Christopher Peter Grey's Blog: Hello and Welcome!

Why did I choose Bologna as the setting for my book, Hand of Silver, Hand of Gold? After all, there are other Italian cities – Rome, Venice, Florence, Milan – with more familiar landmarks (Milan was actually the setting for my last book, Leonardo’s Shadow). Well, a long way back, when I was still young and hopeful, I lived in Bologna for almost a year and fell in love with the place. It is, for me, one of the most romantic and charming European cities, home to the oldest university in Europe, and with sections of the original city walls (there were three in all, the first built over a thousand years ago) still visible today, as well as vestiges of the original twelve medieval city gates (incredible to see some parts of them still standing today in almost perfect condition.) The city centre still retains a strong feeling of the Renaissance: many of the streets are dark and narrow, and the famous arcades – the porticoes – still provide cover for pedestrians and house small shops and restaurants, just as they have done for hundreds of years. There are numerous bars and basement taverns (I visited more than a few of them), warm and candlelit, where with a glass of the local red wine in your hand you can well imagine what life was like in the 15th century. A charismatic city, suffused with secrets and shadows.

At the time in which I set my story, 1493, Bologna was ruled by Giovanni Bentivoglio, a scion of the family that had ruled Bologna for almost a century. The Bentivoglios brought peace to a city mired in civil unrest, but they ruled it ruthlessly; perhaps that was the only way to rule in those days, where the rule of law was arbitrary, to say the least. While the Bentivoglios might well deserve the title of “tyrants,” they also made the city rich through trade and encouraged the arts. In my story, Bologna is under threat, both from outside, by Pope Alexander VI, who wanted to add Bologna to the papal territories, and from inside, by the return of civil unrest and the resurrection of a Black Magician. Plenty of threats, ensuring plenty of action throughout…

One last reason I chose Bologna: I dedicated the book to a friend, Johnny Cooper, who lived in Bologna for a decade and who hosted me when I lived in the city. Johnny looked like an Italian, behaved like an Italian, and spoke the language perfectly, but he was, in his heart - like me - as English as fish and chips. My friend died in 2009. If there is any one true reason why a book is written, then this one was written to to commemorate Johnny: a wonderful person, a beloved friend, a hero.

When someone belongs so much to the whole world as Leonardo does, we can easily forget that beneath his extraordinary accomplishments as an artist, inventor, musician, writer, anatomist, and engineer, he was a man. But what did it mean to be Leonardo? What kind of man was he?

When I started reading Leonardo’s Notebooks, I became fascinated by the glimpses of the man inside that are afforded by his notes; many of these notes are little more than asides to himself, reminders, passing thoughts – and they are very revealing of the true Leonardo, the one whose perfection of thought has given many of us the idea that he must have been a “perfect” human being. On the contrary, quite a few of Leonardo’s notes show him to have many of the failings the rest of us have – impatience, frustration, anger, anxiety. He questions himself; he berates himself; he pities himself. How very human he was, beneath the armour of his capacious, unmatchable mind.

I tried to write about this Leonardo – the Leonardo I could see in the Notebooks – in my previous book, Leonardo’s Shadow, and it upset some people, who prefer to believe that a genius of his stature must only have pure and positive thoughts, and that anything less diminishes his name. Well, I disagree wholeheartedly; for me, Leonardo’s mental turmoil enlarges him, makes him human, relatable. The great artist was a startling contradiction: a man of supreme self-confidence in his work, but someone who in private (it seems to me) suffered from what we now like to call “low self-esteem.” This, I find, is what makes him so fascinating, along with his relentless drive to create, create, create.

Leonardo has a guest appearance in my new book, Hand of Silver, Hand of Gold. He only appears fleetingly, but his contribution is paramount. An invention of his becomes an integral part of the story, an invention that surely only Leonardo could have been responsible for – a unique and futuristic object. This object is a weapon, but I will tell you no more than that, in the hope that you will read my story. Did Leonardo actually design the weapon that I propose in Hand of Silver, Hand of Gold? Well, no one knows – but it does not take a great leap of imagination to believe that such a weapon might have come from the man who designed and drew plans for such ideas as a weaponised chariot, a triple-pronged lance, a giant crossbow, a parachute, and, of course, the famous flying machine.

The manufacture of armour reached its peak during the Renaissance, and Northern Italy was at the forefront; from its workshops, master armourers produced battle-ready, magnificently constructed suits of interlocking plate armour that were not only impervious to most weapons (including early musketry, although that was soon to change as firearms became more sophisticated), but works of art undiminished by the passage of time: the suits that can still be seen in museums are as striking and elegant now as they must have been on the battlefield or parade. The very high level of skill employed in the making of the finest armour, which might feature exquisite engravings and inlays of gold, required craftsmen who were also artists; and even simpler armour, created as it was from steel plates that were forged in the furnace and then cut, shaped, trimmed, and polished to exactly fit every part of the body from the top of the head to the tip of the toe, is still awe-inspiring. Go to any museum with a good collection of armour and just stand amongst the exhibits for a while; you will not fail to feel the eerie power that the armoured suits still emit, as if their plates still vibrated with the distant echoes of battle and combat.
In my book, Hand of Silver, Hand of Gold, the hero, Orlando Novi, is the son of an armourer. And there is a certain weapon, a potent piece of armour, capable of great damage, that plays a very important part in the story.
I hope you will buy the book and discover more. Hurrah for the Renaissance!

There was much interest in magic during the Italian Renaissance. Ironically, it was the devotion to God that inspired it, and the practitioners we have knowledge of who lived in that era did not consider their interest in magic to be blasphemous or heretical, because there was a distinction, as they saw it, between “natural” or “spiritual” magic and “demonic” or black” magic. The distinction rested more on words than actions; for example, you could without reproach attempt to summon an angel - but not a demon. The fact that the summoning, per se, required the kind of conjuring that is nowhere permitted in Christian theology, tended to be ignored. If a demon appeared instead of an angel, it was because the demon fooled the conjurer, not because the conjurer was necessarily “evil”; that, at least, was the theory.

Magic and Christianity are, of course, inextricably linked. In the Bible, there are stories of all manner of miracle - transformations, healings, resurrections, visions, and illusions - and many other wonderful instances of the triumph of belief over rational thought. For Renaissance magicians, these stories, along with the apocryphal story that King Solomon, that most holy of wise men, was guided by seven demons in the building of his temple (The Testament of Solomon), were excuse enough to pursue power through thaumaturgy.

And then there were the truly evil necromancers! In my book, Hand of Silver, Hand of Gold, there is just such an unregenerate, fathomlessly corrupt individual (I won’t give you his name - even to write it down is a bad omen). If you read the book, you will learn why someone refers to him as bringing the Devil to Bologna. He has quite a story to tell, even if he has been dead for a century when the book begins. Long dead, yes, but not quite done...as you will discover.

Giovanni Bentivoglio, whom I refer to in my book as Lord Giovanni, was the ruler of Bologna during ther period in which Hand of Silver, Hand of Gold, is set. He was the son of Annibale, Chief Magistrate of Bologna and de facto ruler, who was murdered when Giovanni was only an infant. It appears that the Bentivoglio family was well liked in Bologna, because a distant family member, Sante, was given control of the city, and when Giovanni was only twenty, Sante died, and Giovanni took the reins, with the blessing of the pope (at that time, Paul II). Giovanni secured the support of other powerful families in Italy by fighting as a condottiero (leader of a mercenary army) for Milan, Naples, and Florence, as well as suppressing uprisings closer to home. He ruled Bologna for four decades, greatly enriching the city through trade, commissioning numerous works of art, and expanding the city's canals. The poor, however, did not benefit much from his rule. Nonetheless, he was, if not loved, then respected by his people. In my story, Pope Alexander VI attempts to seize control of the city from Lord Giovanni - I'll leave you to read the book and discover what happens!

In my book, Hand of Silver, Hand of Gold, there is a statue set in the wall opposite the tavern, the Golden Fleece. It is the Madonna and Child by Niccolo dell'Arca, made in 1478. A stunning piece of Renaissance sculpture. You can still feel the power emanating from it, 450 years later (find it online, if you will). I had this idea that drunks would stumble out of the Golden Fleece and fall asleep beneath the statue, trusting to the impeccable Madonna to watch over them as they slept. It was probably safer to sleep beneath this holy lady than it was to try and make it home after too much drink; in those days, the unlit streets were an invitation to cutthroats and robbers...

Folks, it's all over (until the next one). I hope some of you got a free copy of my book, Hand of Silver, Hand of Gold. But, if you didn't, and you are interested in reading what one Amazon customer says is a "powerful fantasy thriller that readers will not soon forget" (and others are calling "vivid," "captivating," "amazing," "exciting," "suspenseful," etc.) then please go straight to

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Thanks for your interest.

"Only the creative artist is truly happy." I read that in a novel some years ago and it seemed to confirm to me that I had chosen the right path: writing. I don't know anymore. Writing has given me happiness because it allows me to express something of myself, and I've had some small success. But writing has also made me feel insecure, because I just don't know how good I am and whether I can make a "career" (i.e., make enough money to live on) out of my work. If I was one of those lucky writers who had family money or an income from somewhere, I am sure that I would feel better about my writing - not so nervous about the future. It's a crossroads every artist must come to one day, and a question every artist must ask him- or herself: Do I have what it takes to make it? I'm beginning to wonder if I do.

I left school at seventeen and did not go to university for various personal reasons. That was my first mistake. I knew I had promise as a writer, but for the next twenty years I wrote nothing creative except sales pitches and brochure copy. I damned myself to the hell of wasted talent. If you're a reader (and I know you are, you are on Goodreads), and if you want to be a writer, do not let your talent atrophy. Do not fail yourself. We only have so much time to prepare the foundations. In my thirties I went back to school; I resumed my writing; I have written four books. But I often think to myself: if only I could have back those missing twenty years of creative wasteland, what kind of writer would I be - could I be - now?
Keep writing, my friends.

The great French writer Flaubert said, I believe, that if he did not write for ten hours a day he felt ill. I confess that I consider myself in the pink if I manage three. And then there are the days when I omit writing altogether. Call them the Black Days. But writing is so much more than just tapping at the keyboard or getting ink all over your forefinger. Writing is thinking, processing, ruminating, remembering, assimilating, and breathing. It is Life.