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 fiction novels redefine the genre by exploring themes of identity, racism, and heritage with historical detail and often times cultural perspectives left to the wind.

Leigh was born and raised in Queens, New York. She was a resident of seven states in the U.S. and traveled extensively throughout her life, including backpacking for a summer at the age of seventeen throughout Canada, as well as traveling throughout the United States and Western and Eastern Europe.

As a teenager, Leigh developed a talent for poetry and the visual arts. She became as a prolific visual aritist through adulthood, as well as in researching genealogy, as reflected in her novels.

Leigh’s ancestry by DNA is 74% Greek; Cyprian and Cretan, Italian; Venetian, Amalfitano, Campanian, 20% West Asian (Many Countries) and 6% Eastern European (Many Countries).

When not writing, Leigh enjoys spending time with her daughter, granddaughter and son-in-law, as well as traveling, cooking and watching movies and TV series.

LEIGH’S STUDIO

EDUCATION

M.A. University of North Carolina, Creative Writing. 2010.

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.

CURRENT WRITING PROJECTS

©Double Orphan is a novel inspired by real events. It is a story about family resilience. Angie Olivetti is a native of San Francisco California’s North Beach community. An investigative journalist who takes her job very seriously, every day that passes, Angie has to cope with the memory of experiencing her parent’s murder, in Puerto Penasco, Mexico, when she was nine years old. She hopes to find and prosecute the persons responsible for murdering her parents, even if that takes a lifetime.

It is now 2013, twenty-three years after her parent’s murder and Angie is senior editor and international investigative journalist for the San Francisco Headline division of U.S. & World Report, when she receives a phone call from Arturo Lopez.

Arturo Lopez is a Mexican miner who claims Mexico’s cartel is smuggling natural gas over the U.S. border for a Texas refinery. Angie wants the story, and the newspaper agrees. With a team of journalists, Ice Shadow Wolves and Federales, a team goes undercover to investigate the mining sting at Burgos Basin, in northeastern Mexico.

Seeking asylum in the U.S. for his testimony, Angie and the team have to rescue the Lopez family hiding out in Mexico’s Sierra Madre Oriental Mountains from cartel death threats. However, when the team gets to McAllen Texas and crosses into Mexico, the unexpected catches up with them and things go south.

Uncle Johnny shows up to confront the head of the cartel he suspects murdered her father, his twin brother, in 1990. Shocked by the outcome of the confrontation, Angie has to confront her feeling, when her uncle confides the truth about happened on that fateful night of their murder.

©Murder at Sweet Life Inn is a comic-noir fiction novel set in 2015 with flashbacks to 1915 and WWI, when the Forni family restores a farmhouse for wayward soldiers, in Campobasso, Italy. They name the agriturismo, Sweet Life Inn, a take on the famous Italian phrase “Dolce Vita,” a life full of kindness and sweetness. As the war engulfs the quaint mountain village, the Forni’s survive by learning to imitate Warbler calls. “Trilling” helps to protect villagers from the onslaught of enemy gunfire.  

Before WWII begins, a Forni descendant immigrates to Princeton, New Jersey, and opens a bakery. He names the Forni enterprise, Sweet Life Bakery, a turn-of-century Mom and Pop start-up from pushcart to successful storefront bakery at the 1939 Palmer Square, at the heart of downtown Princeton, featuring top of the line restaurants, shops, and entertainment.

A century later, Luna, the heir to Sweet Life Inn, is suspect of a murder at the inn. Heartbroken about the incident, Eanna Tasso and her family travel to Italy to convince the Carabinieri that Luna is innocent. Witnesses at the inn claim they heard unusual “trilling” at the scene of the murder, and it is unlikely to belong to a Forni family member since they are skilled “trillers” and witnesses claim they heard a tone-deaf songster “trilling.”

With that, a stubborn Carabinieri place the entire village on lockdown, insisting to exonerate Luna, villagers must hold a “Trilling Contest” and vote to prove who murderered the couple at Sweet Life Inn.

However, in 2013, tides turn for the Forni family, when their cousin, Luna, is a person of interest in a crime of passion at Sweet Life Inn. Aghast, the Forni’s in Princeston, New Jersey, travel to Italy to convince the Carabinieri that their cousin is innocent. Witnesses at the inn claim they heard unusual trilling at the scene of the crime. To exonerate Luna, the villagers hold a “trilling contest” to prove who the murderer really is: A tone deaf songster.

©SPECIAL AGENT: Valentine Day is a spy thriller about the Stiles family and their role in catching a mole in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) during a joint counterintelligence operation with the United States and Russia.

When the couple is invited to speak at Moscow’s 2007 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, in Russia, on Valentine’s Day, Maggie goes missing. Ned surmises his wife’s disappearance has everything to do with the classified biochemistry project she is working on for the CIA. However, after a yearlong CIA investigation into Maggie’s disappearance, the agency tells Ned, ‘Maggie was kidnapped by Federal Security Service (FSB) operatives and deceased.’ Upset and angry, Ned buries his wife and the mother of their two boys, Darius and Lukas, without a body.

As Ned’s haunting thoughts about the CIA lead him to believe the agency is hiding something from him about Maggie’s disappearance, and that Maggie may still be alive, he patents, AI-QFP, an Artificial Intelligence & Quantum Forensics Program he swears will find his wife.

When the CIA find out about Ned’s patent, they offer him their top position, Director of Artificial Intelligence. He joins the CIA to gain access to CIA classical data ON Maggie’s investigation to input into AI-QFP. With his team of expert scientists, they discover Maggie is still alive and on a mission in Moscow to intercept “The Wolf,” Dmitry Volkov, a former CIA foreign asset gone rogue who wants to steal and sell Maggie’s biochemistry research to terrorists.

ITALY

LEIGH’S PARENT’S,

GRANDPARENT’S & ANCESTOR’S

Leigh’s paternal grandparents, Martino Messano and Carmela Maria Ventimiglia, immigrated to the U.S. in 1901 from the Provence of Salerno, Italy, and lived in N.Y.C. They owned and operated a Mom and Pop Italian grocery store, where they lived on Staten Island, New York.

Leigh’s father, Andrew James Messano, was born in N.Y. C. and a U.S. citizen. He was an account exective for Van Doran Laundry, a commerical laundrey service for resturants thought the five borghs of New York, owned and operated by the Nittoli family; Leigh’s maternal grandparents and their five children, including their only daughter, Leigh’s mother, Antoniette Nittoli-Messano.

While married to Antonette, and before Leigh was born, A.J. was a WWII Navy veteran stationed on a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Hawaiian-Pacific. Luckily, he was on active, annual leave, when on December 7, 1941 the Empire of Japan bombed the U.S. Pacific Fleet at its naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. 

Pictured above: Leigh, mother and maternal grandparents

Leigh’s maternal grandfather, Antonio Amato Nittoli (baptized; Amato Maria Nittoli) immigrated to the United States in 1913 during the Italian Diaspora. https://youtu.be/hwqzplK_gG0?si=mC_q_R1N4_nc8Mhw

Antonio lived in New Jersey, with his brother, Leigh’s uncle, who immigrated to the U.S. during the late nineteenth century. At that time, and before establishing his business, Van Doran Laundry, in Corona, Queens, Antonio was supervisor of a New Jersey company that quarried Princeton (New Jersey) Stone. Afterwhich, he bought Van Doran Laundry with five partners and then bought them out becoming a successful businessman and U.S. citizen in 1930. With the onset of WWII in the air, in 1931, Antonio, brought to the U.S. the remainder of his family still living in Lioni, Italy. Leigh’s mother, Antoinette, her maternal grandmother, Victoria (DeConza) Nittoli, and two or her four uncles, Danniel and Michael. Rocco and Angelo were already in the U.S. Michael and Angelo served in the U.S. Army during WWII. The remaining Nittoli famliy still living in Lioni, Italy, historically kept their large farm that produced goat’s milk for Lioni’s famous goat cheese industry. https://sistemairpinia.provincia.avellino.it/en/comuni/lioni

Before becoming a U.S. citizen, and living in the United States as an Italian citizen, Amato Maria Nittoli returned to Italy to serve in the Italian army during WWI, May 1915, under Italy’s conscription laws. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery at the Battle of the Isonzo (1915-1917), defending Italy against Austro-Hungarian Powers, alongside the Allied powers of France, Britain, and Russia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_the_Isonzo

Italy’s allegiance to the Triple Entente with the Treaty of London, promised Italy, but failed to deliver lost Italian territories after Italy helped to win WWI. As a result, the National Fascist Party formed from 1922 to 1943, with Benito Mussolini as prime minister, who instigated Italian citizens to join the party, but the Nittoli’s resisted, sold their farm and moved their remaining family to the United States. Other Italian citizens fumed about losing territories promised after winning WWI, calling it “A Mutilated Victory.” With that, Italians deterred from joining the Allies during WWII, and instead joined the 1940 Axis power alongside Germany, under Mussolini. Italy transitioned from a monarchy to a republic on June 2, 1946, celebrated as Festa della Repubblica.  

With a thriving business well under way, in 1950, Amato Maria Nittoli has his memoir written and 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 helped build a children’s orphange, 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, a date for hire project to translate by Susan Connors, of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In return, Leigh paints Susan’s portrait, pictured below.

NITTOLI NOBLE COAT OF ARMS

Leigh is the armiger of the Nittoli Coat of Arms. In the field of heraldry, a coat of arms is designed and approved by a heraldric artist and sanctioned by the country of origin. The Coat of Arms includes symbols and colors designed to represent the history of the Nittoli family. The Nittoli shield symbolizes 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 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 loyality to France. One of 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