One of the things I’m most prone to criticising people – well, okay, my husband – for is wasting time on the internet. So it’s ironic that I was doing that very thing the day I had the beginnings of an idea for my latest novel, When In Rome.
To be fair, I wasn’t looking at cars and boats on TradeMe (like my husband does) but I did have a looming deadline for the book I was supposed to be working on.
Around that time I’d read a couple of novels that included real-life people as characters – writers such as Ernest Hemingway and Rupert Brooke. I started thinking of doing something similar. What followed was an entire afternoon spent watching clips on YouTube as I tried to decide whom I might write about.
By evening I had fallen in love with a Hollywood star called Mario Lanza. His voice was enchanting, with so much emotion in every word he sang it sent shivers down my spine, and he was handsome in that classic matinee idol way. Despite the fact that, in his day, he was bigger than Frank Sinatra, few people under the age of 50 have heard of him. Once I learned the details of his life, I wanted to base a novel on them.
I became obsessed; reading everything I could get my hands on, begging the ultra-trendy staff at Auckland’s Videon to go through their stock of old VHS in search of his musicals, listening to him in the car. I couldn’t get enough of him.
Writing the novel proved difficult though. My story takes place during the years Mario spent living in Italy and is told by a young woman who’s a member of his household. I needed to know what the real Mario was like in the privacy of his own home.
So I was thrilled when I managed to track down his only surviving child, Ellisa Lanza Bregman, who generously shared some of her memories with me.
When In Rome is a poignant story of love and music, set in the La Dolce Vita era. It’s about difficult men, glamorous women and hard choices.
All these years on there are still Mario Lanza fans around the world and I’m nervous of what they and Ellisa will think of the novel. I’m hoping that reading it moves them as much as writing it did me.
Most of all I hope my story inspires a new generation to discover Mario’s voice and music… even if that does involve wasting time on the internet.
Giveaways by September 14.
When In Rome (Orion, $36.99)
is available now
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