Diana Santamaria - Writer, Teacher, Pianist, Composer Born, raised and educated in Sydney, Australia, Diana also majored in music. She holds a Diploma of Teaching and a Bachelor of Education, and also studied piano at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Diana spent many of her working years in education - from the high school classroom teaching English and Music, into ESL for adults and finally into educational management. Much of her spare time was spent doing Musical Direction in a variety of venues around Sydney.
From her childhood Diana has adored music and writing and has had some minor short pieces of writing in print. It has only been in recent semi-retirement, that she has found the time to dedicate herself more fully to her two great passions - writing and composing music.
Diana has done a large amount of international travelling over the years, but nothing is dearer to her heart than the place of her ancestral heritage - the Aeolian Islands off the northern tip of Sicily. From many visits to these islands and having heard stories of its people that fascinated and charmed her time and time again, her first novel The Secrets Of The Pebbles was released in August, 2011. The story was inspired by genealogical records of her ancestors and her very deep love for the history and culture of her own people.
The Secrets of the Pebbles is about life, love and gossip on the tiny Aeolian Island of Filicudi. When in 1940, Italy is thrust into WW2, the 17 year old Francesca is separated from her lover who is sent to fight. Finding herself pregnant soon after his departure, she refuses to divulge the father's name. Not only are others implicated as a result of her secretiveness, but many more secrets are uncovered, gossip gets out of hand, and more scintillating tales emerge. Francesca's secret becomes a link to the secrets of others. Little by little the ramifications of secrets that extended through two generations, begin to emerge. When a long-hidden manuscript is discovered in 1995, the pieces of a giant jigsaw eventually come together with total unpredictability.
Diana has also written theme music for her book that has been made available with a CD that accompanies it. Her hope is that, like a movie, the music can fill the spaces that words cannot.
Apart from this novel, Diana's young nephew inspires her to write children's stories and poems that she also plans to get into print to share. Additionally, her past and current experience in literacy tutoring to adults and children provides fertile ground for developing educational materials to stimulate people's ability to write. To this end she is currently co-writing a set of literacy texts for publication.
She says she is not short of writing ideas but her greatest challenge is having the discipline and time required to get them onto paper! She is delighted to be in the company of so many aspiring and published writers and very much looking forward to enjoying many enriching hours with them all.
