His voice was as
sweet as the summer night. His hand grabbed mine and pulled me just
enough so my eyes met his. "In bocca al lupo,'' the stranger whispered
as his lips brushed my cheek.
The stranger's whisper
is one of my greatest memories of Positano, Italy, the remarkably
romantic city with so much to remember - clams in spaghetti vongole
sweet as plums, people living their lives as passionately as play
actors, views so luscious I fear a blink might make it all disappear -
it's amazing that I could recall his words at all.
Perhaps the words
stayed with me because of the splendid setting in which the phrase was
uttered. But the writer in me believes it was the translation that left
the brief encounter emblazoned in my mind.
In bocca al lupo literally means go into the mouth of the wolf.
You want me to go into the mouth of the wolf? Get my head eaten by a beast? What?
Who is the writer who used such potentially dangerous, dramatic imagery like that?
Even now every time I hear an American say "break a leg" I wince at its lack of beauty.
These are the questions that help make me a writer, an
investigative journalist, a poet, an artist. It is visiting places like
Positano that give me inspiration. It is the company of other writers
that sparks the real magic.
I got my first book published by accident.
I was stuck in my identity as a crime reporter. Just a crime reporter.
Sure, I was
dogged, willing to go anywhere and do almost anything for a scoop, and
have built up an impressive slew of cocktail party stories like I snuck
into John Gotti's wake in Queens, New York. I got whacked by a woman
wielding a patent leather purse in London after Princess Diana's
untimely death and I posed as a mob moll with an undercover NYPD
detective targeting fight fixing in Las Vegas. I was at the scene
of the largest mass murder in our country's history: the terrorist
attack on the World Trade Center towers that killed 2,996 people and
wrote about the 343 firefighters; 23 NYPD cops and 37 Port Authority
police officers who made the ultimate sacrifice while rescuing the tens
of thousands who survived that terrible day.
But it was the murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace that helped me get that acci dental book deal. I
was sent to South Beach, Miami by the New York Daily News hours after
Versace was killed going into his beachfront home. His blood still
stained his marble steps when I arrived; his killer still on the loose.
When spree killer Andrew Cunanan was finally found dead in a Miami
houseboat, I interviewed the owner of a nightclub where Versace had
spent his last hours. That club owner was Chris Paciello. And his name
would cross my desk years later on an indictment that listed mobsters
charged with racketeering, extortion, assault, and murder.
It turned out that Paciello, who had dated Madonna and Sofia Vergara of Modern family, was in fact a killer on the run from his past. My coverage
in the Daily News led to a magazine story in Maxim. That Maxim piece
got me a call from an agent. The agent asked me to write a book
proposal. I had no idea how. So I bought a book, "How To Write A Book
Proposal" and followed the directions.
To my amazement, I
got a deal. The four other crime books I have written were not as easy,
believe me, but the experiences have given me insight into the secret
world of publishing. And my Writers' Studio will reveal those secrets to
save you a lot of heartache.
So, brave fellow
writers, I urge you all to go into the mouth of the wolf...to take a
chance, invest in yourself and your inner artist, to write every day in
the most beautiful place on the planet. You can be an accidental author
too.
