Velvet, Glass, and Private Jets

And a current project update

October started off in a leisurely fashion, with a weekend trip to our favorite B&B in Mackinaw City. That’s how we tend to vacation — a quiet, comfy suite with good food and no work. Unfortunately it was back to real life far too quickly, and wondering where the first ten months of 2024 have gone. Lest this turn into a melancholy diatribe on the passing of time, however — a thing that irritates me on an hourly basis — let’s talk writing.

Of Velvet, Glass, and Private Jets

Murano glass turtle, Wikimedia Commons

For LEC, I researched the Swiss Guards and the Casina Pio IV, and did some scouting through Google Earth, but that was mostly all I needed since I could pull from my memories of Rome.

For Love in the Glass City, I get to explore a completely new area: Venetian arts! As you might have guessed, the “glass city” refers to Murano, once an independent city but now part of Venice. In its heyday, Murano held a monopoly on state-of-the-art glassmaking, and its craftsmen still practice the techniques and styles that have been passed on for centuries. Venice itself is known for its textiles, from velvet and damask to lace and silk (the silkworm farms were on the mainland.)

THE COLORS. The colors!!! Look!

orsoni.venezia1888

A post shared by @orsoni.venezia1888

tessiturebevilacqua

A post shared by @tessiturebevilacqua

As you might guess, some of LGC will take place in Venice…including Elena’s bachelorette party. And Rianna may or may not fly them all from Rome to Venice in her personal plane. (Researching private jets is super fun, let me just tell you. Turns out there’s a Swiss jet manufacturer not far from where the Rechsteiners live…)

In the Eleventh Month

Now, how’s the sequel coming, you ask?

It’s hard, y’all.

Not that you didn’t know that. It’s a fallen world. Everything is hard. Being creative is sometimes the hardest, especially in a world that drives us to a fever pitch of busy-ness and sensory overload and emotional dysregulation.

When I wrote what became the first draft of Love in the Eternal City, I was playing. “What happens if I try to write to the genre conventions of a contemporary romance?” I asked myself. “I bet I can do that, it can’t be that hard.” There was an adventure to it that helped smooth over the hard parts. Yes, I had to push through at times, but it was still a journey of discovery as I pantsed my way through Beni and Elena’s story.

I want to reclaim that sense of adventure and discovery. At first I thought I knew exactly where Rianna and Oscar’s story would go, but now I’m realizing that I don’t have to lock myself into that preconceived outline. I can get back to playing, and have fun with the challenge of telling a new story.

Just for fun, here’s an AI-generated character image for Rianna Rechsteiner. :D

So that’s my goal for the month of November: pound out a decent chunk of — if not all — the draft for Love in the Glass City. LEC was a NaNoWriMo book; I’ve stepped back from the official NaNo program, but I’ll still be joining my writers’ group, First Draft Detroit, for an “aggressively-Midwest-friendly” November writing challenge. Our mantra is “First drafts are legally obligated to suck.”

I also have another project (royal fantasy) in the works, which I’ve been developing since about the same time as LEC. More on The Sapphire Crown in a later email, but I’m excited to progress on it too. Come the new year, I’m hoping to put a wee beta-reading group together to help me work through the first draft.

So, for the next month, this overachieving writer will be surviving on chocolate, popcorn, and caffeine, and we won’t talk about what the house will look like by the end. See you on the other side. :D

Love,

Rebecca

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