Frequently Asked Questions
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Why the name Due Lupi Books?
Due Lupi means “two wolves’ in Italian.
Who are the two wolves?
My wife is a consummate and brilliant artist, a certified genius and an avant-garde biologist. Her brain is a beautiful little super-computer. Our home is filled with her art. It’s like living in a lovely fever dream. She’s 100% Italian, so her creativity is very vibrant and organic.
I’m a retired Executive Chef with an odd and often hyperactive imagination and a lifetime of random pop-culture influences. I also have a flair for the technical and illustrative elements, so my creativity tends to be more straight-line and mechanical.
Where is Due Lupi Books based?
Vicenza, in the Veneto region of North Italy. We live in a quiet little farming town about 45 minutes from Venezia. Yes, the wine and cheese are very good.
How do you create so much content so quickly?
Easy, we started over two years ago with a collection of random ideas and images we created over time. About a year ago we began compiling similar ideas and images and organizing them into small collections. From there it became a regular process of editing, adding and then finishing each book – some of which were scrapped for creative reasons. Now we publish each compilation as it is completed.
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Why for “adults”?
It’s a play on words, and a hook to catch your attention. Coloring books are for kids, right?
Why are certain books “for the OCD”?
I have OCD, often severe. It can seriously complicate life and make small tasks difficult. I discovered that performing repetitive tasks with a lot of detail made me calmer and more focused. I realized that it could be helpful to other working adults who need to function and meet their daily responsibilities if they had a creative and engaging way to indulge their OCD tendencies. I use a lot of fractals – naturally occurring patterns – because they have the effect of calming my OCD, and they add a very curious and often elegant element to art.
How do you use AI in your books?
Mostly we use AI for boring tasks like formatting pages and framing up images so we don’t have to do each one manually. We use AI in the same way you would use word processing software to change a font or edit a document. Everything we publish starts out as an original idea, conceived and brought to life on a sheet of paper.
Who are your influences?
The list is strange and varied. Gary Larson, Boris Vallejo, L. Sprague de Camp, Robert Howard and Lin Carter of the Conan the Barbarian novels, HR Giger, James Cameron, Star Trek, Flash Gordon, The X-Files (my wife forgives me for perving on Scully), and the many, many sexy and memorable women of sci-fi.
How did Due Lupi Books come to be?
No surprise – but it’s an odd little story. We were at a friend’s house for dinner years ago, and the host’s house was decorated with all manner of cute little gnomes. Gnomes on shelves, peeking around corners, sitting on top of the fridge – all doing very wholesome gnome-things. After the third ( or fifth, c’mon ) glass of wine I thought to myself “what would these little bastards do if they were really, really drunk?”. The next day I drew a primitive image of random gnomes and showed it to my wife, and from there the idea bloomed into life. We started drawing and sketching all manner of things that we had wanted to make over many years, and after a couple of years we had stacks of images.
Why do you also make children’s educational books?
Hmm, kind of a long story. My wife and I both love children, but it was never the right time for either of us. Unfortunate life events and other circumstances beyond our control prevented us from having children. So, we both wanted a way to enrich the lives of children in a tangible and important way, since we don’t have kids of our own.
I worked in a multi-lingual environment for many years and I was always the go-to guy for anyone who needed help with their English. And oddly enough, I discovered I was pretty good at it. So, after retiring as a chef, I went to university and earned all my props to become an English teacher. Now I volunteer as an English teacher in various places and for friends and family. It brings me great joy and I love the time spent with the kids – they are all so precious to me.
While teaching English I realized there were some opportunities to teach English in different ways and to help children self-teach – which is something very important that I learned as a chef. Self-teaching is absolutely imperative to higher learning.
How many children’s books are you publishing?
We currently have six children’s books in production, with the first one being published in the next two months. More books will follow depending on what lovely creative ideas my wife has.