authors! And not just of one book, but several!

Sono pienamente d’accordo con le parole di Valentina: “Se riesci a vederlo, lo hai già nel mano”—perché questo è precisamente il tema del mio primo romanzo, Dreaming Sophia. “Io credo nei sogni, i sogni diventano realtà.” Ci vuole tempo, ma se puoi visualizzare qualcosa chiaramente, e lavori ogni giorno ad ottenerlo, ti avvicini un po’ di più a ciò che vuoi nella vita. È lo stesso per qualsiasi cosa tu voglia creare nella vita, dall’apprendimento di una lingua al viaggio, alla scrittura di un libro!

I wholeheartedly concord with Valentina words: “If you can see it, you already have it in hand”—because that is precisely the theme of my first novel, Dreaming Sophia. “I believe in dreams, dreams become reality.” It takes time, but if you can visualize something clearly, and work every day to get it, you get a little closer to what you want in life. It is the same for anything you want to create in your life, from learning a language to traveling to writing a book!

Beep Beep! Sentite? Questo è il clacson della Fiat di Valentina! È impaziente di parlarvi. Prima di andare via, per prendere la strada di nuovo, eccola a dirvi con le sue parole un po’ di se stessa, dei suoi progetti e del suo nuovo libro.

Beep Beep! Hear that? That’s Valentina’s Fiat horn honking! She is impatient to chat with you. Before she drives on down the road, here she is to tell you in her own words a bit about herself, her projects and her new book.

It’s a glorious time in my city “Top Of The Wold, CA” expressing my power and happiness in written words. I am at my fourth published book and not counting. Some years ago, in a conversation with friends, I said, kind of jokingly, I was going to write books on design topics, the field I know best. Up to that point, I had sporadically written articles for the local newspapers and magazines. Then, I opened up my first blog on home design topics, it was the year 2008.  However, being a very talkative person, I felt writing only about design was a bit reductive for me, thus, a year later, I opened two other columns on Friday Fashion and The Good Life. The writing career started and I didn’t even realize it. So many things were locked up in my drawers of thoughts, it was about time they all came out in some form of communication or another. I started caressing the idea of writing books, and do you know what they say? “If you can see it, you already have it” meaning if you can see your dream, it is already a reality. Dreaming about something is not enough without actions. I set aside time to write and made appointments with myself every evening after 8:00 and nothing else was important until I finished and ready to go to bed.

My fourth book,©The Road To Top Of The World  is a travel narrative. The small car Fiat 500 is an Italian invention of the ’50s, a snazzy car intended for young people, students, creative and open minds. The Fiat 500 was always stuffed with rowdy youngsters having fun around the town. With the same concept and the same free spirit of youth, I am stuffing a group of creative friends in my Fiat 500, to travel to their locations and see what they do in life. Get to know them and make new friends, while they are helping me in a pre-holiday virtual book tour launch and will share it on their blogs, Facebook pages or any social platform they like.

©The Road To Top Of The World is a book totally outside my design trade and I am happy I wrote it. I made it into short stories, easy to read, each story has a beginning and an end, without relation to each other. It’s a book about my native region of Puglia, in Italy, seen with the eyes of a native (me) who decided to expatriate abroad and live like an Italian in a foreign country.

The snazzy Fiat 500 will start the tour from my location “Top of The World, California”. Some people have asked me if such a town really exists in California. It is not a city, it’s a state of mind, that is where I live every day and where all the fun things happen.

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