Journalists are often quick to say how their writing improves under the strict confines of menacing editors, deadlines and especially space constraints. Journalism professor Paul Salsini's recently published book, "The Cielo: A Novel of Wartime Tuscany" registers at 120,000 words.

As a former Milwaukee Journal editor and reporter, Salsini had never completed anything of this scope before. An inch of type on this page is about 32 words, so one can imagine the vastness of his undertaking.

Though Salsini is from Hubbell, Mich., his family (both sides!) is from a town near Tuscany called San Martino.

After visiting with his cousin Fosca, she mentioned fleeing to a farmhouse called Cielo (translated literally as "heaven") during World War II with other villagers when the Italian resistance was fighting the German insurgents in the area. She brought over many of the neighbors who also lived through the massacre for dinner, and Salsini got the idea for a story, originally intended to be a journalistic account.

But, because of the passage of time since the events – almost 65 years – "it was hard to get the feeling of it," Salsini said.

Nevertheless, he still felt there was a story to be told – in whatever format best suited the story.

"I had planned to write a non-fiction," he said. "The story was there; I was here. I didn't have the time."

So the self-published story turned into a historical fiction, with real events but composite and fictional characters. The story became even more pressing for Salsini after he came across the story of the massacre at Sant'Anna di Stazzema.

Salsini changed the name of San Martino in the novel, but the horrific events that killed 560 innocents less than 15 miles from the village remain the same. Priests, children and other innocent civilians all fell victim to the atrocities committed by Hitler's SS troops.

Though much of the book felt "like (he) was just transcribing," Salsini's journalistic background, paired with his teaching expertise in narrative non-fiction, made breaking rules of the trade difficult at first, then liberating later.

"At first it was hard," he said about when he first changed a quote, but then he "felt power" over the story and had one character killed off.

Though he didn't start off with an agenda, he developed one as he was writing: "To show courage and have the story set in war – but it's not a war story. I wanted to show people who are forced into a situation and endure and the best of them comes out," he said.

"It was fun," he said of the research, which included talking to the director of a small museum commemorating the massacre, and also reading SS and partisan (anti-fascist) memoirs.

The difficulty came in abandoning journalistic balance, especially when the recollections of the SS all said, "Well we're just doing our job."

"The partisans had two sides to them too, and I had to temper that impression," Salsini said.

As artists must depart with their paintings, so must the writer let the characters take on a life of their own. "I really wanted to find out what would happen (to the characters)," he said. "They surprised me."

So much so that a sequel is in progress. But as for rounding out a trilogy, Salsini laughed while denying any such idea, as if the weight of the current project (and teaching responsibilities) were enough to keep him busy for now.