The sun is pounding down, and I’m having a fantasy expatriate morning, starting with a stroll through the beautiful medieval “old town.” The sun is blindingly bright on the pale gold-tinged “tufo” stone that the town is build out of. Brightly painted fishing boats bob in a sea that fades from aqua to deep blue to a narrow streak of indigo on the horizon. The shutters are brilliant green, the geraniums explosions of red in the window-boxes and terraces. Wet sheets dangling from every balcony sway in the breeze and create hot clouds of sweet smelling humidity over our heads. Maybe later we’ll go swimming, but right now the most urgent thing on my mind is coffee.

We head straight to our favorite coffee bar. As luck would have it, we encounter Ciccio, our travel agent, or sometime travel agent, I should say. Sometimes he gets bored and runs away with a touring show of “Evita!” or “Jesus Christ Superstar” or “Saturday Night Fever” for a few months. Then he returns and re-opens his agency, regaling us with tales of his affairs with beautiful dancing girls and a sheaf of photographs of himself on stage as Herod or a Bee Gee, or some such.

Ciccio has taken it upon himself to be my image consultant, as it is patently clear to any who look at me that I am in desperate need of one. When he heard that I was on the verge of a website, the solitaire on his pinky glittered and winked with his gesticulations. “Molto bene, that you registered the domain. But the site? That you must do like I—“ and he smote his broad chest with a large fist “—like I say. You have to create a Personage. Do you understand what I mean by a Personage?”

I know a trick question when I hear one, but I was momentarily dazzled by his pink-tinted Prada sunglasses and the white gold serpentine chain around his neck. “Uh, no,” I faltered.

“Of course you don’t,” Ciccio said indulgently. “What do your readers know about you?”

“Practically nothing,” I admitted. “How could they know anything? I’m too new.”

Ciccio grinned his relief. “Excellent, excellent. So you could tell them anything. Anything at all. What an opportunity, no? You could be a countess in a castle by the sea. You could be an international spy.” His eyes swept over my usual summer uniform; freckles, a crumpled linen skirt, a tank top, sand-encrusted flip-flops, hair wound back into a scrunchy. He shook his head sadly. “You don’t want them to know the real you. You write erotic thrillers, no? You have to be thrilling. Inscrutable. You have to have . . . mystique!”

I was rescued from the necessity of a reply by Salvatore, the barista, who presented me with a wedge of pastiera. It’s a delicious pie made of eggs, ricotta, wheat-berries, candied fruit and orange-flower water. “Your espressino is getting cold,” he reproved me. “I sugared it for you.”

I’m always touched when Salvatore sugars my espressino. It’s a mark of familiarity, a gesture that imparts to me, the valued customer, that I’m here so often that he knows exactly how I take my coffee. I’ve never had the heart to tell him that he puts in twice as much sugar as I like. It would spoil the tender moment. Besides, the coffee’s so wonderful, it would be ignoble to complain. One learns not to quibble about such details when one lives abroad.

In a matter of moments, I’m flying high on a caffeine and sugar buzz, and I begin to actually consider Ciccio’s suggestion. I contemplate putting a fake photo in my website. Some vampy girl, legs up to her chin, dressed in black leather and spike heels. Sloe eyes, bee-stung lips, belly button proudly displayed. It sounds like the beginning of a romantic comedy, and in an instant, I’m writing the synopsis in my head. The hero is played by Hugh Grant—no, wait. Hugh Jackman, now we’re talking. He’ll pursue the image in the fake website photo for some reason, and the real writer behind the website, played by a frumped up Sandra Bullock in horn-rimmed glasses, will embark upon an escalating series of misadventures to cover her tracks, which will culminate in them both learning the Importance of Being True To Yourself, yada yada, while finding true love and all that good stuff along the way. Yeah.

Yikes. Maybe I’ll write that story someday, but I don’t want to live it! Pretending to be something you’re not is stressful. Besides, my sweetie already knows the truth about me, and he appears to be handling it.

So if you’re interested, here’s where you’ll find odd bits and pieces of the Shocking Truth about living in Italy from time to time, when book deadlines permit. No countess in a castle by the sea, or international spy. No black leather, spike heels or belly buttons. Just me, and my adventures in a foreign land, where truth is always stranger than fiction . . . and the coffee is simply awesome.

But for now, I’d better get to work on the next book, so that this website will have a right to exist.

Til later, then, with much love,

Shannon McKenna

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