An the winner is....

Some days ago I went to an entrepreneur’s event in Miami where I met very interesting and alike minded people. It was like a breeze of fresh air to find innovative and smart people from different backgrounds. After the event we gathered at El Mercadito, a cool Mexican restaurant (for a change!). I was talking to Patrick Barbanes, founder of Real Simple Social Media about Your Future Ex-Wife. Of course, being Patrick a social media guy, he suggested that I co-create parts of my book with my fellow colleagues of the groups I belong to on LinkedIn and Facebook.

 Interesting idea… I decided to give it a try.

The day after talking to Patrick I’m invited to join Generation21, which is a very interesting LinkedIn group of inquisitive, restless minds started by Piero Ponti Sgargi. This group gathers a lot of Italians… and it happens that the male character of my book is an Italian guy, sort of that “dream guy” every woman would want to –at least – have dinner with.  I was looking for the character’s name and had been bouncing back and forth from Stefano to Maurizio, Enrico, Lorenzo… I liked all of them but for some reason I couldn’t still make up my mind. So I decided to ask the group for suggestions on how to name this male character, just by giving this brief introduction:

“I felt again that mix of fear and joy in my stomach; It was like standing just before a graceful, powerful lion: you could sense his balanced power, physical strength and grace. I was sure this guy would never waste his time or energy on anything he would not want to kill. Magic was in the air and something special was about to happen. I knew it right away."

The group came up with great suggestions: Marco, Luca, Falco, Patrizio, Vasco, Maurizio, Enzo, Carlo, Enrico… I like all of them, maybe because I always said Italy in my mind is like an erotic dream…so even names I wouldn’t like in English or Spanish, I would love in Italian.

 After a weekend debate between my left and right brain, I decided the winner is …

 Piero

And I chose it because of Piero Ponti Sgargi. I’ll name this smart, good looking, successful, passionate, persuasive Italian character after Piero as a thank you for starting this interesting group on Linkedin, in which people are not advertising themselves but having intense, interesting and intelligent conversations. So, thank you Piero… I always say that writing a book is like baring a child and the selection of the character’s name was like selecting a baby’s name.

When you ask for something you want, you always get more of that which you have expected. Sandra Garcia, another fellow colleague – and writer -of this group sent me an email with the description of a female character, which I adopted as part of the description of Your Future Ex Wife…

"The passion and feeling... and the sensuality of an intelligent woman who knows herself completely, to the point where she is becoming aware that her strength is her weakness..."

So thank you Sandra, Piero and all my colleagues and friends from Generation21. Thank you Patrick for the suggestion and to the rest of you, thank you for inspiring my writing every day, for giving me those small, simple and powerful phrases that I incorporate in my pages.

I know it’s been a while since my last post in this blog, but let me tell you what happened: I still have to do a lot of mediocre things to pay my mediocre bills and that ever since the end of July I have been dedicating almost all of my free time to writing the book for which I finally came up with an innovative, intense, intelligent and interesting story between Piero and his Future Ex-Wife…

Enjoy the reading and if you like it, don’t forget to share it!

 

Mariana

Posted via email from Mariana Ferrari