Hi! I am so glad to be with you Thrillerlezers!
*Who is Ilaria Tuti? Which five words will described you best and why?
I was born in a little village in the northeast of Italy, near Austria and Slovenia. I still live there with my husband Paolo, our two-year-old daughter Jasmine and two dogs. Since I was a child, I loved spending my spare time close to nature and these feelings and memories are present in the stories that I write.
I have a degree in economics and I manage public procurements for a private company. I like reading, writing, painting, cooking. I also like photography. The five words:
Private (I don’ speak very much about me)
Arachnophobe (I am trying to overcome the problem, with poor results)
Tsundoku (a Japanese word: I buy books compulsively, more than I can ever read)Quiet (I love the silence, the primordial symphony of nature, smooth atmospheres)
Creative (I am always thinking about something new to invent)
*How did you come up with the plot of this first book?
The settings are my mountains, frozen and mysterious, and yet full of life.
My land is very important to me, with its millennial history, intact nature, the arcane charm of pre-Christian traditions and its powerful suggestions. The sense of belonging that I feel is very strong.
My mountains are the true beating heart of the book. While I was writing, I felt the need to convey the emotions that these places arouse to me. Words were not enough; the descriptions could not end with a dot at the end of the sentence: they had to create an echo in the reader. That is why I tried to write a sensory novel: I used shadows and lights, smells, the sensation of heat and frost on the skin, colours, the primitive melody of the forest, the heat of the burrows, the breaths of the animals in the night...
For the description of the killer – a mind unknown to the criminal psychology manuals – I took inspiration from a real fact (a psychological research).
Teresa Battaglia is an unusual protagonist for a thriller – a Police Inspector in her sixties, suffering from diabetes and facing a potentially devastating new diagnosis. She appeared in my mind three years ago: slightly tetchy but compassionate, struggling with being overweight, she is a woman with wonderful maternal and protective instincts, though she has never been a mother herself. She is so good in her job because she is a rational being, but she knows when to let her heart guide her. The real inspiration behind Teresa Battaglia’s character is the strength of ordinary women who have made an armour out of their own insecurities and who have transformed difficult circustamces into a hymn to life. This novel is also dedicated to the many women who wake up more tired every passing day, and who battle solitude and illness: may they never cease to love themselves.
*What character in the book has most of you in it?
Teresa, beyond her temperament, is the kind of person that I would always want to be: straight, compassionate, with great integrity.
*Kind39 is your first book and is sold to several countries: how are your feelings about that?
I feel immense gratitude towards all the people who made it possible. I feel I have a great responsibility towards the readers who loved this novel, the booksellers, the bloggers, and the journalists who believed in its potential. I want to give them only my very best story.
*Do you have a writing-routine or any writing rituals, and if so, what are they?
I love collecting diaries. I buy them in every trip that I make, every time I go into a bookstore. So they are my writing-routine: when I get ready to write a new story, I choose the diary that I feel most suitable for those atmospheres. I write the date, maybe a title that I have in mind, and start writing the first notes.
* What was the soundtrack while you were writing? Are your listening to music while writing?
I love the contemporary composers of soundtracks: Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard, and Steve Jablonsky. I listened to their music while I was writing Kind 39.
Hans Zimmer You tube
*Do you plot out your book from start to finish and then write it down or let you your characters lead the story and see where they take you?
I plot it out chapter by chapter, from start to the end: I need to write down every idea, excerpts of dialogues, situations, atmospheres… Then, when the plot is ready, I can finally dedicate myself to real writing, without having to worry about anything other than the pure pleasure of playing with words.
*What can distract you from writing?
Actually, my daughter is a great distraction!
*What kind of books do you like to read yourself?
I read very different genres, fiction and non-fiction. I love Primo Levi, Umberto Eco, Stephen King, above all. Then Raymond Carver, Michela Murgia, Joe R. Lansdale, Gillian Flynn, Jo Nesbø, Camilla Läckberg and so many others... I am a very curious person, I like studying history, psychology, anthropology. Now, for example, I am reading a book about the Lombard goldsmith art and its connections with pagan religion.
I love criminal psychology and profiling because they throw light on the depths of human mind. They make us understand that the line between good and evil is not as clear as we like to think. Monsters do not exist: serial killers are human beings, just like us, and most of the times they were abused children.
*When did you discover you wanted to be a writer?
It was a slow path: first, I started painting, when I was a little child that could barely hold a brush. Then, when I was a teenager, I became passionate about photography. As an adult, I realized that they were mediate and mysterious ways to tell stories. The portraits were characters, the landscapes were settings of the stories that I was telling in my mind. At that point, starting to write was natural.
Salem’s lot – Stephen King
The name of the rose – Umberto Eco
Gone girl – Gillian Flynn
Bloody January – Alan Parks
Accabadora – Michela Murgia
Phantoms – Dean Koontz
…
*Are you already working on a new book?
Of course! I have so many stories to tell.
*Can you shed some light already?
My second novel with Teresa Battaglia will be released in Italy in May 2019. The title is Sleeping Nymph. Also this novel is set in my land. The season will be different: a lush spring, full of symbolism. It speaks about a little-known valley with an extraordinary history, a mysterious painting and a love story that spans the decades and survives death. Actually, it survives more than a death.
Thank you very much! It was a pleasure.
Ilaria
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