Valentina Franceschi

How can I write an appreciation for the life of my friend Valentina Franceschi when we never met? I suppose it is symptomatic of life post-COVID.  A visual bond of no more than a face and shoulders connected through the screen.  This medium is euphemistically called ‘progress’ because of convenience and speed of access.  Friendship made us modern-day pen pals through images rather than letters.

The written word brought us together when we met four years ago on the Creative Writing degree course at the University of the Highlands and Islands. The classes are conducted through Webex.  Valentina and I immediately connected due to our horror of modern technology. I could see the terror on her face as we tried to navigate the university’s Brightspace platform.  We were drawn together as we were significantly older than the other students, which heralded further anxieties and insecurities. 

I kept a low profile and pretended I was as proficient as the youngsters.  But this wasn’t Valentina’s approach.  She had no reticence; if she had a problem loading a web page or didn’t understand the passage being read, she let the class know.  At first, I was intolerant, and shame on me.  But often, her query was correct, and her questioning nature helped the whole class.  Over time, I appreciated her interventions that questioned and challenged.  It gave our class confidence. 

Our friendship developed when she contacted me in the spring of 2022 to ask if I would read her novel and provide some feedback before she self-published it.  I was honoured that she asked me, and when I read the opening chapters of the book, I was surprised it was a Sci-fi/fantasy novel.  She wrote under the pseudonym Keki Mai, a name she created while living in Japan.  Her first book, The Red City, was published in 2017 and was a coming-of-age story of Dan and Lila on the Planet Amox.  The sequel, Back to the Red City, is a political thriller self-published on Amazon in January 2023.  In addition, she published children’s stories when she lived in Japan, Varisco Follows the Sea, Friendship Stories, and the Dragon Who Wanted to Have A Bath.

Valentina joined my podcast, Sue and Johnny, Everything and Anything, in 2023 to discuss her life, and provide insight into her writing and motivations. Valentina was born near Venice, Italy, on October 23, 1972. She had a younger brother, Leonardo, but they lost both their parents at a young age and lived with their granny. As a result, Valentina had a nomadic existence, living in Switzerland and working in Japan, where she mastered, French, German and Japanese.

Valentina was autistic and did not find school rewarding, as she struggled with noise, bright lights, and lots of students. She had a natural aptitude for numbers and loved chemistry, geology, and physics. However, her favourite subject was algebra. She understood her autism, knew when to isolate herself when her life was in overdrive and embraced the clarity that her unique way of viewing the world provided.  Valentina’s gift for languages, extended to English which she found easy to learn and write.  She read Tolkien’s The Hobbit which motivated her to write in the fantasy genre.  In addition, she claimed on the podcast that Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, helped her English vocabulary despite being old-fashioned.

She was living in a convent in Florence when she decided to up sticks and start a new adventure in the Northeast of Scotland.  She wanted to see the Loch Ness Monster and wrote a series of stories on ‘Nessie being a dragon’.   She found employment at Moray College, Elgin and enrolled part time on the Creative Writing course at UHI and produced good academic writing and creative works.

It was deeply shocking when I found out that she had terminal ovarian cancer.  Her openness, self-deprecating humour, and matter of fact approach to the illness, the pain and treatments was inspirational.  Her strength lay in her deep faith and through our many texts, phone conversations, and Zoom calls remained as intellectually sharp, and challenging. I’ll treasure these interactions, and the pleasure that she gained at being awarded a degree from UHI on the work that she had completed.

In a rich life of fifty-one years, I knew her fleetingly.  My tribute can only be a snapshot but will be indicative of her life. Valentina was an independent woman, comfortable with who she was and where she was going.  She was courageous, and showed humour, kindness, intellectual rigour and enthusiasm for the challenges of life. She has left us too early.

• Valentina Franceschi, writer, born 23 October 1972; died 23 September 2024.

#Creative Writing

#UHI