Rita Schiano, author of Painting The Invisible Man and Sweet Bitter Love, is an author, speaker and free-lance writer. “When I was a child, every Sunday morning my grandmother would rip the list of spelling bee words from the newspaper and my task that week would be to look up the words in the dictionary, learn their meaning, their pronunciation, how to spell them, and to use them in a sentence during the week,” says Rita. “This once dreaded exercise led to my love of words.”

“My mother also encouraged reading. I had my first library card at age five and my first typewriter, a green Tom Thumb (a gift from Santa), at age six. The cancellation of my favorite television show, The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., when I was ten, drove me to write my own spy adventures featuring April Dancer and Mark Slade.”

“As an adult in my late 20s-early 30s, I worked as an acquisition editor for a NYC publishing company. Tired of the NYC of the mid-1980s (a city sullied by crack cocaine and horrific homelessness, despite Reagan’s assertion he saw no homeless people in NY) I moved to New England and opened an Italian-Japanese restaurant. One of my customers, Ruth Wells, (author of A to Zen and The Farmer And The Poor God) suggested I take a stab at writing again. She thought the stories of my childhood were interesting and threatened to use them if I did not.”

“I began writing, short stories at first, and with Ruth’s encouragement, I sent them to a quarterly, and had a few published. One short story evolved into my first novel, Sweet Bitter Love, which was published by Rising Tide Press in 1997.”

“Upon selling my restaurant in 2000, I decided to pursue writing as a profession. I now make a living as a freelance writer. In 2001, while researching the online archives of my hometown newspaper for a client, I made a keying error–a simple mistake that led me down a path I’d been avoiding most of my life; on a journey inside the world of my father, killed gangland-style more than two decades ago.”

“I wasn’t inspired as much as I was ‘led’ to writing this book. I started to write Painting The Invisible Man as a non-fiction, thinking I could take a journalistic approach to exploring my father’s murder and the truths behind the man. I had about 60-70 pages written and I gave them to my partner, Michelle, to read. I trusted that she would be honest. She was.”

“She told me that the writing was lacking emotion. I remember her saying, “There’s very little in here about you. None of the childhood stories you’ve shared with me about your childhood, the crazy things you did as a kid. Nothing about your parents’ relationship and the effect of your father’s way of life on their marriage. Why are you not writing any of that?’”

“I didn’t know why…at least not consciously. But as I thought about Michelle’s comments, I realized that in order to paint a true portrait of my father, I needed to paint a family portrait and a self-portrait, as well.”

“I continued writing the story as non-fiction, yet I could not dig deeply into my creative well. My childhood memories, and emotions attached to them, had been sealed for far too many years. Hard as I tried, I could not tap that well.”

“Being a fiction writer, I understood the freedom that fiction affords. Whenever I began a new story, I awaited that moment when my fictional characters would take hold and begin to speak to me, to tell me their story. It’s a magical moment; it’s the point when my characters begin to breathe on their own.”

“I knew that fiction would offer me the freedom I needed to explore the story with emotional honesty; to explore family issues and family secrets openly while protecting, to some degree, my family’s privacy. I felt, too, the need to protect my brother John, on whom the Anthony character is based. Had John followed our father home that December night in 1976, he, too, would have been murdered. In the book, Anthony commits suicide several years after his father’s death. This is one truly fictional event, although it is a metaphorical statement about my brother’s life in the years following the murder.”

“Since much of the story takes place during my childhood, I knew I, too, would have to re-create scenes and merge memory with imagination to bring some events to life. And after the A Million Little Pieces debacle, I did not want to risk being “Frey-ed.”

“I’m currently working on a novel entitled From Hell To Heaven In Five Hail Marys. The story begins with the funeral of the main character, Nico.  Nico lived an egocentric life. During the final months of his terminal illness, Nico begins examining his life, thinking about all the people he had wronged–wives, children friends, family. Filled with so many regrets, Nico asks to see a priest, takes confession for the first time in 40 years. The priest absolves Nico of his sins with a penance of five Hail Marys. Feeling free of a burdened soul, Nico reaches out to the people he had hurt throughout his life. With each phone call, Nico feels better. He dies a spiritual free man.”

“That’s just the preamble…The story explores the aftermath of Nico’s unburdening. Nico’s confessions may have delivered him to heavenly salvation, but for those he left behind, his amends created a living hell.”

YouTube Video interview with David Ewen.

Visit http://www.ritaschiano.com and http://www.paintingtheinvisibleman.com to purchase the book. Purchase: Painting the Invisible Man Sturbridge, MA

Chic Galleria and Rita Schiano are giving one autographed copy of Painting The Invisible Man to one lucky person!  Leave us your comments and let us know your thoughts on her book!  Be
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Tags: author, family, fiction, murder, novels