Mariella Gattini

Today I finished my essay number seventy, it’s called Witch Hunt and it’s readily available for you on my blog. The world has changed since I started writing in this website in 2015, but not fundamentally. The difference is that today cruelty, negligence, and disregard for the most vulnerable are all more apparent and disguised as honesty, especially in politics.

Before I started my seventieth essay, I revised my previous ones and made changes in punctuation, such as my use of commas, periods, and full stops, especially when it comes to apply them in regard to brackets and quoting marks; this was a deliberate choice. I’ve also updated the number of Covid related cases and deaths in each essay I mentioned the pandemic, because they were based on the information we had at the time. In the new update, and according to more recent numbers displayed in the World Health Organization website, I mention that from January 3rd, 2020 to January 3rd 2023, the Covid confirmed cases in the United States are 99,423,758, and the number of deaths is 1,082,265. And as of December 16th, 2022, the total number of vaccines administered in this country has been 652,464,668.

I’ve made no changes to the content of my essays, written at a time and place different from my current one. I’m no longer who I used to be, so my following essays are probably going to vary in tone and purpose, because time has added much more heft to the knowledge I have of my contemporaries, but not all of it will be discussed here. Most of it is going to my books, which are five so far. The first one I’ve ever written is titled Lost in the Forgotten South, published only on Amazon*. Beware of the non-secure websites that are using my book, my name, and Amazon’s name to capture your attention; the book is available in English, Italian, and Spanish only on amazon.com nowhere else, and with no words in between. The version in English is available for free on Amazon Kindle, so you don’t need to fall prey of shady websites.

This book, Lost in the Forgotten South, is a transition between my life as a translator and that of a writer. The voices and points of view are those of my parents, for that reason, its tone seems to come from another era, due to the fact that my parents were much older than me. With my dad long gone, I self-published the book so my mom could have awareness of her own stories before she died. The following book is coming from my experiences in two contrasting states in the U.S., the third one has a Midwest backdrop inspired by people I’ve met in, and from, that region. The fourth one takes us to Italy, which I wrote in Italian and later translated into English. The latter would be my fifth book.

As of now, I’m on the final stages of my sixth book, and this one is set in California. I have another book in the works that probably is also going to be set in California.

I haven’t published my already written books yet through the traditional system, because I haven’t looked for an agent, which is the only way to get to the big multinational publisher houses today. Nevertheless, I’ve been making good use of my time by actually writing.

My books are not about politics and they are not about me, they are about people just like you, so it is my job to protect your identity and your integrity. For that reason, I choose fiction to interpret what’s going on around me. The individual experience can be very compelling and can be an indicative of our collective state of affairs. My blog, on the other hand, is a non-fiction account of some observations I’ve made of our human nature, observations that do not intend to be the universal law of things. They simply are instants in our precipitous lives, that I deem worth of reflection. Since I’m not the owner of the truth, and neither are you, my essays reflect on who we are and on how we could improve and strengthen our relationships.

I hope you’ve already recovered from the difficulties we went through last year, and the harsh realities that we’ve already had to face the first two months of this year, because we need to prepare ourselves to confront the innumerable challenges that lie ahead.

Best wishes for this 2023 that has been around for a while now, and for all the years to come.

Update: My books are not longer available on Amazon or in any other website in any language. I'm working on a new edition and I don't want to cause confusion in the future.