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Silvia Foti Mystery, Tarot...Needlepoint! |
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BEACONSTREETBOOKS .COM |
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BEACON STREET BOOKS Interviews |
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J A N—F E B 2008 |
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Virtual author tour |
ABOUTPOINT
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Hi Silvia! Having already met and sold books with you, I am doubly happy to be conducting this interview. Your latest release, THE DIVA'S FOOL, combines the opera, suspense and Tarot cards. I have to ask: when did you first discover the Tarot, and how? |
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What are some of the reactions you received to this book? Do people consider it on the side of the occult? When I do book signings, I offer a Tarot card reading, and those who say no rather emphatically take large steps backward and look at me with funny eyes, so I'm sure some do believe it's related to the occult. To that, I have a one-word, two-syllable response. Fiction. The cards work beautifully when I tell them to predict what I need them to foretell, and the characters respond to them as if they were an occult item. You've called yourself a "double-life creative." Explain what that means and why you are one. This is a term I created more than five years ago. At the time, I was a full-time freelance writer, writing business copy for companies, while by night I wrote a novel. At this point, I'm now a high school teacher by day. When you choose creative writing, it's rare that you can live by it, so you are forced to lead another life to pay the bills, and it feels like you are split into two people leading a double life, one constantly robbing time from the other, and the two sides at war with each other. What's next for you? Is there a follow up to THE DIVA'S FOOL? The Diva's Fool is the launch of a mystery series based on the twenty-two cards of the Greater Secrets of the Tarot, thus the next card is A Magician. A fool (my protagonist) is on a journey of twenty-two phases to reach The World, or spiritual enlightenment. I've read you are currently teaching school. Are your students aware of your published author status? Do you encourage them, as your 8th grade teacher encouraged you? I have phenomenal students at Proviso Mathematics and Science Academy. One of my freshmen is busy working on a novel, and she has already shown me her first pages. It's incredible. Others, I need to motivate to read, which is endemic to the teen-age set, although I'm heartened that all is not lost to the television, Internet, videogames, PlayStations, PSPs. If you were to venture into a new genre, what would it be? Memoir and biography. I have a great story in me about my grandfather who was a general in Lithuania during World War II. My mother had been collecting information on him all her life, and she has passed it all to me, with the hopes that I could write about him. I have a treasure of primary sources, letters, diaries, even unpublished novels he has written, as well as secondary sources. Where can readers find out more about you? I'm currently updating my new website at www.silviafoti.biz and www.silviafoti.net, as well as my blog at www.myspace.com/lotusink Thank You!
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My mother used the cards when I was a child. She'd hide them as soon as I walked in, which made me even more curious to find out about them. She would read these cards for friends at parties, and the said her fortunes came true. Finally, I begged her to do a reading for me, and she did, but for me, her cards were not reliable, unfortunately. (For example, she said I'd marry a blond man who I knew. I ended up marrying a man I met in Argentina who had brown hair.) Then in college, I roomed with someone into Tarot cards, and he gave me a set as a gift. I'd never owned my own set, and since then I've been playing with them. What are some of the reactions you received to this book? Do people consider it on the side of the occult? |
