James Carnarvon

Stealthy edit. This exchange should have been in there all along. I hope it makes Gianni and Angelo seem a bit less comically blind!

Yes, if Gianni and Angelo were more experienced parents they would know the value of managing their child's expectations before it becomes a problem. They might also have foreseen the meltdown potential of something as exciting and stressful as a big family Christmas. Obviously they didn't blindly forget that Sami wouldn't be able to sample everything on the menu. Maybe there's a line of dialogue missing to cover that... let me think on it!

Gianni awoke on Christmas Eve to find Sami’s bedroom door open and his bed slept in, but empty. Curiously, he padded down the wooden stairs to the dining area in his bare feet and pyjama bottoms. There was no sign of the little boy on the upper ground floor, either. Gianni had just enough time to begin to feel concerned before he heard rustling sounds coming from the den downstairs. He crept on down the spiral stairs, wondering whether he was about to catch Sami in the middle a loss of

Thank you for mentioning Sami's story! There was nothing particularly clever about the subtext, but I was quite pleased with it anyway!

I think there are valid concerns around incorporating a child's cultural identity in their new life. Children who have to start over in new families typically arrive with nothing besides the name their birth parents gave them and their life story to date, such as it is. The new family owes it to them to recognise what makes that child who they are, and to explore the role their history and heritage have to play in the new identity they will build with their new family. These kinds of concerns are recognised by the adoption system here in the UK and play a part in finding the right family to match with the child. Of course, that can make children from minority backgrounds more difficult to place - you do have to wonder whether it's right to keep depriving a child of the potential for a loving home in the hope that a better cultural match might come along at a later date. Yes, Marco certainly needs help. I'll continue to defend Giacomo as a decent but flawed boy whose thoughts and actions are not so unusual for his age. He's not entirely self-centred: in the past, we've seen him put himself in danger for both Dani and his mother, and he urged Dani not to hurt Emilia before their disastrous date in Lanterns in the Dark. However, Giacomo comes off badly in comparison to Dani because Dani is so extraordinarily selfless, and in comparison to Marco because he hasn't suffered the hardship that Marco has. I didn't shy away from giving Giaco a few selfish thoughts and feelings in this chapter because, until Dani edged out in front of him at the end of Lanterns in the Dark, he was always the leader of the pack. Giaco has never really had to play second fiddle before; it's a new experience for him, but also an opportunity for him to grow as a person. I'm glad that the pets' contributions to the story, however small, are feline good to you! It's in Gianni's nature to doubt himself when Sami pulls away from his offers of love and affection. He feels that the occasional distance between them is a result of his own failings, despite the reassurances of those around him. You and several other readers have recognised how Sami's past losses and trauma are driving his behaviour. It's not easy for Sami to trust a new adult, and every gesture of affection he offers has an undercurrent of anxiety. The truth, of course, may be somewhere in between...

I'm finally back from my travels, with a bit of time for myself, and able to do clever things like quoting more than one comment at a time... I hope so too! Sami won't be a teen for six years! So, you're saying that this 25-year-old character has rushed into parenthood, and has taken on the responsibility of raising a traumatised child with attachment difficulties despite having no real understanding of what that involves, resulting in unrealistic expectations of what parenthood will be like? Well... yeah. Aah, Giaco. He's always liked be the centre of attention. Gianni jokes with Dani about whether Marco will be willing to share Sami with Giacomo, but really it's Giacomo who struggles to share. I suppose it's a mark of his devotion to Dani which, to be fair, Dani more than earned in the early days of their friendship... but it also speaks of a self-centred part of his nature. In the last chapter we saw him trying to be supportive with Marco but the tension over Dani got in the way. Maybe this will be the story where Giaco grows up a little...?

As the following week passed by, the weather grew steadily colder thanks to a string of clear nights. On the morning of the last Saturday before Christmas, Gianni awoke to find a nip of frost in the air. Outside, the uneven paving stones glittered with a faint suggestion of ice. For the first time, he was reminded of those cold winter mornings back in London. Angelo was tied up finishing a last-minute carpentry job in Scala, but Gianni seized the opportunity to give Sami a taste of the wint

Therein lies the challenge of writing a story set in the winter. How do I bring Ravello to life without all the usual summer tropes? Also, I’ve never even seen the Amalfi coast in winter, so I’m having to do my best imagining! Thank you for all the character-by-character comments, too, even if I don’t have time to respond to them all. I’m glad you’re all enjoying the ‘wordsmithing’!

Thanks @drsawzall and everyone else who has commented. I’m still travelling and struggling to respond in detail, but I appreciate each and every one! I felt like I was writing this birthday party scene forever! It had a lot of ground to cover, needing to give every character their moment, but I think it came together okay. With Reza and Tiziana, I think what you’re actually detecting is a hasty edit where their chat with Gianni and Angelo went a bit further than I’d intended in my outline and I had to pull it back 😅. They need to spend a bit more time with Sami before they commit to spending major time together, but there’s every chance that they will come through. And yeah, Toto and Michele aren’t really in this story, but they deserved a cameo or two!

Gianni was at a loss to explain his panic attack. It was as if every trauma he had ever experienced had been triggered all at once and, just for that moment, he had lost all control. All the same, talking to Angelo about it helped. By the time he had talked himself out, his heart rate had returned to normal, and he was beginning to feel sleepy. They cuddled for a while in the quiet of the den, where the only sound was the gentle crackle and sizzle of logs settling in the wood burner. “

@Summerabbacat you have set me a high bar there! I’m travelling for the next few days and will only have access to GA via my phone, which will make that more difficult (but don’t worry, the next two chapters are already uploaded and scheduled to auto-publish at the appropriate times). So many brilliant and insightful comments to wake up to this morning - I’m a bit short of time, so I’ll focus on my newest follower if that’s OK. @James Baxter I’m delighted to have you aboard! I always recommend a chronological approach to avoid spoilers, but it’s not the end of the world if you have a few clues as to what happens in the future as I don’t rely on blinding plot twists to tell my stories. I’ve seen people binge my entire back catalogue in a couple of days and I don’t think I’d recommend that, but it’s up to you how you proceed. If you do go back, you’ll find three ‘generations’ of main characters represented by Gianni and Angelo; Toto and Michele; and Dani and his friends (followed by a side trip with Reza). The point of view character shifts from story to story, but there are always ongoing storylines and themes that link them. ’The Summer of the Firefly’ is much older than the rest and has a few flaws, but I remain very proud of it and it’s still the best place to start. And, in case that wasn’t clear already, I quite like Ravello…

I still maintain that Angelo is one of the hardest characters to write, particularly as an adult. He's almost too good to be true, you see. It's easier when he's interacting with Gianni on a 1:1 basis, as he lets his guard down. In larger, group settings, he doesn't give nearly so much away, and I find his personality much harder to pin down.

Don’t worry - next chapter!

@Summerabbacat, this story is clearly not the best fit for you given that you’ve never been interested in having children, so I’m grateful that you’re still with me. I always look forward to reading your comments. I realise that the urge to parenthood doesn’t strike us all. It did strike me, but I’m pleased to say my experience of adoption got off to a better start than Gianni’s experience of fostering has. I’m tempted to say that the lack of appeal you find in children might change if you ever had to cause spend more time with them. I don’t mean infants necessarily, but older children - with more developed personalities - can have a wonderfully fresh, non-jaded perspective on the world that it can be a pleasure to experience. However, you’ve clearly been around for long enough to know your own mind on this subject, and fair play to you. This story is not all about Sami; you will also get to spend time with Gianni/Angelo on their own, and - as you will see in the next chapter - there’s more about Marco too. I know you’re fond of the deprived, mousy-haired, prickly one!

The following Wednesday, on a cool morning with a bright, pearly-white sky, an anxious Sami stood in the street just outside their courtyard, neatly turned out in a white shirt and a pair of plain trousers under his warm winter coat. He wore a rucksack on one shoulder, packed with a few essentials to last the day. Gianni and Angelo fussed over him, making sure he had everything he needed for his first day at school. It was just a taster day; he was due to start full-time in the New Year.

Actually, it’s correct as written - Gianni just doesn’t want the teens to keep calling him ‘sir’! Thanks for commenting. As far as Gianni’s inexperience goes - you are, of course, absolutely right.

@dutch woman, @drpaladin and @raven1, thank you for your comments. I'm glad Sami's behaviour makes sense to you. If there's one thing I'm pretty sure of in this story, it's that Sami's behaviour throughout can be explained by what's happened to him in the past. I know what's going through his head when he hugs Gianni, or at least I think I do. Thanks @drsawzall! I'm glad you mentioned Marco. It was important for me, in writing this story, not to lose track of my ongoing storyline with Dani and the others. Thankfully, Dani and Marco's friendship with Sami, and the close proximity of Elena's shop, made it very easy to keep featuring Dani, Marco and Giacomo within Gianni's point of view storyline. Emilia is kept slightly out of the action by the fact she has a new boyfriend, a development partly inspired by @raven1's comment on Lanterns in the Dark that "Wouldn't it be nice for Emilia to get a kiss from a boy that didn't make her cry?". Writing a story from a parent's point of view also made it necessary to feature all the teens' parents a little more, as it would be a bit weird if Gianni and Angelo only ever spoke with the teenagers themselves. Elena, Patrizia, Paolo, Roberto, Monica and Marco's parents Lorenzo and Gemma... it was an awful lot of characters to keep track of and write distinctively!

I hope the rest will do more than just depress you! But yes, the season does suit the story - that’s intentional.

The first Saturday in December brought a respite from the relentless spell of cloudy days. As the mild winter sun broke through, the daytime highs rose slightly, and a few more people ventured out into the quiet streets of the town. As Gianni and Angelo stepped out into the street that morning, Gianni glanced up into the blue sky, basking in the warmth for a moment. He stared up through the fronds of an umbrella pine that overhung the street from the belvedere, remembering the scraping soun

That’s correct. There still seems to be some confusion here!

I'm a sprout purist, really. I'd rather have the bacon wrapped around the sausages and chopped up in the turkey stuffings. Give me the sprouts boiled: just make sure they're green and al dente and that there are tasty things to eat with them, preferably including gravy. Monica does aspire. She says that the restaurant is "lovely" - but she sights the opportunity for a bigger party. To be fair, for a fourteen-year-old, a sit-down meal in a restaurant wouldn't really cut the mustard as a birthday celebration. Emilia would want the space to hang out with her mates. As stated, I quite enjoy sprouts. However, I'm with you on the peas (they are antisocial vegetables that sit there disgustingly in their tough, impermeable skins and detract from everything else instead of complementing it), and I would add broad beans to the reject pile for similar reasons. Aside from that, I'm pretty flexible... It's strange that I seem to keep to bring Mrs. Deakes back, since she had served her dramatic purpose by the end of the first chapter of my first book. I always knew that she had been a foster carer before, as it explained how social services so readily agreed for her to take care of Gianni on an interim basis in The Summer of the Firefly. It was even mentioned in a few early drafts of that story, but I took it out as it was a distraction from the emotional impact I was trying to convey in those first few pages. The Star in my Eye is probably my oddest title to date. I think the meaning of the title ends up slightly unresolved, but once I'd thought of it I just liked it. Titles are difficult: you wouldn't believe how many dreadful titles I thought up and then rejected for Together We Can Fly. I hope 'restful and soothing' doesn't translate into 'boring and lacking in incident' for too many readers!

I'm glad you mentioned that! It's the birthday celebration that's being brought forward, not the Christmas dinner, but I can see how that might not be clear. I'll make a small edit.

I couldn't stand them when I was younger, but I quite like them now! Never overcook them.

Thank you @raven1, @Ivor Slipper, @pvtguy and @drsawzall for your continued interest and support! You are so right!

As December approached, the weather continued its descent into unusual levels of cold for the time of year. The bemused residents of Ravello hunkered down in their homes or ventured out in hats and scarves, while Gianni wandered the town in a light jumper, wondering what all the fuss was about. God forbid it should actually snow this year… what would they do then? On the last Saturday of the month, Gianni persuaded Angelo to venture out to the cathedral square for a morning coffee so S