“For me, history is really about currents: peoples moving back and forth, languages moving back and forth, ideologies all blending together, changing the reality from any given moment,” Butler said. He is able to tap simultaneously into another aspect of his talents, one that combines historical fact with credible fiction, the product of persistent research. Now living in suburban Philadelphia - “It’s tough to be a Penguins fan and surrounded by Flyers fans, but I’m holding true” - Butler is employed as a business writer. “I was working on this one on lunch breaks in the Subway down by Braddock,” he said. Although two others preceded it, the tale of Venetian intrigue actually is the first he prepared for publication. Butler, the name he uses for his novels, with the book scheduled for release in October.

How can you not? It’s begging to be told.” “They published an edict that said, ‘We hereby exonerate all charges against Lorenzo Celsi and order the destruction of all evidence.’ That’s all we know. “No one knows the circumstances of his death,” Butler explained, as the only extant mention comes from the Venetian Senate’s Consiglio dei Dieci, the powerful Council of 10. The first answer is the ceremonial leader of the canal-laden city-state in what now is Italy.įor his soon-to-be-published third historical novel, the Plum native chose to focus on what may or may not have happened to Doge Lorenzo Celsi. If it ever comes up during Trivia Night, the 58th doge of Venice died on July 18, 1365.

A township tale review