Tuesday Teaser

Here's another excerpt from Giacinta's new Chapter 1. I've had a terrible struggle trying to picture medieval Italian architecture for this story. It's all so different from the castles I'm used to describing in England and France. It's taken a very long time for the architectural design that was apparently common to nearly all Venetian houses to begin to click in my brain, but little by little I think I'm getting the idea. 

(Speaking of pictures, I actually drew a very rough one imagining what the the portego--1st floor--of Giacinta's house might have looked like.  I thought about sharing it with you, but it's soooo rough I haven't had the courage. Maybe I can neaten it up at some point and share it with you here. We'll see.)

I don't think I've described the portego very well in my story so far, but hopefully it'll get better in revisions. Just do your best to imagine the portego for now in this little excerpt.

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Torchlight beckoned her from the T-shaped end of the long hall of the portego. It was left burning all night to allow the illusion that the household of Saverio de Luzio never slept. They did, of course, behind the doors to the chambers that framed both sides of the portego, but her father’s fabrication stood a symbol of her ancestors’ industry that had raised them from simple salt farmers to one of the wealthiest merchant families of Venice. Giacinta passed her father’s chamber and Amadio’s and the others to go gaze through the bank of tall, arching windows that overlooked the canal. Even from the height of this second floor, the torchlight cast small yellow pools against the dark rippling water.

Where would you take me if I let you carry me to the mysteries that lie beyond our city where my father goes, those tantalizing points on the maps that Amadio is such a laggard to learn?

She sighed, turned away, and walked back to Amadio’s chamber, two doors down from her own.

Tuesday Teaser

It's nearly inevitable with a writer like me. I tried outlining a book in advance once, but it proved to be a dismal failure. My characters ran off and told an entirely different story and turned all my outlining into a tremendous waste of time. Ever since then, I've just jotted down a few ideas of character and plot to get me started, then started writing and let my characters take me where they wanted to go.

The downside of this writing method is that sometimes my characters don't tell me things in the first draft until I'm several chapters into the story, then they force me to go back and rewrite the beginning before I can push on through the rest of the story. That's what happened with Nick & Gia's story last week. I thought I was happily writing away on Chapter 12 when Giacinta suddenly revealed some new information to me, and now I'm back writing a brand new Chapter 1 just to please her!

Here's an excerpt from Giacinta's new chapter.

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 “Donato is only a baker, but he says he loves me madly and will knead his fingers to the bone to keep me richly gowned and our table laden with all of the delicacies he imagines must grace the kitchen of a man as rich as Saverio de Luzio, the silk merchant.”

In truth, they dined simply more days than not, especially when her father was on one of his trading ventures. But when he was home and had guests he wished to impress, he loaded his table with foods strewn with exotic spices, and dressed his daughter and son in lavish attire. Giacinta was glad he was gone more months than he was home.

 “I do not think Papa cares for love, though. I mean, not for me,” Giacinta added hurriedly, so as not to offend her mother. “You know how Papa is. I do not mind. I do not care for love either, not since Francesco died.” She shifted her gaze away from the bright star called Venere, scanning the shimmer of lights in the blue-black canopy of the heavens. Curious she had never found a star to remind her of Francesco. She supposed she still carried his memory too deeply in her heart to let him free.

Tuesday Teaser

I fell off the Tuesday Teaser wagon for a bit...I do that sometimes. Sorry! Let's give it another go-round. Here's a new teaser from Nick & Gia's story. (Yes, I'm still working on it. Slow and steady will hopefully win this race...eventually!)

Did I mention that the hero of Courting Cassandry, Gerolt de Warrenne, plays a part in this story when he was a young man? Here are a few paragraphs of him getting into mischief with his friend, Samson, in medieval Venice.

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Caution dissipated as Gerolt found the first handholds and pulled himself up. He expected the path to be easier, given Samson’s dexterity, but the bricks were not always where Gerolt thought they should be. Perhaps because his limbs were so much longer than Samson’s, he kept misjudging their placement. Di Luzio had not been much above Samson’s height, so the distance between the bricks had undoubtedly been chosen for the natural length of his body.

Gerolt tried to think “shorter”, but soon he felt a wild giddiness rushing through his brain. It’s the wine, he thought, hitting me at last. He glanced down, startled for a moment to see how far below him lay the shadows of the garden. He had stood on the soaring parapets of his father’s castle and looked out over land and people grown curiously small, but he had never hung in the air like this, so exposed, so helpless should his grip slip. Would he plummet into a bramble bush or would he hit the hard earth at the bottom of those shadows? Would the fall bruise, or had he climbed high enough to break a few bones? Or my back? Or my neck?

He bit off a euphoric laugh. It is the wine. It has made a fool out of you. Yet as he scrambled for the next brick and the next, he thought he had never felt so blazingly alive as he did scaling this gloriously precarious wall.

Tuesday Teaser

Here's a new Tuesday Teaser from Nick & Gia's story for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

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“Sir,” she said quickly, “I assure you that we are but—”

“Brother and sister, cousins” —the man cut her off, a thread of laughter in his voice— “he is clearly too young to be your uncle.” He waved a hand that looked gloved in the air. “It is no concern of mine, signorina. I will leave you and your . . . ‘brother’ to resume your amusements, then. Buona notte!”

He strolled past them, his cloak rustling on the breeze as he whistled a light tune into the enveloping darkness.

Amadio muttered, “I warned you in the tavern that men would mistake you for a—”

She whirled on him. “Do not say that word with my name. If you had stayed home as I ordered you, I would not be so humiliated.”

“It was reckless of you to follow me, and unnecessary, as well. What, did you think Il Cavaliere Scarlatto had abducted me? I would like to see him try!”

Tuesday Teaser

Today's Tuesday Teaser introduces my heroine, Giacinta, as my hero, Nick Ryder, first sees her as she enters a tavern in Venice. (Keep in mind that this is 1st draft material, so there may be some clunky sentences. They should get smoothed out in revisions. This is just to give you a taste of the story I'm working on.)

A woman stood in the open doorway. Not the sort of overly-primped wench with stained cheeks and lips that the harlots of Venice attempted to seduce men with. A natural elegance radiated from the crimped coils of her bronze-colored hair, to the delicate blush on the glow of her faintly golden skin, to the modest embellishments on the gown that draped a shapely bosom, and the slender, beringed fingers that somewhat tremblingly clutched the doorjamb. Nick’s gaze followed the flow of her skirts over the graceful curve of her hips to the tips of the red slippers peeking out from beneath their folds, before returning to her face. He judged her to be near her twentieth year.

Her brown eyes, warm and luxuriant as honey, stared into the tavern, round with dismay, as though she gazed upon some scene from purgatory. Her blush deepened, perhaps from all the stares of the men fixed upon her, more than a few of which had gone broadly lecherous. Her hand left the doorjamb to briefly touch her hair, as if belatedly aware that she had failed to don a covering veil. Dread flashed in her eyes, so stark Nick thought she might turn about and flee. To his surprise, a shout half-rose in his throat to stay her, for he sensed her departure would leave a blast of cold in his chest.

Then her gaze darted to some point behind Nick and he saw her spine stiffen. Her expression altered. He had seen just such a look in men’s eyes on the battlefield: an unflinching resolve to face the enemy blazing in defiance of the weakness of fear. Her sweetly rounded chin lifted with all the fortitude of an unflinching warrior.

A Valentine Tuesday Teaser

I fell a bit off the writing rails in 2016. I spent the first 5 months of the year being sick and the last 7 months trying to catch up with all the things I fell behind with the first 5 months. But 2017 is starting off better (knocking on wood, let's not jinx it, shall we?), and I'm working hard to get my writing back on track. Instead of resuming a sampling of daily sentences from my daily writing sessions to share with you, I've decided to share a weekly Tuesday Teaser from my work-in-progress instead.

If you read my 2016 romance, Courting Cassandry, my new story takes place 31 years earlier when the hero, Gerolt, was nineteen years old. He and his friend, Samson, play young secondary characters in this new story, but the romance centers around an English knight named Nick Ryder and the daughter of a Venetian silk merchant named Giacinta. And yes, the story takes place in Venice!

Here, in honor of Valentine's Day (which should always involve flowers, don't you think?), is a tidbit of a scene between Nick and Giacinta in Giacinta's garden. I hope you enjoy it!

These narrow, tiled gardens of Venice must not be conducive to inspiring romantic garlands or chaplets. Nick's fingers flew now as he entwined one flower after another into the braided ivy. He interspersed the bold colors of the violets, gladioli, periwinkle, and melograno with the delicate white of the gelsomino and an occasional honeysuckle, wrapping their stems around the ivy to secure the flowers in place.

“Oh, but how pretty!” Giacinta exclaimed when he tilted the wreath for a final inspection of his work. 

He set the wreath atop her crisscrossed braids, then smiled. “Now it is beautiful.”

Her cheeks turned a becoming pink. She reached up a hand, tentatively touching her fresh-blossomed crown. “English ladies wear these on their heads?”

“Young, unmarried maidens do.”

She sighed. “I am not young.” She lowered her hand, but to his relief, did not remove the wreath.

“How old can you be? I guess you a mere twenty.”

“I am twenty-two,” she said, though she looked slightly pleased that he had under-guessed her age. “Nunzia Rosa has been married for seven years. If Stefano does not marry me soon, I shall end up a spinster.”

“You? A spinster? The thought is absurd!” And who the devil is Stefano?

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