It’s not as if she just started writing, Diane Rivoli has been writing her stories since she was eight, putting pencil to paper in her attic bedroom. She started with short stories about the things she knew about as an eight year old… horses and dogs and lollipops. Over the years as she matured, her stories were expressed through poetry, which became her preferred form of writing. In 2001 Diane’s letter “To The Future” was chosen to be sealed in Rochester, New York’s Time Capsule, to be opened in the year 2134. She also has her short story, Zucchini Soup, as part of “Story Walk” an interactive artistic sidewalk installed on the grounds of The Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester.
Diane’s first Novel “License” is a collection of 60 short stories, each with the word “License” in the title, such as… License To Be Broken, Official License and License In A Whisper. There are twenty-one poems scattered throughout the 60 chapters adding to the depth and dimension of the novel. Some of the poems were written specifically for the book, some were previously written.
License is a series of stories that are inner-connected by characters and moments in time. “The book is really short stories, stories about life and relatives and emotions, all told from different points of view,” Diane says. The main character is 20 year old Dixie Andrews who is, “high on life, flying down the road towards change, adventure and independence.” There are seven major characters in the book, all with lives connected in some way to Dixie’s life.
Diane says the stories are sourced from an idea she had on a snowy drive south in February of 2013. To pass the time while moving at a snails pace in the car, she started making up songs about the words she saw on license plates. She decided that the songs really should be stories. She came up with a list of 106 words which she divided into categories and the stories were born. “I followed those words wherever they led me,” Diane says.
Diane also has a great love of cooking and preparing gourmet meals. “Food plays an important part in the book as in life. I had a reader tell me that every time she reads the book her stomach starts to growl,” Diane says. Other comments from readers about the delicious sounding food in the book has Diane thinking about a cookbook for her next project.
It took Diane 18 months to write License, she says, “I had the greatest time writing it.”
For more information about “License,” to read Diane’s time capsule letter “To The Future,” and for some favorite recipes visit www.dianerivoli.com.
