The Varissian Affair: When Brindisi Became Sci-Fi

9/14/2025

I almost flew to Latvia for a writing retreat — until my book told me not to.

The Retreat That Never Happened

February in Brindisi Winter in Brindisi, popular walking route for Jonathan Kuiper who wrote Brindisi and Me

A funny thing happened to me in the last six months of my time living in Brindisi. There was some uncertainty in my job search as I looked to return to the States full-time, and for whatever reason, my mind and soul wanted to cocoon and write as much as possible. I still remember it well for that February vacation. I was all ready to head to Riga, Latvia, for a four-day writing retreat.

Even now, I can still see that bucolic, charming hotel with the brick recessed walls and kick myself for not hopping on the plane at that exact moment. Instead, I stayed home and wrote. Honestly, I started writing Valo, the follow-up to Riley, and the next thing I knew, I didn’t want to break the creative energy. Where I should have been leaving for the airport, I was lying on my chaise, stretched out, typing away on the computer with a notebook filled with notes and the outline for the rest of the series.

The entire week consisted of writing in the morning, followed by a short break, then writing in the afternoon, another break, and finally another session in the evening. I was doing eight to ten thousand words a day. No joke, it just spilled out of me, and in less than ten days, Valo was done, and I was onto Lane.

Sometimes the writing process just works this way, and for that I was grateful. Even after the vacation concluded, I maintained a solid writing schedule after work for the remainder of February to complete the drafts for the series, The Fox and the Girl.

The End of Brindisi and the Beginning of Varissi

I’m not sharing this to toot my own horn, but to point out when I get locked in, it’s hard to come up for air until the story is complete. As winter gave way to spring, the fact that I was leaving Brindisi became clearer. While I enjoyed some aspects of the area and loved the school, those idiosyncrasies of Italian living had shifted from charming to a giant pain in the backside.

With the rosy glow of watching Luza and Keira’s story come to an end, I needed to get something to balance me out in the closing months of the year. Many educators will share that the school year is a roller coaster and a cycle one gets used to, but it also brings different periods of high stress. The end of the year is a mad sprint with a gluttony of events mixed in with your classes, and so many changes between students leaving and, well, teachers.

Think about the range of emotions. In this case, in Brindisi, where a large expat community attended this close-knit school, the energy shifted between excitement and mourning. To that end, I needed a story to keep me sane. Sometime around this period, I wanted to move away from the tween and young adult audience and have some fun with a genre I love, or have fawned over because of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Where The Fox and the Girl is glorified fan fiction of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Marcus Files screams Star Wars, Star Trek, and Babylon 5 in between. Being in a different world, in the future, having the same challenges we face daily but magnified thirtyfold, is a literary delight.

Brindisi Becomes Varissi

Even so, I find I always write about real locations I have lived in because it’s easier to use a known commodity and then adapt it to the characters and their lives. Not to dwell on Luza, but the entire book takes place on the same lake where I spent my summers as a child. Described to the t, the characters are fictional, but those mountains, the dirt roads, the water—everything save the whistleberry—was true.

I did the same thing with The Vincent Chronicles, especially Swimming With Angels, which is in the exact location. Oh, and A Second Chance, too. My Virginia and West Virginia-based books are from places I have taught or explored in detail. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that The Varissian Affair, the first book of my trilogy, took place on an alien planet called Varissi.

What do you think that rhymes with? Even the apartment I put Tahir in is a model of my own in southern Italy, just spiced up with future technology. And the streets he walks in and the tunnel he has to defend himself are based in Materdomini, where I roamed. In a way, it’s a bit humorous because that first chapter of the book was filled with frustration and angst, just the way I felt as I transitioned away from my super loud apartment and neighbors who didn’t give two hoots about me.

Every interaction Tahir has with the locals is madness, especially when he hears them just yelling, “Bada baba badba.” I wonder who went through that daily? I share this because, without having lived in Brindisi and experienced life there, I would not have been in a position to delve into Tahir’s living situation, his being stranded on an alien planet. Sure, I spiced things up and overplayed the locals, but in a book, a science fiction series no less, anything goes.

From Pandemic to Publication

Jonathan Kuiper writing area for The Fox and The Girl, The Marcus Files, and Rusty Star

Again, we write what we know. The cosmic humour in it, though, is that I only got through the first chapter before the closing events of the school year took over my inspiration and need to write. I had to put my focus on the annual cycle, goodbyes, and the transition home. There was no room for that headspace, the one I would need to continue Tahir’s life in Varissi, until I was settled again in my new home. Strangely enough, I wasn’t in the proper headspace for another two years, and that was only in the middle of the pandemic, where I had an adequate writing nook and the time to allow myself to reenter that world.

Here’s the funnier part of this story. When the pandemic was at its peak and the school year began with hybrid teaching, I was often home by 3:00 p.m. My head was clear, so I told myself I would participate in National Novel Writing Month, but I had to clear up some previous story ideas before taking on a science fiction series. Surprise, surprise, Brindisi and Me went first. I dictated that book with ease, even when the dictation software failed me, and the book itself languished in purgatory until this past year, when it was finally revised and published.

That was the beginning of October. By the third week of the month, I was on to Seli. That’s right, for whatever reason, I slid into the follow-up book on what happened with Keira and Luza years after the conclusion of Lane. That took me until the last week of November. Then, everything fell into place. Tahir and I were ready to take on the Varissians and dive into his internal and external struggle to get off that blasted planet, finally.

Fact Leads to Fiction

If you want to have some fun and love to read, reading Brindisi and Me, a non-fiction memoir of my life living in Brindisi for two school years, versus The Varissian Affair will make you smile. The range of emotions I experienced while living in Brindisi is evident, and likewise, how they would manifest in a science fiction novel would make perfect sense. You can love a place, but also hate it at the same time. Then again, Tahir never loved Varissi. It was a job he didn’t want or ask for, but he was true to his assignment and service. I think I know another guy who wasn’t too game at first on Italy. Go figure, there it is again, fact leads to fiction.