Isabella Valeri’s first novel, *Letters from the Dead*, is the story of a wealthy dynastic family and its secrets.
Show notes:
- Isabella Valeri
- Letters from the Dead
- Napoleon on Board the Bellerophon, Sir William Quiller Orchardson
- How To Write A Novel Using The Snowflake Method
- Erin Morgenstern: The Night Circus
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Isabella Valeri’s first novel, Letters from the Dead, is the story of a wealthy dynastic family and its secrets.
Isabella Valeri is mysterious: her website says that she lives under an assumed name somewhere in the Alps. This can make readers think that the stories she recounts in this novel are true. She says, “The book is a work of fiction. And the stories in it are mostly true and substantially accurate.”
If not for the mention of a year in the very first paragraph of the novel, a reader could think that this story was set in the early twentieth century, that it could have been written in the 1920s or 1930s. It takes place in a massive estate somewhere in the Alps, and there is an atmosphere almost like The Magic Mountain. At the same time, there’s a gothic feel to the descriptions. Isabella says, “It’s interesting you talk about the Gothic aspects of the story. Donna Tartt’s A Secret History, which is a huge inspiration of mine, is quite the same. When you read that book, you ask yourself, ‘When does that novel take place?’ At first, it doesn’t sound like it is a modern book.”
As to the genre of the novel, that’s a bit hard to pin down. Isabella said, “I think there are aspects of many genres. I think it’s Gothic. There’s dark academia, thriller. It’s a family drama, historical fiction, fictional memoir, and, of course, literary fiction. I write the books that I wanted to read. And so, because of the way that I grew up, I had a built-in bias towards deeply textured, rich, almost lyrical and archaic prose.”
The estate, whose location is never specified but is clearly far from civilization, takes on a life of its own as the unnamed eleven-year-old girl who is the protagonist discovers new rooms she had never seen before. “It’s isolated. And it’s strange. When I wrote this book, I wanted the estate to feel like a character of its own. And the dynasty is certainly a character. It has its own wants, needs, and desires. It’s a powerful entity in a way that affects our anti-heroine throughout the book series.”
Isabella has a number of audiovisual stories on her website, and she spoke of how she is influenced by films. “I’m very into films. I rewatch some classics probably once a year, including Alien, Kingdom of Heaven, and The Godfather. It’s fascinating to watch these classic films from the point of view of narrative theory.”
She spoke about the idea of the hero’s journey, first elaborated by Joseph Campbell, saying, “I think the hero’s journey is actually a bit boring, and it’s quite predictable. For me, when I’m writing, I like to write anti-heroines. So I’ve made my own journey, an anti-heroine’s journey, you could call it.”
Isabella’s novel is full of references to arcane subjects, with quotes from Latin, historical and scientific references, and more. I asked her if she is a “Renaissance woman,” if she is one of these people who reads and learns everything. “Yes, I suppose I am. I had access to an incredible library when I was a girl. I think the most modern book in there was probably from 1965. They had books hundreds of years old, and I was allowed to run around, and I could pick up anything that I wanted, take it from the shelf, put it on a book stand, and read it. I wasn’t raised on modern works. I hadn’t seen teen magazines or any of those things until much later in my life. I suppose that had quite an effect on me. I was quite happy to learn all of these fascinating subjects.”
Isabella told me her oldest Scrivener projects date back to 2014. “When I first considered writing a book, I had an enormous amount of material all over the place. I had handwritten notes, notebooks, and Post-Its, and things like that all over the place, completely disorganized. Then I discovered Scrivener and I started using its organization and made it my own. It was like a completely different way to write.”
One valuable feature of Scrivener for Isabella is the ability to edit and retain deleted scenes and chapters. Letters from the Dead is just under 170,000 words, “And that was after a lot of cutting. The editing process was quite brutal. It was painful because I even cut some characters that I had come to really care for in the first book, and entire scenes. I think I cut one or two chapters at one point. What was nice about that, though, is that I don’t delete anything that I cut. I have a folder in Scrivener that I use, I call the folder the Hall of Orphaned Scenes and Characters. You never know how a scene might be able to be used in a later book.”
Kirk McElhearn is a writer, podcaster, and photographer. He is the author of Take Control of Scrivener, and host of the podcast Write Now with Scrivener.