A Life Lost #author Holley Martlew

A passionate love affair. 

A glittering secret buried for centuries. 

A question that could destroy everything.

When an English writer meets the fifth-generation owner of a glass foundry in Murano and they fall in love, their worlds explode.

Business and pleasure take them to Athens, the Greek islands and Istanbul. The shocking sequence of events that follows includes two murders in a Venetian Palazzo on the Grand Canal, the unmasking of an international smuggling gang in the bowels of a ruined Byzantine Monastery in Istanbul and the discovery of a cache of glittering medieval mosaics that have been hidden away for over a thousand years.

Finally, their story takes a surprising and horrific twist. It raises a question and when it is answered, a life is shattered, raising a moral dilemma:

Was a murder committed on the slopes beneath the Parthenon?

A Life Lost is a passionate love story, action-packed, full of intrigue. A detective story and a thriller. Rich, deep, and all-absorbing, it is a fascinating mix of pure history and historical fantasy. It is fun. It is scary. It is sexy. It is thought- provoking. 


To connect with Holley ....
https://www.amazon.com.au/Life-Lost-Holley-Martlew/dp/1068191309

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

It's good morning, Dr. Holly Mattlew. Welcome to Yellow Shelf.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Holly, thank you for coming on. I know we're having some technical difficulties, but um it's very exciting because you're coming from the UK and I'm here in Australia. So we're still going to make this interview happen. I'm delighted uh to share with the audience today your book, A Lost Life. Holly, tell us all about it.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Well, I all I can say is that it it says what it says on the tin. I mean, it's full of it's it's all kinds of things. It's a murder mystery, it's a passionate love affair, it's smuggling, it's secrets buried, and it's falling in love with the past, possibly a Byzantine Empire, emperor. So it it it ticks a lot of boxes.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Yeah, and Holly, I've read that it's uh been described as a historical thriller, uh, a mystery and a love story. So I think you have summed it up. You cover off a lot of genres. But do you want to tell us about the story and the characters? What do we need to know?

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Well, um, story and characters. Um the the lady's a writer, the man, well, is in the well, guess what, in Venice, in the glass business, glass foundry, but they meet in romantic locations and have a very well interesting life traveling, but a lot of unusual things happen to them. They end up uh finding a cache of ancient icon mosaics that have been buried for a thousand years, but they're also, before that happens, there's some murders on the Grand Canal. So it is a murder mystery as well as the love affair and the traveling to Istanbul and and uncovering um derelict the secrets of derelict monasteries. Confusing, no, because it just is complex, but it it it follows a rather slow pattern, so you can get into the feeling and the and the romance and the action as you walk as you go along.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

And Holly, yeah, sorry, keep going. No, keep going.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

No, I'm okay. You do ask me.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Oh no, I was gonna say, do you want to tell us about um a little about you as an author? Because I think so much of this book really um, I guess complements your career and your journey throughout your uh your work. Is that fair to say?

SPEAKER_01 2:47

I think so. Um I well, I'm an archaeologist, yeah, and basically it's the Greek Bronze Age, but because of that, I've spent a lot of time in Greece and in Istanbul, and and the other thing is that then I became interested in mosaics, which took me to Venice. I'm a great traveler and I'm fascinated by places, but of course, there are some places on this earth more fascinating than others, and Venice is one of them. The other thing is that I'm interested in people, not just artifacts. And because it's a walking city, you see people, you see them, they're not just people in supermarkets, they're characters because you're right there on top of them, which you're not in a normal life. And this probably enhances my appreciation of people and what goes on in their lives. And when I see somebody, I can become inspired by this person. It's not that I'm um imagining their lives, but they they somehow develop their own life when I look at them and I wonder what's happening to them and you know what could happen. But Venice does provide this backdrop of being interested in people. So I think it's my time in Venice that that is probably inspired more than anything else. But because I'm very busy as an archaeologist and also writing books on that, this took a long time because I had to fit it in with my other things. I love my writing, I love my personal writing. But it has to be fitted in with you know all the other commitments you have in life.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

So, but that's that's basically the background. And and what it well, the beginning inspiration was mosaics, I suppose, for this book, but then the people take over. Once you have characters in your book, they develop a life of their own, and you kind of follow them, you know, you care you you take them so far, and then they're alive. And and you you're writing about something that is happening in their lives. And I I wrote the book for to for them, I suppose. I wanted I wanted them to be their lives to be loved and appreciated, their ups and downs, their passions, their experiences. Um, which of course relates to all our experience, in other words, it it you know, we're all a well a family. We have we understand each other, and if if you can understand a character as a larger life and get inside this character, your own life develops more meaning, I think.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Yeah, so true. Um, Holly, if we're watching or listening anywhere in the world and we're curious about your work, um where can where can we find your work? Do you are you on socials? Do you have a website? Or can I put some information in about your publisher and publishing company?

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Well, uh it's Ingram Spark, is my publishing company. And then the books are available in Barnes and Noble. I think bookstores, well, more or less everywhere, I suppose. Certainly. I don't know about Australia, of course, but I'm sure they're available in all over England and the United States. I mean, I I did get a list once, but it's the big bookstores, and of course it is available on well, it's available on Amazon. Yeah. So that's the easiest probably. I buy a lot of books on Amazon because it's well, it's easy.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

True, true. And look, I mean, Amazon is you know makes makes books available to to many um corners of the world. So I'll put some links into the show notes. Holly, I'm curious, are you gonna keep writing or is there more or have you done more people watching uh and you've got more stories to tell? What's the plans?

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Well, of course, the next book that'll be published is his is nonfiction. And it basically it's the research that the heroine in the novel did for her own work, for her own writing. So it it provides a very the the nonfiction book is not only interesting on its own because it's act, well, it's called um the most serene republic of Venice in the Byzantine Empire, a celebration of their lives and relations. And it's individual things that happened in Venice in the Renaissance. I mean, the for instance, the great importance and legality of poisoning, which was which was uh adopted as by the Council of Ten that ran Venice, and all these little stories. Now, this is the best, this is the next book, which lives on its own, but it's a companion to the novel, and it fills out all the places where the two main characters visit. Yes. And they're but my next book after that will be on the wellheads of Venice, which I do you know of a wellhead? Um well in the Renaissance Venice became uh famous in Europe for being the cleanest city in Europe because they had these cisterns which uh which it had rainwater fall into them and it purified them, and then everybody could go to the local, well, piazza or the campo, as they say in Venice, and get clean water. And this was a phenomen this was a phenomenon, and also because the lagoon has its title, Venice became known as the as the cleanest place in in Europe. So basically, and wellheads have never actually been written about, so that's my next book. I mean, it is finished, it's just well, it's going to have a forew by the director of the museums in Venice, so I'm waiting on him at the moment. But after that, the next book, believe it or not, is in Egypt.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

So that'll be that'll be a novel. That's fabulous. I need to keep bringing you back every time you release a book. This sounds way too exciting. Sorry, yes. No, I was gonna say I'll have to get you back. We'll have to get this technology working. It'll be great, great to meet you next time and hear about the the books that are coming ahead. But you know, in the meantime, I encourage everyone to have a look at A Lost Life. Um, Holly, thank you so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Well, I'd like it very much meeting you.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Yes. Holly, have a great day. Thank you. Thank you.