Interview with Author Carlo Armenise

Interview with Author Carlo Armenise

• I want to welcome you to Dream Chasers Radio with me, your host, Yaya Diamond.
• What's up, people?
• How are you doing?
• It is a great day and I'm so very excited to be here.
• I have a returning guest.
• You know how I feel about returning guests.
• I absolutely love it because I see progress.
• I love progress.
• I love progress.

Carlo Aminis and his book

• And I have Carlo Aminis back on the show today, and he is putting his book out again.
• It's a republication, but you probably don't know anything about it, do you?
• That's why we are here and I'm here with Carlo.
• Welcome back to the show.
• Thank you.
• Thank you for having me.
• I appreciate it.
• Anytime, Carlo.

Introduction and Background

• So before we get into your book,
• I want to just kind of go through you again and who you are and how you became an author.

Author's Background

• Well, who am I? I've been writing for most of my life, actually.
• I've been writing for most of my life, actually.
• I wasn't an author when I started.
• When I started, I was a retail executive.
• And while I was in retail, I was writing.
• And then when I finally decided I wanted to get out of retail, I went into writing full time.
• So I've been doing it for years and I started writing.

Author's Writing Style

• I write different types of genre.
• I've got four books out now, and they range from horror to comedy.
• And then in this one historical mystery, it was the first time I'd written one of these books.
• So that's what I've been doing.
• And I'm in the process of finishing my fifth book as I sit here today.
• So, my goal is to continue to write because I think that I have some stories to tell, and I think there's some real benefit in getting it out and getting it into the public.

Author's Journey

• So, that's kind of my story.
• That is a cool story.

Following Your Passion

• And that shows that you don't necessarily have to be in the field that you want to be in to start.
• That's right.
• If you find a love and, for some reason, at some point in your life, you need to go in a different direction to make money and support yourself, it doesn't mean you have to give up your love.
• You find ways to continue to do it.
• And I was blessed to be able to find the ways and the time and the money to continue my writing.
• So, I'm really ecstatic about that.
• And now I'm able to write full time, which I really appreciate.
• Nice.
• That's really good.
• I mean, a lot of people would want to be doing what you're doing, which is being a full-time author.
• That's great.
• That is awesome.

Transition to Book Discussion

• All right.
• So we're getting to your book now because I am really curious about this.

Overview of the Book

• It's about a story about a Croatian family.
• It's called 'The Picture Box', a historical mystery.
• Tell me about this story.

Inspiration for the Book

• I lived next door to a gentleman who was Croatian, and it turns out that his family was very, very successful in Croatia, especially his grandmother.
• As we got to know each other, he knew I was a writer.
• So, as we got to know each other, he started to tell me his story and his family's story, and I got more excited about the possibility of bringing it to life.

Introduction to the Historical Mystery

• It's the first time that I've written a historical mystery.
• Most of my books are fiction.
• So, this was a combination of fiction and reality, which was fun.
• He told me his story, and what I did then is, I just took it from that point and worked with him on the story and really started to do some intense investigation into the whole plot point of what he was telling me.

Setting: Croatia

• It's about Croatia.
• It's about a city in Croatia called Osik.
• And what I didn't know about Croatia at the time was that they were going through a whole transformation as a country.
• They started out being governed by Yugoslavia, and Yugoslavia was a communist country.
• Croatia was primarily Christian, and they got to a point where they didn't want to be governed by the communists anymore.
• So, they broke off.
• They went to war with Croatia, and they had a fairly sizable war, and they separated, essentially.
• And then what was so fascinating about this book is that a lot of it takes place during World War II.

The Influence of Hitler in Croatia

• So, there's the Hitler influence in Croatia at the time.
• And so his grandmother was the first woman in Croatia to have a driver's license, and she was the first woman owner of the Royale hotel, which is still there today.
• Wow!
• And in the process of going through that, I learned a whole bunch about Croatia and Croatian history, and that was kind of the impetus for the story to begin with.

The Complexity of Croatian History

• But it takes a whole bunch of knowledge.
• There's a lot that went on with the Germans when it came to the Jews and how they took care of, literally, the Jews.
• Well, in Croatia, they did the same thing because the Germans came in and were influencing what was going on in Croatia.
• And so they did the same thing.
• In fact, even worse when it came to killing off the Jews.
• So it was one of those stories where you learned a lot about the history and you learned a lot about how Croatia got involved with the Germans.

A Successful Grandmother

• His grandmother was very successful.
• He was a singer, and he wanted to continue singing, but he wanted to go to America to sing.
• And so when the war started in Croatia, his grandmother pulled some strings and got him a visa to go to America to sing.
• And so he wasn't in the country during most of the war.
• He came back at the end, which is really where the story picks up.

A Successful Singer's Return

• It picks up from the fact that he was in America and was very successful in Vegas, and he gets the notification that his grandmother was killed or died.
• So he's going back to his hometown in Croatia for her funeral.

Uncovering Family Secrets

• And in the process of going back to her funeral, he finds out all kinds of mysteries about his grandmother and about what her involvement was in the war and with the association with the Germans, because she had some association with them.
• As it turns out, the Germans left a lot of gold in Croatia.
• They were taking all the jewelry from the Jews, and they were melting it down into gold bars.
• And when the war stopped, they left primarily a huge amount of that in Croatia.
• And the way the story goes is when he goes back to his grandmother's funeral, she gives him a gift, and that gift is a gold bar.
• And so he wants to know where that gold bar came from, how she got it, and what it meant.

The Quest for Answers

• And that's kind of where the story goes.

Unraveling the Mystery

• It goes from him doing the research about his grandmother and his family and the gold bar.
• Pretty fascinating.
• But, like I said, all the buildings and everything there were all real, kind of fictional.
• Right?
• But still, in one aspect, it could be true.

The Reality of the Croatian War

• Yes, in one aspect, it is true.
• The war in Croatia did take place.
• They did go to war with Yugoslavia, and they broke away and became a totally Christian nation.
• Croatia wanted to be all Catholic.
• They didn't want to have anybody in their country that wasn't Catholic.
• So when they went to war, they forced all the other nationalities, the Jews, and the Serbians, and the gypsies.
• They had to fight for Croatia and give up their own heritage in order to stay in Croatia at that time.
• So all that was going on.

Dario's Reluctance to Fight

• And of course, Dario, the lead character in the book, he didn't want to fight in the war.
• His parents left and went to France, so he stayed.
• And then when he went to America, that's when he got away from the war.
• But he comes back, and what happened was he comes back to find that many of his friends and a lot of the people that he knew growing up had all been killed in the war.

Dario's Search for Answers

• And so now he was trying to.
• And of course, he felt guilty because he wasn't there to fight.
• And many of his friends kind of made him feel guilty that he didn't stick around and help defend the country.
• And so that was a lot of that.
• So a combination of real facts and taking a little leeway with the storyline itself.
• Right.

The Impact of History

• How did this change you?
• I mean, to know all about this history being fact and fiction mixed together, but the fact, how did that help you understand better what you were going to write about?
• Well, I think the key for me was the fact that he had a family that was well-known in Croatia.
• And it also was something that really put me in a situation where I was amazed at all the history that I didn't know.
• So many times in your life, you meet people who are from different countries and different places, and you really don't spend a lot of time getting to know them, really, where they were born, what they went through.
• And in this particular case, because it took place in the grandmother's life, not Dorio's, but the grandmother's life took place during World War II.

Insights into World War II in Croatia

• It gave me all kinds of information about what went on during the war in Croatia and the reach of the Germans and their desires.
• Hitler spent a long time going through the world collecting and stealing pieces of art, especially from the Italians.
• And so part of this story was about the grandmother's force was forced by the Germans to use the hotel the royale, which is still there, to demonstrate and show her artwork.
• And what ended up happening is she didn't want to do it, but she did, because, of course, she was under the control of the Germans.

The Grandmother's Heroic Act

• But as it turned out in the story, she actually steals some of his artwork, sells it, and uses it to support the people in Croatia.
• And so the idea really got to be, as it gave me a whole.

The Research Process

• It was a requirement to really spend hours researching the cities, towns, and places.
• And the picture box actually came from the story topic, which came from the fact that when the grandmother was a young girl, she was there in Croatia when the Germans were there, and basically one of the German soldiers was taking pictures of herself, her young self.
• And essentially, there were pictures that she got and kept through the years that she passed along to Dario.
• And these pictures were of German soldiers, and the fact that they were burying this gold.
• And so that's where the picture box came from. It was this box of pictures that demonstrated what she went through.

The Picture on the Cover

• Wow.
• And the picture on the COVID, where is that?
• Is that an actual place?
• That is an actual place in Croatia today, in Osik. Basically, there are these…
• I don't know what you would actually call them.
• They're like caves, if you will, that were used by the Croatians to store ammunition during the war.

The Mystery of the Picture Box

• And what they did is, after the war was over, they transformed those into places for concerts and music and that kind of thing.
• And so the picture box really took place in the story, took place in one of these caves. Essentially, that's where the picture comes from on the COVID. That's an actual picture of one of the caves.
• That is amazing.
• I like what you've done.

The Power of Fiction

• You've added that fiction to the actual mystery of the truth and made it a story.
• If you had to say anything to anyone, what would you summarize this book as?
• I think I would summarize it as being a depiction of the history surrounding Croatia and the history surrounding this town of Osijek.

Exploring Croatia's History

• And there were some wonderful things and wonderful places that are still existing when I wrote this book.
• As I was writing this book, I wanted to go to Croatia because I wanted to visit the Hotel Royale because it still exists, along with the restaurants and everything.
• So what it meant to me was it opened my eyes to a whole other area of the world and a whole other historical point in time that I had no idea about.
• It wasn't me sitting down and creating Sam Razor, for instance, or creating some character that I made up.
• These were real characters.
• And so the obligation I had was to do them justice in terms of how I wrote about them and how these places came to life.

Inspiring Travel

• And the most inspired I got is when people read it and then came back and talked to me about the same thing that I really want to go to Croatia.
• Now.
• This was an interesting read, and it really got my interest to be able to see it and experience it.
• So, I think that was the most important thing that opened my awesome, awesome.
• I think that people will have that same experience because a lot of people don't know about Croatia.
• The only reason I know about Croatia is because of a past incident with it as well.

Discovering Croatia

• And someone mentioned that they were from Croatia.
• That.
• But, I mean, you know, it's not one of those places that you just come to know in the conversation.
• Croatia.
• No, but it's so.

The Beauty of Croatia

• It's.
• It's so taken.
• I took advantage of bringing all the beauty into the book as well.
• So it really defined the location, the churches, the restaurants, the theaters.
• And so much of this was part of Dariel's life.

Drawing from Personal Experiences

• So as I was writing this, I was using his experiences in these same places and his friends.
• And even though he wasn't there for most of the war, if not any of it, he still loved his country, his city, his grandmother, and his parents.
• And so it was a nice way to introduce myself to a whole historical side of myself that I want to continue to develop.
• This whole German World War II thing.
• I have really no understanding of what went on.

Uncovering Croatia's History

• And I had no idea that the Germans were as influential in Croatia as they were in Germany, and that there were some pretty bad people in Croatia at the time who were being governed by the Germans and doing the things they did because the Germans told them to.
• Wow.
• I had no idea as well.

Unveiling a Historical Mystery

• Well, with your book, 'The Picture Box', a historical mystery, people can find out.
• That's right.
• How can people get this book?

New release on Amazon

• It's on Amazon right now.
• And what I'm doing with authors' tranquility is I'm republishing the books because they were with different publishers.
• And so I'm going through the republishing process.
• Picture box is now done.
• It's been released again on Amazon.
• And so I'm doing the same thing with that one.

Join our book club

• So it's out, available.
• Get it?
• I'm going to put that in our book club.
• It's going to be kind of cool.
• I love doing this.
• I love finding out about books.
• What do you have coming up next?

Upcoming mystery novel

• Well, I've got a story called, let's see, deceitful intentions.
• It's about two young women. One of the young women is in a car accident with her mother, and the mother is killed. But the young woman sustains a whole bunch of terrific injuries, loses her leg, loses her memory, that kind of thing.
• She doesn't realize that her mother was killed in the accident until she comes out of the coma that she was in and goes back to her hometown to try to find out what really happened.
• But she doesn't have any memory, so she's learning as she goes.
• She has a friend, Julia, who helps her.
• To me, this was my first opportunity to write a more female-focused book, focused on young females.
• The idea was to really write something that is a mystery.
• It's another mystery.
• And it has a lot of twists and turns, and it's out.
• I'm now just finishing the republishing of it, and it'll be released again here within the next month.
• That's my next thing.

Future writing projects

• And then I'm writing another Footsteps in the Dark.
• I've got nine more stories that I'm writing, and I'm writing another Sam Razor mystery.
• That is so cool to be a full-time author.
• Yes.
• I mean, that's a dream come true.
• Congratulations.
• Thank you.

Challenges of being a full-time author

• The tough part about it is, of course, just continuing to write.
• I mean, it's like you.
• You've got a very successful career and you've got to keep at yourself to keep it being successful.
• Right.
• And making sure people want to hear from you and what you're bringing up.
• And writing is kind of the same way.

The importance of consistency

• You don't write anything and then turn around.
• And I've been blessed enough to be able to write well enough that people kind of like what I write.
• It could go the other way, of course, but it hasn't so far.
• Well, that's good.
• We cross our fingers, toes, arms, and say thank you, definitely, definitely.

Expressing gratitude

• And keep you in our prayers.
• I want to thank you so much, Carlo, for being on the show.
• I appreciate you coming back.
• And when you do your next books, I need you back so that we can share the progress you're making and how you can inspire other people to go after their dreams and hopes as well.
• They've got to go for it.

Encouragement to pursue dreams

• They've got to go for it.
• I mean, it's the age-old story that if you've got a dream, go for it.
• Don't let anything get in your way.
• Figure out a way to get to it.
• Just be dedicated.
• And if nothing were to ever come of it, from a substantial monetary side, just being able to write and share my stories is payment enough, definitely.

Thank you for tuning in

• Definitely.
• And for me.
• Thank you so much.
• Thank you, thank you.

Don't forget to visit Carlos

• And thank you guys so much for tuning in.
• Don't forget to go ahead and visit Carlos.
• The link will be in the description box below, as well as the Amazon store to actually purchase the book if you'd like to go ahead and do that.

Closing remarks

• I want to thank you guys so much for tuning in.
• We wouldn't be anything without you, and Carlos' book would be a closed manual script without you.
• So please go ahead and check it out for yourself.
• And until next time, guys.
• Bye.

- Thank you.