I have been asked many times where I come from. I have answered with songs, because a song is brief and a life is not.
I have now written the life.
Centuries: The Mortal Years is the first volume of my account. It begins in Umbria in 1458 and follows me through Perugia, where a humanist taught me to test an idea instead of simply receiving it. It follows me to Florence, at the edge of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s court, among Leonardo, Botticelli and Ficino. And it follows me east, toward Constantinople, Delhi and the Himalayas, after Lorenzo died and there was nothing left in the city to keep me.
You know what I became. This is who I was before.
I kept no notebooks until I began the journey east. Before that I kept everything in my head, and a head is an unreliable archive. Where my dates drift by a year or two, forgive it. The rest I set down as I remember it.
There are 54 short chapters, in three parts. Craig Conley, author of Magic Words: A Dictionary, read it and said it was “a gripping tale breezily told, as if Umberto Eco wrote in succinct chapters.” I did not ask him to be kind. I asked him to be honest.
Pre-orders open October 23.
Paperback, $16.99. Cream paper, 6x9, 222 pages.
Signed limited edition hardcover, $40, US shipping included. Linen-wrapped, with a dust jacket. Twenty-five numbered copies exist. Two are spoken for, which leaves twenty-three. Each is hand-numbered and signed by the author. International shipping is added at checkout. This is the First Limited Edition. When these are gone, it may not be available again.
Ebook, $4.99.
Every physical pre-order includes the ebook free, delivered about a week after you order, so you may begin reading before the book reaches you. Pre-orders are final once the ebook has been delivered.
Pre-orders start Oct 23 at Morella Records.
Farther than you think. Closer than you’d guess.
GIO
