Episode 82: Diana Giovinazzo, author of Antoinette’s Sister
Diana Giovinazzo, author of Antoinette’s Sister, which USA Bestselling author Heather Webb calls "A sweeping tale of power, love, and the bonds of family...”
Diana and Ashley chat about how Diana first learned about her protagonist, Maria Carolina Charlotte, and how her family history led her to write in the first place. She also shares her journey to publication, her best writing advice, and what books she recommends right now.
Books Mentioned:
Antoinette’s Sister by Diana Giovinazzo (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com)
The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com)
Connect with the author:
Transcript:
** Transcript created using AI (so please forgive the typos!) **
Diana Giovinazzo 0:00
Antoinette Cicero is the story of Maria Carolina Charlotte. She was one of the Habsburg arch duchesses. She was Marie Antoinette's older sister. They were about two years apart. And the two women were raised as twins through most of their childhood, and if you look at pictures, they look almost exactly like they look like they could be twins. There was so so many things similar to them. And by chance, by fate, what have you, which is roughly just south of Rome, so roughly about Naples down to the what's now Cecily. And when her sister we all know the fate of Marie Antoinette. And when that happens, Maria Carolina, Charlotte vows revenge on France, and is one of three women who actually stands up to Napoleon.
Ashley Hasty 0:53
Well, I hate to admit this. Not familiar with Maria Carolina's name. I apologize to my history professors. If you guys taught me about her, and I just don't remember. Do you remember the first time you learned about her? Was this someone that you knew well?
Diana Giovinazzo 1:14
she's she really was one of these women who were just lost to history in a lot of ways. And even the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. I was never I was a big history nerd as well. And I was never taught about the Pinewoods Sicily's in school. It wasn't until I was older that I really, you know, knew that there was this kingdom I didn't know too much about and I was in the midst of doing edits for less of the woman in red. And I was like, okay, and I did what every author does, I spend about a day becoming this expert on this history, reading these books, and they were talking about this guy, Birdman. And he would do these crazy things like he would rip wigs off of dignitaries heads, he would spend time playing fishmonger innkeeper, farmer. And one of his favorite things to do was to sit and play chess with old men of Naples, and had no interest in being a king. And I'm reading these stories and I'm thinking, Oh, my God, who was that man's per wife, who was the poor queen who had to get stuck with him. And that's when I went and researched her and I found her story. And immediately, I knew I wanted to write her story. I wanted to write this book. I was maybe halfway through her biography, when I was pitching it to my agent. It she just completely engrossed me and this world that she inhabited, and that history, I am still just like all about the Kingdom of justice. Ladies, it's one of my favorite things to discuss. I love how researching for your first book actually led into the subject of your second book, as you mentioned, your first book was the woman and read which came out in 2020, I believe. Yeah. About another woman somewhat forgotten in history. How did you choose? A Anita Anita garibaldi? parabolically? How did you choose her? So before I even stumbled on historical fiction, I was very interested in my family genealogy. My I'm Italian, obviously, by the last name with my family. I was curious about how they got here. What was their journey like that? You know, what both they came on? And that those questions of how they came here turned into well, why? Why did we leave Italy, my family, they're from Calabria and Sicily, which is also part of Maria Cara Llinas. world where she would have ruled over my ancestors, which I think is kind of neat. And I was actually in the kitchen, my dad having this discussion about, well, why did they leave and we were kind of talking about what was going on in Italy at the time. Just like, you know, there's this guy named Giuseppe Garibaldi. You need to look into him more, and then you really need to look into a Nita. It's like, Well, okay, I did that. And there was another woman that just really just gripped me and her story, somebody I had never heard about, and all my life, all my histories, lessons and things I took. And so I decided, well, I'm gonna try my head, a historical fiction, maybe this is what I need to do. I've always wanted to be a writer, and I did that. And I, that's where my start came. And I love historical fiction, and I love writing about Italian history as well. That's my favorite thing about historical fiction is that it teaches us in a very accessible way about many people forgotten to history, and that history classes and textbooks haven't traditionally done. Exactly, and especially women's history, because we see so much about the wars and we see the past political figures. But you don't really see the women that were behind it because oftentimes women weren't, you know, political figures with Maria Cara Lena, she's she was a political figure. But you didn't have she didn't have as much recognition, especially because the kingdom was to Sicily is was pretty Italy as we know, Italy today. And she often signed her the documents under Fruitlands name. So Ferdinand got a lot of credit for what she did, even though Ferdinand was just all about hunting and partying, basically.
Ashley Hasty 5:34
So I'd like to hear a little bit more about your road to becoming an author you talked about, I need to kind of inspiring you to dive into historical fiction. So tell us how you got to this point.
Diana Giovinazzo 5:46
For as long as I can remember, I always wanted to be a writer, like before I even like registered my head that our writer has to like write novels. I was going to be a writer, and I was, like seven years old. And I wrote my first story. It was a school project. And it was the Oregon Trail. That was a big thing. When I was growing up, it was like the coolest thing to be able to go to, to the library and to play the Oregon Trail. And we were studying it in second grade. And I had to write a story. And I remember writing the story. And I remember the story very much. Mostly, it was a family that was going on the trail and I did it like a journal. And my mom helped me like bake the pages. So it looked like it was you know, like actual like journal. I remember the teacher cried because from the story, and I made the teacher cry, because of course, because I am I am. One of the kids dies. And it's arbitrary because everybody dies on the Oregon Trail, right?
I wanted to have and so having that feeling that somebody had this emotional response to something that I wrote, I think kind of like triggered me to be like, Okay, this is what I need to do. And then of course, I got older. And real life happens, I guess you could say I I kind of I as much as I love the idea of starving for your art or sacrificing for your art. I also have a belief that I want to put food on my table and they're having a day job is quite important too. So I ended up I got my degree, weirdly enough in sociology, with a minor in anthropology. And I wound up going and becoming a paralegal for 10 years was really winding road. I wanted to write and I went through this stint, I was in my 20s We were living in Texas at the time, my husband was active duty soldier, and I tried my hand at writing. I was like, Okay, I'm fresh out of college, I hadn't started being a paralegal yet. And let me give this whole writing go and I failed miserably. In in my head, I felt like I failed miserably is 20 in my 20s writing fantasy, and I got nowhere. And I was like that's it I'm not gonna write anymore, I'm gonna be do something else. But I'm not gonna write me move back to California. I met my podcast co host, Michelle. And we were we bonded over both of us, our clients, we bonded over that. And we bonded over books. And we were some anthology contest was going on just to get your story, put an anthology contest, and she asked me, she talked me into doing it. And she's like, we won't, you know, submit it. We want some Adele, you just we'll just exchange with each other. And I gave her a story that I did. And she was like, You need to be a writer, why aren't you writing? And I told her what happened. I was like, I'm not going to be a writer. It's just not for me. I'm just I'm just gonna be a reader. And she was like, no, no, no, you're gonna be a writer. And she would, she would nag me about it. And this is back in like the early days of Twitter. I feel like I'm totally dating myself.
But she would send me these articles about writing, actually getting off your button writing, and she would tag the authors of the articles. And the authors would be like, hey, Diana, why aren't you writing? And so I started out slowly I started blogging and then and there's something special in that for me that there's this connection to my ancestors and my family. Because they live through this and exploring these histories for me, is in some ways connection to them. Once I started like writing about the need to garibaldi, all these other ideas for other books that may or may not happen one day like this one of the better things too because they say there's that saying right what you know, and I feel like that gets taken too literally So many times, because writing what you know doesn't necessarily mean you have to know how to be a queen in the 18th century, I feel like writing what you know, really comes from knowing people being able to know, okay, these, this person's acting this way. So I need to, you know, this is how it ends. And so you can't in some ways, you know, being out there in the world is a benefit to you as a writer, as opposed to just always being in your office with books, which don't get me wrong, I love that. But sometimes gotta get out there with other real real world, not just your imaginary world.
Ashley Hasty 10:38
That's a great segue into my next question is what advice would you give to authors or aspiring authors who are not yet published?
Diana Giovinazzo 10:44
Well, obviously, that's one of the pieces of advice. The other thing is to read, read everything from the back of shampoo bottles to the classics, I found, I took a lot of literature classes, and it's important to know grammar, of course, but to know how to structure a story to see a plot, you know how it works out on paper, how scenes work out on paper, that's a really important to a writer and to you to learn how to do that you have those influences in your, in your writing, just like a musician has influences with other musicians, as a writer, you need to have those other influences for your writing to help you become a better writer.
Ashley Hasty 11:31
You mentioned this earlier, but I want to talk a bit more about your podcast wine women in words, tell us what we could expect if we tuned in?
Diana Giovinazzo 11:39
it's going to be a lot of laughter, I would hope that Michelle and I amuse ourselves, she and I, obviously, we've been friends for God, almost 20 years now, somewhere around there. Maybe I think it's like 1015 years. And we haven't actually done the math, but we drink wine. We talk books, we have a different author on every week. And then we have a book in January, we're reading infinite sister. So we're also talking about after the authors of the year. So we're talking I'm talking about like some of the behind the scenes stuff and discussing the book with her. Next month, we have a book of the month, which is going to be the Paris bookseller. And so and we'll have the author's on as well, talking about their books and things. And so if you're a writer, I think it's a really good podcast for writers, because Michelle and I are both writers. And when we have these authors on the show, we really pick their brains, and you can tell where we are in our writing journeys, and what we're struggling with in a book that we're working on, because we're just, we will get an author on who's got something similar, and it's like, how did you do that? And what about this and how did you structure that? So that's really our own masterclass that we like to share with the world. I love that.
Ashley Hasty 12:52
What are you reading right now? What would you recommend others read?
Diana Giovinazzo 12:56
I'm actually reading from the Neapolitan quartet. I'm a huge fan of Elena Ferrante.She's, I love her books so much. And the Neapolitan quartets, you've got My Brilliant Friend, the story of a name, I'm reading the third one those who stay and those who choose to leave, I think I might be messing up the title. What's the third one in the series, and I've gone back and forth, because I've read other stuff. And I last year, I read My Brilliant Friend in Italian, and the actual Italian language it was as I'm trying to learn Italian and and so I was reading it and that and Italian. So now I'm going back and reading the third one especially because the series is going to come out the next episode. Next episode we're gonna think in the fall maybe. So I want to have it read before the next one comes out. But I love her books so much. And can you tell us what's next for you? Do you have a work in progress that you can say anything about I have a work in progress. However, I cannot see anything about it. My agent has it right now. Trust me as soon as I can say what it is I will be shouting it from the rooftops.
Ashley Hasty 14:11
Well, I want to share where people can find you. Or website is dianagiovinazzo.com, your Diana G author on Twitter and Instagram anywhere else you would like people to visit you.
Diana Giovinazzo 14:25
I'm DianaGAuthor on TikTok though I post on videos, put videos there now I'm still learning it and trying to get the hang of it. So you'll see videos of me pop up on there and everything Sanergy author on everything because I figure it's the easiest way to get that last name for social media.
Ashley Hasty 14:45
Yes, and we'll have links for those in the Episode Notes as well. Well thank you so much for joining me I loved getting the chance to get to know you better and hearing about what inspired that your two novels.