Manuela Cardiga - Guilty Pleasures and Culinary Treasures

Oh how lovely! An excuse to talk about myself boastfully and not get reprimanded for vanity!

Who am I, what do I write, and why do I write it.

First: my name is Manuela Cardiga and I am a writer. I also design, illustrate, sew, cook, mother a pre-teen, and juggle a day job. I don’t do windows.

So what do I write? Now there you’ve got me….

All sorts, really.

Let’s see…I’ve written plays, musicals, short stories, essays, novellas, one full length novel, and am half way through another.

Let me also shamefacedly admit to oodles of really bad poetry. Bad…

Now I can just see you ask yourself the latest fashionable question with that hideous word in it: GENRE.

What GENRE does this female write?

Let me put it this way…all sorts?

The novel rejoices in the name of “Guilty Pleasures – The Food and Fornication Fables”, and is (I hope) a tongue-in-cheek exposé of the entire genre myth. I will label it: a Cock and Cook Comedy.

Now the novella I co-wrote with a friend, (under the pen-name Jacqueline Sapphire) and is called Desire’s Detective, it’s about a courtesan in the court of Louis XV who has a virginal apprentice-nun as a side-kick and is looking for a killer whose only identifying mark is a tattoo on his scrotum.

It’s very funny, has absolutely no historical rigour and oodles of salacious gossip.
It’s part of an on-going series called “Desire Investigated” and I laugh myself silly as I write it.

The play is about a group of female convicts with a shoe fetish, locked up in a maximum security prison. It’s called “Prison Break-fast at Tiffany’s”

The musical…well…that is called “Mamma Cannibal’s Blues”, and it tells the story of Abigail Reach, who overcomes being victimized by incest; opens a road-side diner serving long-pork; and ends up with a multi-million dollar franchise of a fast-food chain called “Mamma Cannibal”. I’m writing the libretto, a very talented friend is writing the lyrics, and another the music. See you on Broadway…

The new novel (I’m half-way through) is called “MANscapes” and  is rather dark. It’s about a woman, an artist, who survives twenty-four years of marital abuse and gives birth to a new self.

The essays and short stories range from the philosophical, mystical, erotic, comic, religious, and romantic all the way to the truly irritating “I told you so” (something I invented all on my own).

The poetry…let’s not go there. It is truly bad.

I also collaborated as an illustrator in 7 children’s books (two distinct series for two amazing writers) and a Graphic Novel for teens.

It’s been a frantic two years. (Yes, I have a day job; yes I have a pre-teen; yes, I have a maniacal giggle…)

So WHY do I do this, you ask?

Why do I write?

Easy.
Because I have to, and because I can, and because I love it.
Because I need to.