LEIGH ROSE

Leigh Rose is the American Fiction Author of the ©”Legends on the Rise Novel Series” for which she received the Massachusetts Cultural Council Award in Literature (2023).

Leigh’s genre is multi-dimensional; historic fiction, mystery, suspense et cetera, with distinctive characteristics, tropes, and conventions that define the story’s style, tone, and elements, reflecting themes of family, self-discovery, and legendary myths.

A prolific visual artist, genealogist, and scholar, Leigh’s talent and knowledge of cultures is highlighted in her novels. At an early age, she developed a talent for poetry and the visual arts and added feature-length writing through adulthood, winning many visual art and poetry awards as well as elected to university positions; Senator, Student Government (Art Department), President of the Student Art League, Publications Committee and Child Care Committee.

Leigh attended John Bowne High School, in Queens, New York, and her senior year at New York University. When Leigh was seventeen years old, she takes her ideas public by organizing human rights discussions, a peaceful Vietnam War protest, and environmental protection awareness by backpacking throughout Canada. She considers Canada her home away from home.

Continuing her exploration of cultures, Leigh had residencies in seven, U.S. states, and traveled to Mexico, Western and Eastern Europe, along with the Caribbean Islands.

LEIGH’S WRITING STUDIO

An independent (“indie”) author who self-publishes fiction, Leigh retains full control over the creative process, publishing rights, and marketing enterprise of her work. She is the creative director and designer of each book cover, formatting and editing high-quality books.

Leigh designs her narratives like a painting having been a professional visual artist for most of her life, Leigh uses the blank page as her canvas.

Leigh designs her own book covers, Papier collé. That is French for paper cuts. A collage technique in which paper is cut and adhered to a flat surface.

HIGHER EDUCATION

M.A. University of North Carolina. Creative Writing. 2010. (3.85 GPA, Magna Cum Laude)

B.P.M. (Bachelor of Public Management). Florida Atlantic University. Arts Administration, Business Management, and Public Policy. 2003.

B.F.A. (Fine Art) University of North Florida. Painting. 2001.

LEIGH’S WRITING PROJECTS

©Double Orphan is a fictionalized novel inspired by real events. Genre: Drama, Crime.

Double Orphan is a story about Angie Olivetti. Born and raised in North Beach, San Francisco, a small neighborhood with a long and divided history.

When Angie was eight years old, she witnessed the murder of her parent’s by cartel gang members while her family was vacationing in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico.

Angie’s adult life becomes complicated as she follows in her Pulitzer Prize winning father’s footsteps, even when the man who had raised her, Uncle Johnny, tries to dissuade her career choice.

After graduating from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, the San Francisco Headline (SFH) hires her. Three years later, Angie is promoted to senior editor and international investigative journalist within the newspaper’s U.S. & World Report division.

The novel opens in 2013. Angie receives a call from a desperate, Arturo Lopez, a former Mexican miner claiming the cartel are smuggling natural gas and crude oil over the U.S. border for a Texas refinery. A federal offence, Arturo is seeking asylum for his family of four for witness testimony.

Angie jumps on the whistleblowers claim and takes the story. With a team of SFH journalists, Ice Shadow Wolves, and Federales, the team goes undercover and investigates the mining sting at Burgos Basin, in northeastern Mexico, to rescue the Lopez family, hiding out from cartel death threats in the Sierra Madre Oriental Mountains.

Everything seems to go as planned until Uncle Johnny shows up and confronts the cartel that murdered his twin brother, Luke, and his wife, Sofia, Angie’s parent’s. During the incident, harrowing secrets about their death trigger Angie’s emotions and the need for her to move forward with her life, despite the truth…

©Murder at Sweet Life Inn is a fiction novel.

A comedic-noir set in 2015, with flashbacks.

Murder at Sweet Life Inn opens during the early summer of 2015, in Princeton, New Jersey, with the Tasso/Forni family.

Getting ready to celebrate the “100th Anniversary of the Wood Warbler Festival, a tribute that revers the tiny passerines: A love story between the Forni family and the tiny-feathered friend that began in 1915, in the quaint mountain village of Campobasso, Italy, when WWI engulfed the city.

It was then that the Forni family transformed their farmhouse into an agriturismo, a bed and breakfast, for wayward soldiers. They named the establishment, “Locanda Dolce Vita,” “Sweet Life Inn.” As WWI continues to ravish their city, the Forni family become master “trillers” by learning the language of wood warblers that protects villagers from the enemy.

However, weeks before the festival, the Forni’s receive disturbing news. Luna, their cousin and keeper of “Sweet Life Inn” is suspect of a murder at the inn. From Princeton, New Jersey, the family travels to Campobasso, Italy, to convince a stubborn Carabinieri (Italian police), their cousin is innocent; witnesses at the inn heard a tone-deaf songster at the scene of the crime. This could not have come from a Forni family member as they are skilled songsters (trillers).

While in Campobasso, the Carabinieri insist that, if this is true, then the entire village must take part in a “Trilling Contest” in order to weed out tone-deaf songsters. “This will prove you are correct and find the culprit who committed the murders. If not, Luna will have to remain a suspect…

©SPECIAL AGENT: Valentine Day is a spy thriller.

Special Agent: Valentine Day, is about Ned and Maggie Stiles, a couple that live and work in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Ned is an at-home-dad and brilliant software engineer while Maggie is a biochemist for the CIA. When the couple are invited to speak at “Moscow’s 2007 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence,” Maggie goes missing. Ned surmises his wife’s disappearance has everything to do with the classified project she is working on for the CIA; a classified project Ned knows nothing about and that placed a wedge between them over the years.

After a yearlong CIA investigation into Maggie’s disappearance, the agency tells Ned, “Maggie was kidnapped by Federal Security Service (FSB) operatives and now deceased.” Angry that he has to bury his wife, and the mother of their two boys, Darius and Lukas, without a body, Ned is not convinced the CIA is telling him the truth. Suspecting foul play, Ned patents, AI-QFP, the Artificial Intelligence & Quantum Forensics Program that he swears will find Maggie alive and bring her home.

When the CIA find out about Ned’s patent they offer him their top position, Director of Artificial Intelligence. He accepts to gain access into the CIA’s classical database on Maggie’s investigation, to input into AI-QFP.

Over the months that pass, his team discovers Ned is correct. Maggie is still alive. For five years in Moscow she’s been on assignment as a special agent to intercept “The Wolf,” Dmitry Volkov, a CIA foreign asset gone rogue. Volkov is planning to steal the CIA classified project Maggie was working on to sell to terrorists: A biohybrid robot made with polymers; a cutting edge invention no one else in the world holds a patent for: The synthetic collagen protein used replicates human muscle and bone and has programmable sensors that mimic human behavior in real-time. It’s like non other in the world. The humanoid can understand, interpret, and interact with human-like precision. In the wrong hands it will lead to massive fatalities…

LEIGH’S BACKGROUND

Leigh grew up in a multi-cultural/multi-lingual household. Her ancestry.com DNA testing is from 1700 forward with 96% South Central Italy; Southeast Avellino & Southwest Foggia Provinces, Basilicata & South Campania Region, 3% Cyprian, 1% Baltic States and North Africa.

Leigh’s love of traveling and learning about culture is reflected in her writing with early interest beginning with genealogy as a young child. Leigh’s parents and grandparents were avid storytellers and retold their stories over their lifetime with Leigh.

In 1901, Leigh’s paternal grandparents, Martino Messano and Carmela Maria (Ventimiglia) Messano, immigrated to the United States from the Provence of Salerno, Italy. In the United States, they owned and operated a Mom and Pop Italian grocery store on Staten Island, where they lived, in New York. Leigh’s father, Andrew James Messano, was born in N.Y.C. and he worked as an account executive for Van Doran Street Laundry, a commercial laundry service for restaurateurs located within the five boroughs of New York City. It was owned, and operated by his in-laws, the Nittoli family. He was a WWII Navy veteran and stationed on a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Hawaiian-Pacific.

Leigh’s maternal family, the Nittoli family, lived in New Jersey during the late nineteenth century. However, it was in 1913, when Leigh’s maternal grandfather, Antonio Amato Nittoli (baptized, Amato Maria Nittoli), immigrated to the United States during the Italian Diaspora. https://youtu.be/hwqzplK_gG0?si=mC_q_R1N4_nc8Mhw

In May 1915, and before establishing Van Doran Street Laundry, in Corona, Queens, Antonio lives and works in New Jersey as a supervisor for a Princeton, New Jersey, quarry, known for their famous, Princeton Brownstone. Still an Italian citizen, Antonio returns to Italy to serve in the Italian Army during WWI, under Italy’s conscription laws. Awarded the Italian Medal of Honor for his bravery at the Battle of the Isonzo (1915-1917), where he defended Italy against Austro-Hungarian Powers, alongside the Allied Powers of France, Britain, and Russia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_the_Isonzo

In 1930, Antonio becomes a U.S. citizen. One year later, in 1933, he fears for his family with the onset of WWII, so Antonio, brings the remainder of his family still living in Lioni, Italy, to the U.S. They include, Leigh’s mother, Antoinette, Leigh’s maternal grandmother, Victoria (DeConza) Nittoli, and the Nittoli’s remaining two sons, Daniel and Michael. Rocco and Angelo were already in the U.S. After gaining citizenship, Michael and Angelo serve in the U.S. Army during WWII. The second and third Nittoli cousins still living in Lioni, Italy, remain on the family’s large farm that produced goat’s milk for Lioni’s famous goat cheese industry. https://sistemairpinia.provincia.avellino.it/en/comuni/lioni

During WWI, Italy’s allegiance was to the Triple Entente and with the Treaty of London, the Allies promised Italy, lost Italian territories if Italy helped them win WWI. Italian citizens called the end to WWI, “A Mutilated Victory” because the Allies reneged on their promise. The reason why Italian citizens resisted joining the Allies during WWII. Italy becomes a republic on June 2, 1946, and celebrates their freedom on Festa Della Repubblica.  

In 1950, with a thriving business well under way, Antonio is knighted as Grand Official of the Order of Constantine of Antioch with (2) merits by Supreme Pontiff, Pope Pius XII, for his humanitarian deeds in Italy, and America after WWII.

With many philanthropic projects behind him, including President of Lioni’s Reconstruction Committee after WWII, Nittoli also builds a children’s orphanage, has his biography written and published in Lioni, A Benefactor: The Grande Ufficiale Antonio Nittoli.

At the age of sixteen, Leigh inherits her mother’s signed copy and translates the memoir from Italian to English, as a date for hire project by Susan Connors, of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In return, Leigh paints Susan’s portrait pictured below.

NITTOLI NOBLE COAT OF ARMS

Along with Leigh’s three older sisters, she is the armiger of the Nittoli Coat of Arms. In the field of heraldry, a coat of arms is designed and approved by a heraldic artist sanctioned by Italy. The Nittoli coat of arms includes symbols and colors designed to represent the history of the Nittoli family. Symbols on the Nittoli shield represent allegiance, nobility and honor: Yellow is gold for nobility, glory, high status, red for military strength and magnanimity, and blue for loyalty and truth.

The Nittoli shield depicts symbols with allegiance to King Charles of Anjou. Charles of Anjou was a member of the royal Capetian dynasty, and the founder of the House of Anjou-Sicily from 1266 to 1285. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_I_of_Anjou

Anjou’s label with four red bars is across the upper length of the Nittoli shield. Eagles represent allegiance to the Catholic Church, and fleur-de-lis loyalty to France.

The original Nittoli coat of arms is archived in Florence, Italy, and the second with Leigh Rose. Leigh’s armiger, pictured below, was passed down to the author by her mother, Antoinette Nittoli-Messano.

Leigh’s Armiger

Leigh is also related to the famous sculptor, Pietro (Peter) Nittoli, and a second, Antonio Nittoli, the 19th century nobleman and former President of the Italian Royal Institute of Medicine.

Pietro Nittoli, is a famous Baroque polychrome wood sculptor that worked during the mid-18th century. His sculptures are still admired today housed in many Southern Italy churches, especially in Campania, Italy, and cited by many scholars. One article is titled “Masterpieces of Middle Earth. Works of art from the Middle Ages to the Baroque.” An image of Saint Michael fighting Satan is pictured below:

Archangel Saint Michael Fighting Satan