Lenny Cavallaro Interview Published on: 25, Nov 2022

I grew up in New Haven, Connecticut. I had little interest in creative writing during childhood and adolescence, although my mother was an author and had had novels published by Harcourt and Random House.

I admired those who wove a great tale, and Mark Twain was probably my favorite. I also fell in love with both Shakespeare and the Greek epics, notably the Iliad, and was exposed to Greek drama at a fairly early age.

Given the cross-genre aspects of my series, I might perhaps address numerous misconceptions people have. Fiction may be used as a vehicle through which to present spiritual concepts, as I do in the later (as yet unpublished) volumes. I develop the idea of “soul fractions,” a rather obscure notion of reincarnation.

Perhaps more noteworthy, though, are my efforts to present sadomasochism in a very different light. As one of my characters articulates, some people make love through the medium of pain. I should add that while Fifty Shades is mere fantasy, the “scenes” described in my series (mostly the first two volumes) are quite real. Perhaps some might deem someone like Elena a “pervert,” but she is remarkably accomplished, honest, honorable, talented, and spiritual, as are many within the “kink scene.” She and Giovanni are also wonderfully nurturing and supportive parents (for those concerned about “family values”).

The romance is: (1) dark-erotic (with hard-core kink), (2) paranormal (with a personified Curse), (3) spiritual (with a message of acceptance of karma, forgiveness, and letting go of anger and disappointment).

In many ways, Giovanni is a reflection of me, although our life stories also differ dramatically. However, the beautiful song (“Canzona a Maria”) his father wrote is in fact the title of a song MY father wrote, and it figures prominently in the series.

I no longer watch movies and almost never watch television, so I really have no idea who might portray Giovanni on screen.

I cannot appraise the “transformation,” but Reiki is a valid healing modality, and I have seen marvelous, inexplicable results, even with remote sessions (via Skype).

My protagonists, Giovanni and Elena, are under a curse (that personified Curse, capital “C”). Elena, who becomes a psychic (in addition to a marvelous musician), learns about some of the other lives she and Giovanni have shared, beginning from the 1st century. Among the victims was Beethoven, who was unable to marry the ill-fated Josephine von Brunsvick. [Hers was a truly tragic story, worthy of a novel!] Even after her first husband died, she could not marry the composer, because Beethoven was a commoner, and her late husband’s family would then have demanded custody of her four children. In “Cursed Love,” I create a fictitious incident in which a Roma fortune-teller tells Beethoven about the Curse but tells him to write the music (his famous “Kreutzer” Sonata for Violin and Piano) that will unite the lovers who will ultimately defeat the Curse.

It is doubtless quite effective for the top practitioners, though not as much so for the “hobbyists.” Krav Maga and MMA are probably better in the streets.

My other published fiction: a novel based on the Trojan War, a novella about a bare-knuckle boxing champion, and most recently Sherlock Holmes and the Mysteries of the Chess World. With The Passion of Elena Bianchi, some of the characters are loosely based on people I know, not strangers. However, the adverb, “loosely,” is the key word here. For example, I had a very wealthy aunt who had residences in both Naples and along the Amalfi Coast, but she was by no means the model for Giovanni’s Aunt Sofia. So, too, many of the actual episodes—musical and sexual—are drawn from personal experiences (or those of friends): often “loosely,” though at times more directly.

I studied with a number of outstanding pedagogues and earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in piano performance and literature. I was a top prizewinner in the J. S. Bach International Competition for Pianists and later played that composer’s Six Partitas to the highest acclaim in Carnegie Recital Hall. I have since gravitated toward composition, with eleven volumes of published work.

On the other hand, I have met some extremely gifted pianists who were almost entirely self-taught, including some who did not even read music. I cheerfully concede that they could perform magnificently in their genres and idioms, though I have severe doubts they could ever perform major concerti with orchestras (or Bach’s Partitas). However, some played entirely by ear—and far better than I ever could!

This is always a challenge, because of the pressure to “grab the reader with the first twenty-five words” (or something like that). I originally began with the start of Giovanni’s memoirs, but I realized that the passages about how the Curse was poised to strike them (cf., Prologue) would be far more effective.

I think Elena’s triumph with the performance of Bach’s cantata, Christ Lag in Todesbanden, has some remarkable writing about music. Similarly, the as-yet-unpublished scenes in which Giovanni coaches his daughter and her friend have been praised by beta readers. I must also note the German SS Captain, the psychopath who engineers the horrors that bring If Music Be the Food of Love to a tragic climax.

I have been obliged to cut scenes, simply because they had no relevance to the broader picture. My plots are tightly woven, and even minor details—e.g., how one of Giovanni’s earlier girlfriends teaches him how to make French toast, omelettes, and pancakes—becomes significant in later volumes. A few episodes, alas, “did not make the cut”!

First and foremost: writing is a labor of love. At my age, I shall not have a high-powered agent muscling my manuscripts to the “Big Five” in New York. I am consigned to tiny houses and/or self-publishing, and even a few hundred sales may be out of reach. As the joke says, “When my book was accepted, I thought about buying a new car, but once the royalties were counted, I had barely enough for an oil change.”

Second: The “game” is quite different these days. Pedestrian prose by rather ignorant writers may do far better than my best efforts, simply because they understand marketing and networking, have huge email lists, do the “newsletter thing,” podcast, etc. I am an abysmal failure at self-promotion, and can only hope that someone will take the job off my hands (without bleeding me dry, of course).

Finally: Reviews are tricky under the best of circumstances. Someone I don’t even know sent me an excellent review she had posted on Amazon. Two days later, Amazon took it down: no reason given! We aren’t supposed to pay for reviews (e.g., $450 to Kirkus), and then we may get assaulted by various trolls, who sometimes give a book a blank, one-star evaluation for no reason whatsoever. My advice: "get used to it."

Evelyn Byrne-Kusch, who ran White Bird Publications, released If Music Be the Food of Love and Paradise Regained and Lost Again, but she then died unexpectedly. However, the other books are "ready to go," and I intend to self-publish the remaining volumes of The Passion of Elena Bianchi between December (2022) and March (2023).

The Passion of Elena Bianchi (If Music Be the Food of Love, Paradise Regained and Lost Again, and the unpublished volumes) draws to a large extent upon my Italian roots, and most of the series takes place in Italy. I have more recently turned to my Jewish roots and completed (and submitted to a publisher) The Ibbur’s Tale, an unusual “tragicomedy” about an ibbur—a benevolent spirit that engages in what might be termed “possession” of a living person in order to complete an unfinished task.

I have begun sketching other projects, including a possible sequel to George Bataille’s The Story of the Eye. I also self-published Two Oedipal Plays—a one-act Hamlet (with a very strange plot twist) and the conjectural completion of Odysseus Acanthoplex, a drama by Sophocles of which only fragments remain.

And, of course, I remain a musician and hope to write more music for English horn and piano. I have also set two of Robert Frost’s poems to music and hope to add a few more.

I believe we went “live” in August. I have LOVED enjoyed retweeting all the marvelous posters AllAuthor has made for me! Sales, alas, remain flat: probably my own fault.