Castello Santa Maria.
Castello Santa Maria
To all those who have been kind enough to read my novels and short stories over the years, I'd like to introduce you to my new novel. With several of my recent publications, readers here will recognise many of the stories either because they were originally series or extracts in this blog. Castello Santa Maria, however, is a brand new work; never previously serialised on my blog or otherwise exposed to public view. It forms the first part of a new series of novels and, while you will not have seen it before, you will certainly recognise my own style within it.
Castello Santa Maria is set in the southern, Italian speaking canton of Ticino in Switzerland. The title is the name of a castle, named after Saint Mary Magdalene, which lies in a beautiful valley in the southern mountains. It is this castle, and the remarkable community of young women who inhabit it, around which this story revolves.
It follows the early introduction of a newcomer to the castle. Christine Berner is a young woman of twenty years old, from Zurich, whose life has fallen into chaos following the death of her mother a year before. The matron of Castello Santa Maria, the formidable Signora LaFranchi, was a dear friend of Christine's mother and she offers Christine a place at the castle. Christine drives down to the castle under the impression that she is arriving for a job interview. Instead she finds that she is being press-ganged into service at the castle and that Signora LaFranchi controls her inheritance and thus in a position to command her obedience.
Christine is horrified. The castle, she discovers, is home to over seventy young women from all over the world who live in a closely knit and cloistered community, subjected to a strictly regimented life and Draconian discipline. Increasing her horror is that fact that the young women at the castle seem in no way to consider themselves hard done by or their restricted lives at all onerous. They are all attractive, intelligent and apparently happy, despite the lives of hard work and discipline they endure. They call themselves “Santa Maria girls” and consider themselves to belong to an elite sorority.
As if Christine's discomfort was not enough, she also quickly notes that the favourite leisure time activity of the Santa Maria girls is themselves. With few men ever allowed within the castle, the girls easily turn their affections toward one another and the resultant labyrinth of inter-relationships and promiscuity would shock a sailor.
It is this bizarre community into which Christine is expected to assimilate and she rebels at the very notion. As a newcomer, she is subject to sexual advances from the other girls and the fragile assumptions of her own sexuality are under continual assault. She resists the regime of the castle too. Every aspect of her life is regimented; her work, her bedtimes, her mealtimes, even her leisure hours. She is shocked to learn that even how she dresses is subject to strict rules. She cannot even walk out of the castle gates inappropriately dressed. There are parades, obligatory communal gatherings and perpetual inspections. There are even inspections of her underwear and failure to pass inspection or to otherwise transgress the castle rules could mean being disciplined with the cane.
Christine refuses to allow herself to be drawn into this strange life and deliberately isolates herself from the other girls, resisting their overtures of companionship. She finds herself apparently friendless, lonely and frightfully unhappy. But her Santa Maria sisters are chipping away slowly at her resistance and, as she learns more about the community and why she is in it, she begins more and more to understand it and to become more sympathetic toward it. Then comes the fateful day when she is disciplined by Signora LaFranchi and, almost without realising it, metamorphoses into a Santa Maria girl. Just how that happens.... well you'll have to read the damn book!
Castello Santa Maria is, of course an entirely fictitious establishment. It does however have some basis of reality in my own experience. At one time, while working a summer season in the southern Swiss town of Ascona on the banks of Lake Maggiore, I lived in an old converted medieval castle called Castello San Materno on the outskirts of Ascona. I loosely based Castello Santa Maria on this venerable old pile. There were a number of parallels between the real castle and its fictitious off-shoot. Both were heavily modified and converted ancient castles; both had beautiful gardens attached to them and both had an ecclesiastical history. Castello San Materno was the summer residence of important cardinals in the 15th and 16th centuries. When I lived there I actually occupied a small converted chapel in the gardens!
Castello San Materno... the castle upon which Castello Santa Maria is loosely based.
Essentially I took Castello San Materno, re-named it, made it somewhat bigger and shifted it en masse to a new location in an imaginary high valley somewhat further away from Ascona. Of course, when I lived at Castello San Materno, I was not amidst a community of seventy odd beautiful and over-sexed young women.... worse luck! The Castello San Materno community was largely composed of artists, musicians, cabaret artists and others in the performing arts. But it was the vibrant and unusual community set in the beautiful old castle that was the inspiration for Castello Santa Maria.
The events described in the novel are not without a basis in real life as well. For instance, the incident where my heroine comes home from the village in the dark, after a few too many drinks, and falls in the fish pond is based entirely on the time when I came home to Castello San Materno, disgracefully intoxicated in the wee small hours, and contrived to fall in the pond in the gardens. The main difference was that the pond at Castello San Materno only had a few sad goldfish in it, as opposed to ornamental carp, and the lady who ran Castello San Materno didn't call me into her office the next day to receive the cane (more worse luck!).
So this then is my new novel. Those of you who have read my previous work and enjoyed it will, I think like this new offering. It is recognisably a Michaela Francis story with all the usual elements that my readers have come to expect in my novels. I think you'll find Castello Santa Maria a beguilingly entrancing fantasy world to spend a few hours in and, should you fail your dress inspection, I hope you'll join me on the punishment roster outside our Mistress's office!
Michaela xxxxx
“Castello Santa Maria” can be ordered from this site location;
http://www.a1adultebooks.com/ebooks/b11038-castello-santa-maria.htm
To all those who have been kind enough to read my novels and short stories over the years, I'd like to introduce you to my new novel. With several of my recent publications, readers here will recognise many of the stories either because they were originally series or extracts in this blog. Castello Santa Maria, however, is a brand new work; never previously serialised on my blog or otherwise exposed to public view. It forms the first part of a new series of novels and, while you will not have seen it before, you will certainly recognise my own style within it.
Castello Santa Maria is set in the southern, Italian speaking canton of Ticino in Switzerland. The title is the name of a castle, named after Saint Mary Magdalene, which lies in a beautiful valley in the southern mountains. It is this castle, and the remarkable community of young women who inhabit it, around which this story revolves.
It follows the early introduction of a newcomer to the castle. Christine Berner is a young woman of twenty years old, from Zurich, whose life has fallen into chaos following the death of her mother a year before. The matron of Castello Santa Maria, the formidable Signora LaFranchi, was a dear friend of Christine's mother and she offers Christine a place at the castle. Christine drives down to the castle under the impression that she is arriving for a job interview. Instead she finds that she is being press-ganged into service at the castle and that Signora LaFranchi controls her inheritance and thus in a position to command her obedience.
Christine is horrified. The castle, she discovers, is home to over seventy young women from all over the world who live in a closely knit and cloistered community, subjected to a strictly regimented life and Draconian discipline. Increasing her horror is that fact that the young women at the castle seem in no way to consider themselves hard done by or their restricted lives at all onerous. They are all attractive, intelligent and apparently happy, despite the lives of hard work and discipline they endure. They call themselves “Santa Maria girls” and consider themselves to belong to an elite sorority.
As if Christine's discomfort was not enough, she also quickly notes that the favourite leisure time activity of the Santa Maria girls is themselves. With few men ever allowed within the castle, the girls easily turn their affections toward one another and the resultant labyrinth of inter-relationships and promiscuity would shock a sailor.
It is this bizarre community into which Christine is expected to assimilate and she rebels at the very notion. As a newcomer, she is subject to sexual advances from the other girls and the fragile assumptions of her own sexuality are under continual assault. She resists the regime of the castle too. Every aspect of her life is regimented; her work, her bedtimes, her mealtimes, even her leisure hours. She is shocked to learn that even how she dresses is subject to strict rules. She cannot even walk out of the castle gates inappropriately dressed. There are parades, obligatory communal gatherings and perpetual inspections. There are even inspections of her underwear and failure to pass inspection or to otherwise transgress the castle rules could mean being disciplined with the cane.
Christine refuses to allow herself to be drawn into this strange life and deliberately isolates herself from the other girls, resisting their overtures of companionship. She finds herself apparently friendless, lonely and frightfully unhappy. But her Santa Maria sisters are chipping away slowly at her resistance and, as she learns more about the community and why she is in it, she begins more and more to understand it and to become more sympathetic toward it. Then comes the fateful day when she is disciplined by Signora LaFranchi and, almost without realising it, metamorphoses into a Santa Maria girl. Just how that happens.... well you'll have to read the damn book!
Castello Santa Maria is, of course an entirely fictitious establishment. It does however have some basis of reality in my own experience. At one time, while working a summer season in the southern Swiss town of Ascona on the banks of Lake Maggiore, I lived in an old converted medieval castle called Castello San Materno on the outskirts of Ascona. I loosely based Castello Santa Maria on this venerable old pile. There were a number of parallels between the real castle and its fictitious off-shoot. Both were heavily modified and converted ancient castles; both had beautiful gardens attached to them and both had an ecclesiastical history. Castello San Materno was the summer residence of important cardinals in the 15th and 16th centuries. When I lived there I actually occupied a small converted chapel in the gardens!
Castello San Materno... the castle upon which Castello Santa Maria is loosely based.
Essentially I took Castello San Materno, re-named it, made it somewhat bigger and shifted it en masse to a new location in an imaginary high valley somewhat further away from Ascona. Of course, when I lived at Castello San Materno, I was not amidst a community of seventy odd beautiful and over-sexed young women.... worse luck! The Castello San Materno community was largely composed of artists, musicians, cabaret artists and others in the performing arts. But it was the vibrant and unusual community set in the beautiful old castle that was the inspiration for Castello Santa Maria.
The events described in the novel are not without a basis in real life as well. For instance, the incident where my heroine comes home from the village in the dark, after a few too many drinks, and falls in the fish pond is based entirely on the time when I came home to Castello San Materno, disgracefully intoxicated in the wee small hours, and contrived to fall in the pond in the gardens. The main difference was that the pond at Castello San Materno only had a few sad goldfish in it, as opposed to ornamental carp, and the lady who ran Castello San Materno didn't call me into her office the next day to receive the cane (more worse luck!).
So this then is my new novel. Those of you who have read my previous work and enjoyed it will, I think like this new offering. It is recognisably a Michaela Francis story with all the usual elements that my readers have come to expect in my novels. I think you'll find Castello Santa Maria a beguilingly entrancing fantasy world to spend a few hours in and, should you fail your dress inspection, I hope you'll join me on the punishment roster outside our Mistress's office!
Michaela xxxxx
“Castello Santa Maria” can be ordered from this site location;
http://www.a1adultebooks.com/ebooks/b11038-castello-santa-maria.htm
8 years ago
Michaela xxxxx
Rick xxx