PRESS RELEASE

A NOVEL SET IN SAVANNAH 
NOMINATED FOR A GLOBAL EBOOK AWARD
 (AND THE AUTHOR IS ITALIAN)

Milan, Italy - March 10th 2012

Italian writer Guido Mattioni’s Whispering Tides, a novel set in Savannah, Georgia has been accepted in nomination by The Global eBook Awards of Santa Barbara, CA (Popular Literature Fiction category). The prize will be awarded in Santa Barbara on August 18th, 2012. Mattioni, a Milanese in his late fifties who recently retired after 33 years as a respected name in Italian journalism, is still an active columnist and freelancing contributor to Italian national dailies and magazines. Bringing him to set his debut as a novelist right in Savannah was the mix of an intimate story and his long lasting “love affaire” with the Georgian City. It’s a love story (Guido says) that blossomed in a memorable early Savannah spring in 1991 amidst gorgeous blooming azaleas.  It was his very first visit there and it was to be just the first of an ongoing never ending series of yearly visits. More than this: it’s a love story that is nourished by a growing number of solid local friendships that pinnacle in 1998 with honorary Savannah citizenship being granted to him by Mayor Floyd Adams, Jr. Quoting Alberto Landi, the novel’s main character, he felt “this place hidden deeply inside, something already familiar…”  and  “since then the city of Savannah has become something intimate, an inseparable part of me, like a vital organ or my second skin”.

One of the yet few Italian “Indie” writers, utterly convinced about the positive impact of this revolutionary wave that is giving full meaning to the expression “freedom of press”, Mattioni is the Author and the Publisher of his novel, downloadable both in the English and Italian languages. Whispering Tides  - Ascoltavo le maree  is available from main digital libraries such as Amazon, Apple, Diesel, Sony, and Kobo, as well as Barnes and Noble, and it is also available in paperback edition from Amazon.com and Lulu.com.

Synopsis

When his beloved wife Nina suddenly dies - after 23 years of life together - Alberto Landi understands he has to leave Milan Italy, where he has always lived and worked. He leaves his friends, colleagues, a good job and the polluted big city he has never loved which has now become even more intolerable to him. He is fifty, he is totally alone and he is confused, but he definitely knows that he has to escape very far away, across the ocean to the only place he and Nina had always loved together. He lands in Savannah, Georgia. There, in a natural paradise governed by the breath of the tides and with the help of many dear friends - colorful human characters as well as wise animals - he starts to rebuild his new life. His dream is coming true until the day he wakes up one morning and discovers that…

Bio

Born in Udine, Italy in 1952, Guido Mattioni has lived and worked in Milan since 1978. Writing has always been his job and his life as well. During 33 years of journalism, he has worked for daily newspapers and weekly and monthly magazines while holding almost every professional title possible, from reporter to editor-in-chief and deputy editor to special correspondent. He has traveled all over the world, especially in the USA, where he has visited almost every state. When he was younger he wrote two non-fiction works. Whispering Tides is his first novel, and it is also available in its Italian version - Ascoltavo le maree. He is married to Maria Rosa, an Oncologist who is as Guido says, someone much more socially useful than he is, apart from being definitely a much more beautiful person too. If he could be reincarnated he would like to do it as a chef because cooking is the pastime he is most fond of. He is an atypical Italian because he suffers an incurable allergy to soccer.

                                                  

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