Thank You, Francesca!

About a week ago, I began conversing on YouTube with a teenage girl in Italy named Francesca.  Through the trailers on my YouTube Channel, Francesca had become interested in my books, The Noricin Chronicles, and wanted to know if they were available in Italy and translated into Italian.

It was with a heavy heart that I had to tell her that, unfortunately due to being a first-time self-published author I do not yet have an international distribution arrangement, nor the means to have my books translated into multiple languages. I figured this would be the end of Francesca's interest in the books, at least until I had acquired the means to make them available to her in her native tongue.

I was wrong.

A day or so later, Francesca contacted me again, letting me know that she had found my first three sample chapters of The Lost Boy (Book 1 of Noricin) on Scribd and that her mother had been helping her translate them into Italian. She had become so hooked, that she wanted to know if I could send her the full book.

Now, of course I could have just told her how to go about buying the PDF's on-line, but I was so tickled by the story, that I sent her not only the full e-book of The Lost Boy, but books 2-4 as well.  Francesca has now moved on to reading the books without the help of her mother or her computer, and she is currently in the midst of The Room of Death (Book 3).


In the past week, Francesca and I have been writing back and forth at least once a day (and often quite more), and it has been truly amazing to watch her English improve so dramatically in such a short amount of time. Today, she confessed to me that she's even started writing her letters to me with little or no help from the computer translator.


Francesca's beautiful story has genuinely touched me in ways that even I as a writer cannot possibly conjure the words necessary to describe. She has helped me remember WHY I became I writer in the first place - a gift which is far more precious than any material possession, and one that couldn't have come at a better time for me.

Finances have been tight lately, as they have been for everyone, and I have been particularly prone over the last several to intense bouts of depression from the pressures of being a new, self-published author in the current economic climate.

But my interactions with Francesca over the last week truly opened my eyes and reminded me of what it really means to be a storyteller. I hope that every author out there can find their own Francesca to remind them of this from time to time.

Even if I never sell another book again (which, of course, I hope doesn't happen!), Francesca has paid me in a way that will outlast any royalty payment, and for that I will be eternally grateful to her.


As a comedic little side note, after I told my parents (who recently returned from a vacation to Italy) about Francesca's story, their immediate response was to have me ask her where in Italy she lives. To me, asking a teenage girl over the internet where she lives did not seem to be the most appropriate action to take, especially as I have no interest in having the International Pedophile Police (IPP) break down my door in the middle of the night and drag me on Dateline.  Maybe I'm weird.