Rainy day in Firenze

Four weeks into our new life, and things are pretty great!  My dad is here visiting, and we spent the day up in Firesole visiting the old monastic cells of the Fransiscan missionary order.  Those monks really didn’t have a whole lot of space!  Will thought it was a haunted house and didn’t want to spend too much time there.

I was thinking that this would be a great week to get some writing done, but I’m not as grounded here as I am at home.  At home I can always just sink into my writing time.  Here it’s a bit of an effort, probably because we don’t have a lot of baselines yet.  But I have to get moving on it.  This is my week to get a whole lot of writing done.  Just check back next week and you’ll see.  I have a book to finish!

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Settling in to life in Italy

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been here three weeks now, and harder to believe that we’re just getting into a groove.  I’ve learned a great deal about Italian playgrounds, Italian toystores, and Italian ice cream.  I’m hoping at some point soon to learn a bit about art and history as well.  Keeping to a writing schedule is more difficult here than at home.  Everything is so much more fluid, and work is actually a lot harder – different preps, different class lengths, different tests, etc.  But I’m starting to get back on track.  I’m working on the third/fourth draft, depending on how you look at it, of American Caliphate, an archaeological mystery that takes place in coastal Peru, where I spent some time working on excavations.

I’m also thinking about Henry Grave’s next adventures.  Mediterranean Grave is picking up a little steam, but I still need lightning to strike to blow it into the next level of public awareness.  A little help came this week from the good folks at The Sacramento News & Review, one of the finest papers in the land.  Check out their review: http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/bibliolatry/blogs/post?oid=1922550