For Brazilians living in the United States, any American or foreigner who loves Brazil, and desires to read a highly emotional, erotic, passionate and suspenseful love story set in the exciting but competitive Bahia-Brazil, Broadway and Seville-Spain dance worlds, I have the right book for you: Love, Passion, Jealousy, written by Jon Stevens Alon, married to Lira, born in Bahia-Brazil.
The female driven book tells the saga of Lara, a fiery, sexy and beautiful young Bahia-Brazilian born dancer living in NYC. On an eternal quest of love but unlucky in her relationships with men, Lara thinks she finally found the love of her life in Enrique, the much older, passionate Spaniard flamenco-ballet choreographer of her Broadway show.
Enrique must overcome demons of his own violent past as he cannot resist falling in love with the younger, splendid, and talented Brazilian woman, making it his mission to inspire her to greatness.
But then evil from Lara’s tormented past disrupts the relationship in the form of Timothy, her brilliant, handsome, wealthy, but emotionally unstable and increasingly dangerous Irish-American dance partner and former lover.
Resentful of Lara’s relationship with the much older Enrique, Timothy becomes jealous to an extreme that blinds him to reason, and his growing obsession with Lara creates a dynamic suspenseful battle of wills, jeopardizing her life.
And as the struggle between good and evil spirals relentlessly out of control while the cast of the show labor to prepare the opening of the Broadway show, Lara must find the inner fortitude to rise triumphant over the shocking consequences of two men in love with her, to fulfill a promise she had made to her mother to never give up on achieving success. This is a towering unforgettable emotional saga of a young woman’s quest for love, and redemption when she returns to Brazil.
Thanks to his proud Sephardi Castilian roots to Toledo, Spain, and Algeria, the Israeli born former NYC Salsa dancer married to a Brazilian and passionately in love with her and Brazil, author/publisher Jon Stevens Alon was inspired by the works of the late Spanish poet Lorca, Flamenco-ballet dance master Antonio Gades, Flamenco cinema master Carlos Saura, Italian movie director Sergio Leone, passionate contemporary flamenco-pop, exciting Brazilian samba, NYC Salsa music, Broadway’s West Side Story, and Lady Gaga stylized music/dancing, as he developed a vision to fuse his passions into an emotional love story in which he could incorporate his varied influences.
In addition to the above influences, Jon also integrated into the novella love story, elements of danger, suspense, violence, moments of dark humor, and he injected a universal inspirational theme that states, regardless the setbacks and obstacles, our characters are tested when our backs are against the wall, and we must therefore never give up on achieving our dreams.
Based on one of his original screenplays, Optimum Performance, Jon who commutes with Lira between California, NYC, and Itabuna Brazil where they own a home, set the fiery novella in NYC where he was raised, the Bahia-Brazil of his beloved Brazilian wife, and the Seville-Spain dance worlds of his family, utilizing famous landmarks, streets, dance studios, Spanish Harlem Latin dance clubs he loved as a young man living in Brooklyn, New York, as well as locations in Bahia such as Barra Grande, Salvador, Pelourinho, and the Itaipava Arena Fonte Nova soccer stadium.
An immigrant to Brooklyn, New York at the age of thirteen, fascinated with Italian, Irish, and Jewish Mafia folklore, Jon gravitated toward Sicilians in his tough neighborhood, easily passing as an Italian named “Frankie” in order to belong, and spent his teen years as a member of a violent Brooklyn Sicilian street gang.
A high school dropout and teen runaway from home at the age of sixteen, returning to NYC after serving in the IDF, leaving the street hood life behind him, Jon who could barely speak English at the age of 16, worked days at a Brooklyn jewelry shop owned by a Jewish immigrant from Yemen, studied acting at night and graduated The American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Overcoming his lack of a formal linguistic and cultural handicaps that face many immigrants to America, Jon became a Canal 47 ABC executive (NYC), and at Fox TV (LA) production executive, a literary agent, an award winning writer-producer of Demi Moore’s debut feature film Choices, and writer-director of a critically acclaimed feature film about an Irish-American family in turmoil called Irish Whiskey, a published journalist, author and publisher of six books on Amazon Kindle and CreateSpace: https://www.amazon.com/author/jon-stevens-alon
“I always remember Anthony, an older veteran Brooklyn based Mafia dude born in Sicily, who was very articulate and took a liking to me saying, Frankie, if you lack a formal education, to get ahead in America in the least what ya can do is sound like you’re educated by developing a strong vocabulary. And he went on to explain how he had done it.
“I loved reading Tarzan books, so I’d highlight words I did not understand, looked them up in a dictionary, asked Americans how to correctly pronounce these words, and I’d practice them on my Yemenite-Jewish co-workers.
“For example, I can say I didn’t feel well last night and I threw up or vomited, or I can say, I didn’t feel well last nigh, and regurgitated. And these uneducated immigrant co-workers who barely spoke English, would go crazy, exclaiming – regurgi-what? Speak English, will ya!
“But regardless their hostility and my sadistic pleasure tormenting them, I persevered until I had enriched my vocabulary by 500 words, which I often used to seduce girls in my Brooklyn neighborhood who were very impressed by my NYU education.
“Eventually, when I started attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and was introduced to Shakespeare and other great playwrights, I started writing and rewriting terrible plays over and over again, but in time, after years of practice, sweat and tears, my bad work slowly improved, and ultimately, after falling on butt so many times that I was ready to quit, I overcame my insecurities and inferiority complex due to my lack of formal education, started to relax, and discovered my own unique voice which flowed naturally, rooted in the vernacular of the Brooklyn streets I grew up in as a teen hoodlum, laced with profanities of course, and dark cynical humor.
“As I started writing screenplays and books, my visual cinematic language was inspired by films of the European classic masters such as Fellini, Carlos Saura, Sergio Leone, and Americans as Brian De Palma, Clint Eastwood, Sam Peckinpah, Francis Coppola, Spielberg, and later, Tarantino, etc.”
Currently, in addition to working on a sequel to Lara’s saga and three other books, Jon, who resides in Canyon Country, California, is also engaged in the fight of his life to fund TSO, his global multimedia content provider startup company.
Asked how he can handle this pressure, Jon says, “having served in the IDF as a Centurion 105mm tank gunner, anyone who had experienced combat, seen death in the eye and survived, can handle anything.”
Love, Passion, Jealousy can be found at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GONE95I
Tony Franco was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, to Sicilian-American parents, and has known Jon since they were teenagers. Tony is a Literary Manager and partner in the Los Angeles and New York City based Quantum Leap Talent Management company, tonylitmgr.qltm@gmail.com
Tony Franco © 2016
