siena.

Having just begun proceedings on my next book project, I have been somewhat burrowed down into the cushions of planning and thinking. Although this kind of works makes me feel more free and more excited, I think that to any outside onlooker I have become a little bit loony and hermit-like. Example: Last week I spent four hours researching Siena, Italy in the stacks of the Wake Forest Library, an invaluable resource, especially in summer.

Circling back, I emphasize that this book does, in fact, take place in Siena, Italy. It was in this fair city that Kaili and I studied abroad for four glorious months in the fall of my Junior year of college. It is the city of stacking buildings atop eachother, Ricciarelli, the Campo and Due Porte (a hole-in-the-wall pizza place that changed my life forever). Planning this book sets me right back down in the middle of those memories. Sitting here, surveying the storehouse, I see thousands of images...