Beautiful Ones

So I’m on the home stretch with Murano, aka Italian Knights 7, aka Beppe’s story. There are about ten or so scenes that will connect the story from beginning to end and finish the flow. It’s not been an easy write, I’ll be honest. I knew what I wanted to write and I knew essentially what would happen and that the focus would be on Bep. Everything played in my head like a Christopher Nolan story, to the point where The Dark Knight Rises soundtrack has been my go to with everything. I mean not the bang-bang scenes, that would have been weird – but all the deep bits, the funny bits, the ‘where is this going mate’ bits, have had Hans Zimmer cheering it along. But I had a George RR Martin moment. The story got too big for me. I worried about how people would take to Mimi. Really worried. Because everyone knows that the heroine has to earn the hero – rarely the other way around, especially if he’s been established in previous books. Mimi is like a best mate and I want to protect her from any nonsense. It made me think what Beppe likes about so much that he falls for her and pretty damn hard. Let me try to do this without giving anything away. No spoilers.

1.       She’s a surgeon and she really enjoys it to a sort of perverse level. You kind of have to, in order to cut up people for a living and go home to sleep like a baby at night, no drugs involved.

2.       Speaking of drugs, she understands Bep’s vocation. You’ll get that when you read it.  

3.       She listens. To be as distracted as Beppe can be and to be patient enough to wait for him to get to his point and to hear what he’s said to have a conversation with him, rather than dismissing him as weird is something wonderful.

4.       She doesn’t give a fuck and she will tell you to your face. There are few people’s opinions that matter to her and they happen to be the same as Bep. Kismet.

5.       She’s kinky like him. You’ll see.

6.       She accepts him for who he is and that’s a lot when you think about the type of dude he is. Man’s wild.

7.       She’ll fight people for him. Verbally and physically. What it is to have a girl bat for you and bat hard with all the tools she has in her arsenal and then some, can only be a sign of true love and affection.

8.       His happiness is her happiness. The simplest things makes them both delight in the world and that shared joy brings the world into focus, excluding everyone but the two of you.

9.       She doesn’t hide her affections, making her as straight as a die. In a world of coded messages and timed communications, it’s refreshing to not doubt how a person feels about you.

10.   She’s fit. Come on, he’s Italian! He likes good looking girls and Amelia Johnson is buff.

Let me do the same the other way around for evens stevens:

a)       Giuseppe Nardiello is ridiculous to look at let alone to touch. There’s a scene where he lets her put hands on and… yah.

b)      He’s a South Londoner and proud of it. He knows the city inside out and enjoys it with her.

c)       He does something for her that heals a crack in her heart like nothing else could have and no one else would have done. Actually, he does that a few times.

d)      He tear gases her neighbours for her. That’s romance when your neighbours are bastards.

e)      He appreciates her dedication to her craft and that sometimes, it comes first. It just has to.

f)        Beppe cracks her up. He’s said things to me that I’ve repeated to other people that has made them laugh just as hard.

g)       He’d kill to protect her. No questions asked.

h)      He loves his friends like family. You’ll see.

i)        He’s a feminist.

j)        He’s a clean freak. He has his places of sanctuary and they must be clean at all times. Good times or no. Think Naomi Campbell in flight mode.

Funny how that’s been the easiest thing of Murano to write – why Bep loves Meems and why Mimi loves her Beppe. They’re just two nice folks, with terrible things happening around and to them who hold on to one another to live through the storms. What they have together in the quiet, the stillness, after the rages have passed, is something that I’m rather proud of.

You’ll see when it’s done. Let me get back to it.