‘The Best Medicine’ Author Interview with Caterina Franciosi, “Il Salotto Letterario”, Italy

I had the honour of being interviewed by Caterina Franciosi, “Il Salotto Letterario”, Italy, about my story The Best Medicine. Before we jump to the interview, here’s some background information:

The Story

The Best Medicine is a horror short story about a wife caring for her acquired brain-injured husband on a remote property in the Australian bush. Written from the wife’s perspective, it explores her grief and anger at their situation and what she does to survive a relationship that is spiraling out of control.

The Best Medicine was the short story category winner in the 2020 AHWA Short Story and Flash Fiction contest and was published in Midnight Echo #16 in 2021.

AHWA partners with RiLL, Italy, and shares winning stories, and The Best Medicine was chosen for translation in the Mondi Incantati series, The Bar Immediately After, also published in 2021.

The Best Medicine has also been selected for the 2022 Bram Stoker Awards Preliminary Ballot for Superior Work in Short Fiction.

The Interviewer

Caterina Franciosi was born in 1990 in a small town on the Adriatic sea coast in Italy. She attended Classical High School and then the faculty of Foreign Languages and Cultures at the University of Urbino. In 2018 she opened her l it-blog “Il Salotto Letterario”, dedicated to interviews and book reviews. She collaborates with several publishing houses, websites, Facebook groups, and magazines, including the cultural association Italian Sword & Sorcery in the short story section and the magazine Life Factory Magazine in the review and interview section. She published short stories in various anthologies. For the digital publishing house Delos Digital she published: “The rain remembers – La pioggia ricorda” (2020), “Terra nova” (2020), “The empty coat – Il cappotto vuoto” (2021), “Shadow of a prince – L’ombra di un principe” (2021), “Project Mathilda – Progetto Mathilda”(2021),“Crooked pumpkin, empty pumpkin– Zucca storta, zucca vuota”(2021), “The boarding school– Il collegio”(2021). For the publishing house Milena Edizioni she wrote “Ballo in Maschera – The Masquerade Ball” (2021). For Plesio Editore, she participated in the fantasy Japanese anthology “Ramen Fantasy” (2021).

Her thoughts about The Best Medicine:

What I liked best about “The Best Medicine” has been its visual and emotional power: claustrophobic atmospheres, unique protagonists, a neverending sense of mystery and a series of unexpected events make this short story unforgettable. It made me shiver from the beginning to the end for the complexity of its themes and for the sense of sacrifice and guilt which permeate every word.

The Interview:

It was a pleasure chatting with Caterina about the story behind The Best Medicine, and a little about me. The full interview can be found here, easily translated into English using google translate: