We recently connected with Denise Antonietti and have shared our conversation below.

Denise, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

I certainly wished I had started sooner. But that requires a little explanation, for those who know me might claim that I’ve been writing my entire life. Which is also true. So what’s the deal? Well I wish somebody had told me earlier that what I did could actually be a job and that to become so, it needed studying and work. I regret my amateurish approach of the early days, I could have got at the point where I am at much earlier.

Denise, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a writer. I’ve recently won the Italian award for the best unpublished spy-story novel and got to be published by the major publisher in our country, Mondadori. The book, “Emerson Ray – Prodigal Son”, came out in August 2023.
Spy stories have gone through a period of little popularity, in Italy, in the latest years, as the most widely sold genre was mystery, crime and, more recently, the cosy crime. For a while, espionage was considered “out of fashion” for most.
Recent political events appearing in the news have proven all those who thought that wrong.
Geopolitics still plays a major, though hidden, role in our everyday lives, and this got to be truer and truer in Europe because of the ongoing war in Ukraine.
As every war is fought with intelligence as much as troops, here spy stories step in.
I am proud to provide my readers with some (true and research-based) information along with the entertainment of a gripping plot.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

As I was setting out to write “Emerson Ray – Prodigal Son”, I got some very bad news concerning the health condition of someone very close to me. I was pregnant with my second child, with no family around where I live with my husband. I seriously considered giving up for some time. I thought that was no time to focus on fiction, when every day life required so much of my energy. That was August 2022. The novel would have to be submitted by the end of January 2023. It would have been reasonable to delay writing. But I had a gut feeling that I had to keep going, and I did. The pain, the sense of guilt for not being able to do enough, all have been channeled into writing. Even though the story has absolutely nothing to do with my life, I think some of the sentiments of the protagonist that I describe, even though originating from very different situations from my own, have a lot in common with what I was feeling at the time.
All ended well: fortunately my family is fine now, and the book came out. But, I learned, all best stories come with a struggle.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I have a very deep interest in the truth. Not about telling “The Truth” but telling about the truth. In my journey through life I’ve become persuaded that although the truth does exist, sometimes it will be just impossible to know it or even recognise it. Some other times, every side will have its own truth, no less valid than the others’.
Of course, writing about war and espionage gives me the perfect setting for stories revolving around this theme.
There is nothing deeply philosophical in the stories I write: they are meant for entertainment. But what I would like my readers to take home is not some sort of moral, but a feeling that out there there is a lot that remains hidden, and that not always what we think of as good and true really is. And viceversa.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @denise.racconta
• Facebook: Denise Jane