Italy Archives

All My Imaginary Friends Have Superpowers

By Rachel Dacus | January 7, 2017November 9, 2017 by Rachel Dacus

Because shouldn’t we all have a little extra help? And also a friend you can always talk to, who understands everything the way you see it, or even if he doesn’t, has wisdom gently offered? Yes, everyone should have this. In my completed novel, THE RENAISSANCE CLUB, (watch for announcement of its debut date), Renaissance genius sculptor and architect Bernini provides the magical wisdom and inspiration for young art historian May Gold, stuck in a going-nowhere…

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50,000 Words in 30 Days — Surviving the NaNoWriMo Marathon

By Rachel Dacus | December 10, 2016November 9, 2017 by Rachel Dacus

It was quite a thing, writing 50,000 words in 30 days. I signed up telling all my colleagues I wouldn’t cross the finish line, that I had no intention of it. I wanted to write good words, not fast and plenty words. But guess what? I have a giant competitive streak in my nature. Every day when I checked my writing buddies’ progress, a few pulled ahead, of me. It got under my skin. I…

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Gaining Momentum in Novel Writing Month – Wheeeee!

By Rachel Dacus | November 12, 2016November 9, 2017 by Rachel Dacus

Update on my #NaNoWriMo2016 — today I wrote over 3,000 words. It helps to be doing a lot of scene-setting in an exotic location, which for my book is the picturesque Ligurian coast of Northern Italy. It also helps that I love writing descriptions of scenery and towns. I love researching places I’ve been or been near. I spent time in Santa Margherita and Portofino, and the little town where I’m setting my book is…

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National Novel Writing Month — I jumped in with sisterhood

By Rachel Dacus | November 5, 2016November 9, 2017 by Rachel Dacus

I did it. I signed up to write 50,000 words in the month of November. Partly, I did it because I’m writing a new novel, The Romantics Club, about two half-sisters who inherit a cottage in Italy and along with it, the ghost of the poet Shelley. I wanted something to distract me from two inevitabilities: death, this one my beloved brother’s; and waiting to hear about my completed manuscript, in this case from agents…

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Write another novel? At your peril

By Rachel Dacus | May 17, 2016November 9, 2017 by Rachel Dacus

Clearly writing this novel, THE RENAISSANCE CLUB, has wiped the floor with me. I haven’t worked on my new poetry manuscript, thoughtfully blogged, wittily tweeted, or amusingly updated in … let’s just say furlongs of seasons. I’m trying to pick myself up off the floor of a rigid and focused writing routine that produced a 416-page, carefully revised manuscript over a period of years. I’m trying to remember the carefree writer who could take a…

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Writing My Character’s Future Life

By Rachel Dacus | September 14, 2015 by Rachel Dacus

Photo: Nadya Phillips, Venice 2015 In writing a novel or story a writer gives lots of thought to what happened to the main character before she or he arrived at the beginning of the tale, but have we considered where she goes after the ending? If you’re contemplating a sequel or a series, it’s a natural question. But how to begin to answer? J.K. Rowling planned not only her characters’ arcs, but their futures beyond…

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Time-traveling in Italy

By Rachel Dacus | May 6, 2015 by Rachel Dacus

While researching time-travel novels as I work on my novel, The Renaissance Club, I saw that Google can grab plenty of articles that answer the question, “When is the best time to travel to Italy?” But none answered, “The Seventeenth Century.” It seems Rick Steeves and Frommer’s can’t propel me back in time to the Renaissance and Baroque to watch splendors of art and architecture arise from the workshops of Gianlorenzo Bernini and his competitors.…

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Tales of Weird Families & Other Quirky Groups of Humans

By Rachel Dacus | February 11, 2015 by Rachel Dacus

My interest in this kind of story could be defined as obsessive. What can be more obsessive than something you’ve lost or something you feel you never completely had? Novels about families and other groups fascinate me because my family never quite cohered and split apart pretty fast. So I read to replace it with a better family, though my secret wish is to see that all families or groups of closely connected people have…

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Back to Italy for a week — while revising my novel

By Rachel Dacus | December 29, 2014 by Rachel Dacus

I don’t want to finish revising my novel, The Renaissance Club, because then I will have to leave the Italy in my mind. Unless I can conjure up another Italy-centered project or a plane ticket, it’s my best form of travel these days, the armchair, or should I say deskchair variety of touring. And there are only two distant places I’ve ever visited: India and Italy. Of the two, it’s more comfortable by far to…

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Time Traveling in Italy

By Rachel Dacus | June 26, 2014 by Rachel Dacus

Today I’m working on my time travel novel set in Renaissance and present-day Italy, featuring the genius sculptor and architect who invented The Baroque style, Gianlorenzo Bernini. Of this sumptuous sculpture of Bernini’s beloved, Costanza Piccolomini, art historian Jonathan Jones wrote: “He has made an intimate monument to secret moments, a sculpted memento of his lover, whose marble reality dissolves, when you chance on her among the stony dead, into breath, life. Bernini’s genius for…