Thursday 19 April 2012

Ty Italiano


 It's Ty! In Venice! What is he doing there?


No, this is not a sneak peek at the plot of Another Life. It's an Italian YA book spotted by my eagle-eyed editor Emily Sharratt at the recent Bologna Children's Book Fair. 
It's called The Descent of Light and according to this blog post, it's a kind of Dan Brown meets the Mayans, SF/timeshift epic romance, set in Italy and Mexico. 
I whipped the blog post into Google Translate and this is what I got:
'The Descent of Light that, as adults, although it is YA literature, intrigues me most, is now known of the Mayan prophecy about the end of the world in 2012. The places where the story takes place is full of charm and mystery of Venice, the Tuscan hills, the ruins of Mexico. The characters by which we follow are Jude and Viola.In Venice comes a wonderful guy. Jude was instructed by his father to find a Maya text, that can save humanity from the provisions of the awful apocalyptic prophecy. During the searches in the Library of Archaeology Jude knows Viola, a student who has a bond with their dramatic Mayan code that the guy is trying.The meeting of two born a love, not wanted, but overwhelming, that will survive the events that occur at some point and that will take them in Tuscany and then back in Mexico. Events that they will meet / collide with characters who, like them, are seeking the all-important code.But the story is not simple as it might seem. It is not just a search, friends, enemies, loves, tragedies and ancient vendettas. There is an element that gives the story a different perspective. Why Jude is not simply a nice guy as a god by Jude is far, far away. It comes from another world, that of SO-CALLED Bright ... (with all the implications, in my opinion, this can result in the past history of the human race and its Gods ... But I'm just assuming ...). Enjoy!

Wow! I am especially thrilled that Ty is called Jude, because that is my son's name.  And it is great to see him in another guise. He looks suitable moody and I think they've made his eyes very blue. 
It's not surprising to find the same picture popping up on a different book, because the photo was sourced from a big photo library. I wonder if the original model knows about Ty and Jude. And I wonder what other uses have been made of his image. Someone once told me that'd seen Ty on a poster warning of STDs. I've never been able to find it, and I'm happy that way.

5 comments:

  1. How weird! I assumed cover photos were unique - obviously I'm wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Loads of book covers duplicate eachother. The designers all use the same stock photo libraries. I'm just lucky this book is Italian.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I wonder how many angles they have of him in the photo library? Very interesting, I also thought a model had posed for your book cover.

    ReplyDelete
  4. He comes from a stock photo agency called shutterstock, and this link shows you all the available shots of him. I'm quite glad we didn't get as far as the third one, he looks completely out of it.
    http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&searchterm=hood+male+man+cool+handsome&search_group=&orient=&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=originalpunkt&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&commercial_ok=&color=&show_color_wheel=1&secondary_submit=Search

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ooh, sounds like a fun book! I'm a sucker for that kind of thing. But I totally have that photo equated with Ty, so it just seems too bizarre to think of him as Jude in Italy. Jude seems a really strange choice for the name of an Italian boy too, as Judah and Judas are both rendered Giuda in Italian.

    ReplyDelete