The tale of this girl’s adventures started life in 1991 as a script for Mills and Boon. My pen-name was Caroline Warwick  (middle name Charles and I used to live off Warwick Ave in Maida Vale as a child!) and my heroine was then spelt Melissa, and she was a shy, repressed English girl from Nottingham.

I came across the old manuscript in 2023 and thought that, with a lot of new ideas and modernising, it would make an interesting short novel: a romance with dark undertones.

I used to pass a little design shop in Battersea in the ‘90s and I thought I’d use that as Melyssa’s base. Melyssa and T-ray would now be a black sister and brother and, when given their great project in Tuscany, would soon find Italian racial prejudice. My original tale involved a war-time friendship and inheritance. This was now miles out of date, so modern concerns, such as climate change and computer projections are at the heart of the new story.

The Italian setting between Florence and Lucca is one I know very well; my mother lived in Montecatini Terme for over thirty years. I spent long summers exploring the hill-top towns of Tuscany by motorcycle in the 1970s and ‘80s.

My evil Contessa and the quirky American secretary to the famous opera celebrity who becomes Melyssa’s lover remain from the original script.  Melyssa is now a very modern girl who can rise to a dangerous challenge.

ISBN: 978-1-9164295-6-7
Available on-line from Amazon and Witley Press Bookshop: 174 page paperback

Published May 2024