LEIGH ROSE

A Poor Woman Is Not Without Money. A Poor Woman Is Without A Dream.

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, with distinctive characters, tropes, and literary conventions that define historic and contemporary themes of family, self-discovery, and legendary myths.

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. In 1997, Leigh was issued a legal name change to her signature art work, Leigh Rose, by the Massachusetts Court, docket number 1503848.

LEIGH’S WRITING STUDIO

Leigh designs her story narratives as if the blank page is a canvas, having been a professional visual artist for most of her life. Leigh also designs her own book covers, papier collé, a French technique where by paper is cut and applied as a collage.

Scholistic Background

A prolific visual artist, educator, genealogist, and scholar, Leigh’s talent and knowledge of culture extends to the themes in her novels. At an early age, Leigh developed a talent for poetry, the visual arts and feature-length writing in adulthood, winning literature, visual art, and poetry awards. Leigh has held elected posts at universities that include, Senator, Student Government (Art Department), President of the Student Art League, Publications Committee and Child Care Committee, along with receiving scholastic scholarships and museum internships.

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.

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LEIGH is working on three, stand-alone novels with a FALL 2026 RELEASE DATE.

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

A San Francisco journalist is determined to find the cartel members that murdered her parents, in Mexico, when she was a child.

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. Genre: A comedic-noir set in 2015, with flashbacks.

A faithful cousin helps to exonerate a family member suspect of a murder at their Italian bed and breakfast.  

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 reveres 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 becomes 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 fiction spy thriller.

A brilliant software engineer designs AI-QFP, the Artificial Intelligence & Quantum Forensics Program, to find his missing wife.

Special Agent: Valentine Day is about Ned and Maggie Stiles. Ned and Maggie 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 gets an invite to speak at “Moscow’s 2007 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence,” they attend but 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 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 is made with polymers, a cutting edge invention no one else in the world holds a patent for; a synthetic collagen protein used to replicate human muscle over bone with programmable sensors to mimic human behavior “in real-time.” Like no other in the world, the humanoid looks and acts human, can understand, interpret, and interact with human-like precision. In the wrong hands, it will lead to massive fatalities…

LEIGH’S Ancestry

Leigh grew up in a multi-cultural/multi-lingual household. Her ancestry.com DNA test results from 1700 forward includes South Central Italy (96%); Southeast Avellino & Southwest Foggia Provinces, Basilicata & South Campania Region, Cyprian (3%), Baltic States and North Africa (1%). Leigh’s ancient heritage is Greek; Cyprian and Cretan, Italian, West Asian, and Eastern European.

Leigh’s Backgroun

Leigh is the youngest of four daughters to Antoinette (Antenesca) Nittoli-Messano and Andrew (Andrea) Messano, Sunday, September 7, 1952, at Long Island City Hospital. She was baptized Rosalie Marie Messano by Reverend James Bulger, at St. Francis of Assisi Church, Long Island City, New York, October 15, 1952. Leigh’s family had attended St. Ann Roman Catholic Church, Flushing, New York, where Leigh studied catechism, for two years each, for receiving communion (age 8) and confirmation (age 12) certificates.

At that time, Leigh attended P.S. 120, Campbell Junior High School, John Bowne High School, in Queens, New York, and one-half of her senior year in high school at New York University. In her early twenties, Leigh graduates from the Bible Institute of New England, St. Johnsbury, Vermont, where she studied the historical writings of the old and new testament and contemporary writings of both nonfiction literary scholars and fictional authors that express biblical theology and practices that emphasize a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, biblical literalism/inerrancy, and as C. S. Lewis stated, “mere Christianity” approach, focusing on core doctrines over denominational dogmas. Leigh is a Christian Apologist.

One year after Leigh’s birth, the Messano family moved from the western tip of Long Island City, to Flushing, Queens, and to a larger home closer to Leigh’s maternal grandparents, the Nittoli family. She grew up in a typical, close knit, Italian family; where schools a short walk from her home, in a safe suburban community of single standing homes, where multi-diverse families’ of Western and Eastern European ancestry lived peacefully.

When Leigh was seventeen years old, she takes her ideas public. She sponsored a neighbor, a wounded, Vietnam Veteran by organizing a peaceful Vietnam War protest, and by the next year instilling environmental protection awareness by backpacking throughout Easter and Western Canada and considers Canada her home away from home. Leigh continued to explore culture with residences in seven, U.S. states, and traveling abroad to Mexico, Western and Eastern Europe, and the Caribbean Islands. For which the themes of her novels exemplify international settings and characterization.

Leigh credits her parent’s for her love of storytelling; they often reminisced about their past and ancestry that became Leigh’s passion as a fine artist and creative writer. Leigh began writing short poems with illustrations for her mother during her adolescence and trained in tap and ballet, taught herself to play acoustic guitar, mastered the fine art of painting and single motherhood, with one daughter, Naomi, and one granddaughter, Sienna Rose. Before becoming a novelist. Leigh debuted with Mistaken Legacy – Book 1, Heiress and Epithet – Book 2, and Children of the Alliance – Book 3.

Leigh’s Paternal Family

Leigh’s paternal grandparents are Martino Messano, and Carmela Maria (Ventimiglia) Messano. Martino Messano (DOB. 10 November 1875 – DOD. 10 May 1955) Maria Carmela (Ventimiglia) Messano (DOB. 20 July 1877 – DOD. 21 January 1943) THey were born in Sessa Cilento, a region along the Amalfi Coast, in the Province of Salerno, Italy. On Maria’s side, Leigh’s paternal great grandfather and great grandmother is Giovanni Battista Ventimiglia, and Filomena De Feo. On Martino’s side, Leigh’s paternal great grandparents are Andrea (Andrew) Messano, and Carmela Tanza. Both paternal grandparents retained Italian citizenship while residents in the US.

On 16 January 1901, Martino immigrated to the U.S. on the S.S. Columbia. Maria immigrated 29 June 1907 on the steamship ocean liner, S.S. Bulgaria. Martino and Carmela met and married, 21 June 1913, in Brooklyn, NY. In the United States, Leigh’s paternal grandparetns 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, (DOB. April 11, 1916 – DOD. May 12, 1991) was born in NYC to italian parents. Leigh’s mother is Antoniette Nittoli-Messano (DOB. February 17, 1918 – DOD. June 15, 1893). Andrew and Antoniette are married on July 21, 1940, Brooklyn, NY. Andrew 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. The company was owned and operated by the Nittoli family. Andrew was a WWII Navy veteran and stationed on a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Hawaiian-Pacific. Andrew restored modern autobiles as a hobby anf Antoniette an at-home mom had a passion for fashion design.

Leigh’s Maternal Family

Leigh’s maternal grandfather, Antonio Amato Nittoli (baptized, Amato Maria Nittoli, (DOB. April 25, 1893 – DOD. April 3, 1968), immigrated to the United States, February 28, 1913, on the steam-ocean liner, S.S. Cedric, during the Italian Diaspora. https://youtu.be/hwqzplK_gG0?si=mC_q_R1N4_nc8Mhw

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 May 1915, and before establishing Van Doran Street Laundry, located in Corona, Queens, Antonio lives in New Jersey and is hired as a supervisor for one of Princeton, New Jersey’s quarries known for mining the regions famous, Gray Princeton brownstone. However, still an Italian citizen, Antonio returns to Italy to serve in the Italian Army during WWI, under Italy’s conscription laws. He is 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 1931, 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. on the S.S. Conte Grande, a steam-ocean liner. Family members included, Leigh’s mother, Antoinette, Leigh’s maternal grandmother, Victoria (DeConza) Nittoli, and Leigh’s two remaining uncles, Daniel and Michael. Leigh’s uncles, Rocco and Angelo are already in the U.S. After gaining U.S. citizenship, Michael and Angelo serve in the U.S. Army during WWII. First, second and third Nittoli family members, cousins, still living in Lioni, Italy, remain on the Nittoli family’s large farm that produced goat’s milk for Lioni’s famous goat cheese industry. https://sistemairpinia.provincia.avellino.it/en/comuni/lioni

Fromm 1930 through the mid-1950s, with a thriving business well under way, Antonio travels to and from italy as a benefactor. He is knighted for nhis humanitarian deeds in Italy and the U.S. after WWII as the Grand Official of the Order of Constantine of Antioch with (2) merits by Supreme Pontiff, Pope Pius XII. Philanthropic projects include while being President of Lioni’s Reconstruction Committee after WWII, Antonio Nittoli builds a children’s orphanage along with other proejcts. He also has his biography written by Joseph Manzella, A Benefactor: The Grande Ufficiale Antonio Nittoli, published by Lioni Press.

At the age of sixteen, Leigh inherits her mother’s signed edition of A Benefactor: The Grande Ufficiale Antonio Nittoli, and has her grandfather’s memior translated 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