Title: Never a Cloud
Author: Jo Brunini
Publisher: Idle Ridge Press
ISBN: 979-8-9861205-0-8
Pages: 423
Genre: Literary Fiction
Reviewed by: Alyssa Avina

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PBR: What inspired you to start writing?
My mother often read poetry in the morning to my sister and me before school, while we ate an egg on toast—books were an integral part of the home. She had read nearly everything of interest in her youth at the town library across the park from her home. There wasn’t any money to buy books. My storytelling father took the bedtime hour one step further by inventing stories. Some part magical, and another mysterious, with a dose of fear that inevitably landed happily, rocketing his two daughters into laughing fits.

PBR: How long have you been writing?
I began writing at the age of six; I had a book of limericks and decided to have a child-sized go at a few. During my teen years I kept a diary/ journal. I’ve envisioned a memoir since my early twenties, and am happy to say, it will be a second novel instead. I find fiction incredibly liberating.

PBR: What advice would you give a new writer, someone just starting out?
If you’re a writer, the work you are meant to produce is in you already. There are many ways to reach a goal, and the advantage of a degree, or seminars in writing may suit some, and others thrive best when they aren’t encumbered by prescribed rules, or conventions. Just dive in, and experiment, your voice will register, and when it does, the honesty will shine.

PBR: What comes first, the plot or characters?
Oh, that’s a tricky one. I write from experience, as a base point of departure, and then hold onto my hat. The unknown part of the journey is what delivers the greatest pleasure. It cannot be stopped.

PBR: How do you develop your plot and characters?
Again, they are each an organic structure, and alive from the get-go. I compile fact sheets, index cards, per character, and then slide the pieces into three-ring binders. In my second novel (a work in progress) I’ve modeled the protagonist’s father after my Italian step-grandfather. In Never a Cloud, I added Ava, Margot’s half-sister, well into the plot, without a clue that Ava’s mother, Violet Grey, would steal the show, center stage. Violet blew in on a storm cloud, and refused to be subdued!

PBR: When did you first consider yourself a writer?
That’s easy. When the architect and designer, Robert Couturier, and I became penpals in 2008, early on he wrote the following: “You are a poet who sees the world through the generous prism of your soul.” It was a huge ah-ha moment for me, because, though he barely knew me, he had seen what I valued most in myself, and no one else had, till that point, addressed. His insight propelled me into writing Never a Cloud.

For a period of time, I wrote book reviews on my blog www.giovannabrunini.com for Francis Lincoln (UK, USA), Assouline, The Antique Collector’s Club, and Garden Art Press. The blog is for the most part archived. The art of novel writing won precedence. Blogs these days are businesses unto themselves.

PBR: What is the most difficult part about writing for you?
If anything, it’s the acknowledgement that a cast of many is about to take-over my life for an undefined period of time. And that they’ll become my personal slave drivers; writing is thrilling, enthralling, and at times, exhausting!

PBR: Do you have a favourite character that you have written? If so, who? And what makes them so special.
Oh, so far, Violet Grey, of Never a Cloud. I like her honesty, independence, and carefree nature. She is my alter ego with an edge. She’s a female version of Leonardo da Vinci, who knows that if one tries to wed family and art, one side suffers. There are only so many hours in a life, and a life well lived is the utmost accomplishment.

“In rotation, every year, poor Vermeer had a new baby to feed. An artist needs three sailing ships, shoved along by the wind. The first carries moons and memories. The second transports the instruments required to avoid a shipwreck, without a star, without a sky. The third carries, in a net, a tangle of hopes and disasters. It is a matter of courage. Not timing or staging—all sheets to the wind. Faculties be damned when time is of the essence. This is why I avoided marriage.”

—Violet Grey, Never a Cloud (That said, Alma, from my current project, is etching her way into my hemisphere in broad colorful strokes, as well as her father Ulysses.)

PBR:  Where do you get your inspiration?
From the natural world, the rythym of a day, from art in every medium, from favorite authors, especially when I learn through their own written word, memoir, or an interview with contemporaries, how similar we all are.

PBR: Where can readers purchase your books?
The paperback, e-book, and hardcover will be available late 2022 on Amazon, and of course by asking their local bookstore to place a special order for Never a Cloud!