Title: Color Song (Passion Blue #2)
Author: Victoria Strauss
Publisher: Skyscape (Amazon)
Release Date: September 16, 2014
Acquired Via: Historical Fiction Blog Tours
By the author of the acclaimed Passion Blue, a Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Book of 2012 and “a rare, rewarding, sumptuous exploration of artistic passion,” comes a fascinating companion novel.
Artistically brilliant, Giulia is blessed – or cursed – with a spirit’s gift: she can hear the mysterious singing of the colors she creates in the convent workshop of Maestra Humilità. It’s here that Giulia, forced into the convent against her will, has found unexpected happiness, and rekindled her passion to become a painter – an impossible dream for any woman in 15th century Italy.
But when a dying Humilità bequeaths Giulia her most prized possession – the secret formula for the luminously beautiful paint called Passion blue – Giulia realizes she’s in danger from those who have long coveted the famous color for themselves. Faced with the prospect of lifelong imprisonment in the convent, forever barred from painting as a punishment for keeping Humilita’s secret, Giulia is struck by a desperate idea: What if she disguises herself as a boy? Could she make her way to Venice and find work as an artist’s apprentice?
Along with the truth of who she is, Giulia carries more dangerous secrets: the exquisite voices of her paint colors and the formula for Humilità’s precious blue. And Venice, with its graceful gondolas and twisting canals, its gilded palazzi and masked balls, has secrets of its own. Trapped in her false identity in this dream-like place where reality and reflection are easily confused, where art and ambition, love and deception hover like dense fog, can Giulia find her way?
This compelling novel explores timeless themes of love and illusion, gender and identity as it asks the question: what does it mean to risk everything to follow your true passion?
Interview
Kayla: Hi Victoria, I really appreciate you taking the time to stop by Bibliophilia, Please for your blog tour! Do you mind telling us a little bit about yourself?
Victoria Strauss: I write for both adults and teens--nine books so far. My first love is fantasy, but I also write historical novels. My two most recent books, Passion Blue and Color Song, are YA historicals with a touch of magical realism.
I'm also co-founder of Writer Beware, a unique anti-fraud resource that educates writers about the many scams and schemes that target them, and about the publishing industry in general. When Writer Beware started up in 1998, we hoped we'd eventually put ourselves out of business--but the growth of self-publishing and small press publishing over the past 10 or 15 years has given birth to a whole new range of scams. Writer Beware is busier now than it's ever been.
What else?...I'm a fanatical gardener, a bit of a health nut, a voracious reader and movie buff, and I spend way too much time online.
Kayla: Since your book Color Song, and the previous book about Giulia, Passion Blue, seem to be very art-centered, I have to ask – are you an artist in addition to being a writer?