The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

 INSTANT DISCLAIMER: This entry is not about Christmas. 

It's about the recent trip the BHE* and I took to Italy. It's about the wonderful people who hosted us, the beautiful region we visited, the memories we made. I think I've left a little bit of my heart there, and I want to go back. Now. 

My husband is an illustrator. Several years ago he was one of the original artists who created imagery for a then-fledgling card game called Magic: The Gathering. The people who played this game created a worldwide phenomenon and collected cards not just for what they could do for them in terms of winning the game, but also for the unique and fantastic qualities of the artwork. The cards were produced in many languages and fans collected them into the thousands, and even now some of these cards can fetch amazing amounts of money in re-sale value. It is no exaggeration to claim that the lives of these early artists were irrevocably changed, in terms of fame, financial gain, and even in the directions their art later developed.

Fast forward two decades. The BHE was invited to go to a tournament in a place called Viareggio, a coastal resort town in Tuscany. I visited Italy years ago, and it was on my bucket list to get him to Florence -- a place I remembered fondly for its beautiful light and history and artwork. He would have to sit at a table for three days in Viareggio and sign autographs and create art alterations on cards for several hours a day. I might have begged, without him even finishing his explanation, to stow away in his luggage if necessary. Viareggio, according to Google maps, was twenty minutes north of Pisa and about an hour from Florence. When he mentioned to his host that I wanted to come along, the reception was incredibly gracious.

We took Italian lessons. I made lists of things for our children to do (or NOT do, depending upon the situation) while we were gone, including such statements -- in red -- along the lines of "Do not let the tortoise die. Remember to feed him".  I packed less than I might need to leave room for returning with Tuscan wine and olive oil, and picked clothing that would be comfortable on me and great cushioning for bottles that would be tossed around in my suitcase by airport handlers on the ride back. I tried to figure out train schedules and how to buy tickets online for the Uffizi museum. We listened to Pimsleur recordings for more Italian. I learned how to say, "I am an American and I don't speak much Italian" and finally, at the last minute, literally minutes before the car came to get us for the airport, the most important question for a 52-year-old traveling woman: "Where's the bathroom, please?"

What follows are some of the pictures I took of the places we went. Because he had to work sometimes until early evening, we saw some things at night -- very romantic and a very unique experience. We saw, for instance, the Tower of Pisa in the dark, all lit up in its majesty. We and our new friend Roberto were almost the only ones there. If not for the roving police, we might have touched it. We saw the walled village of Lucca and walked in the fog atop the parks there under streetlight, and roamed past ruins and cathedrals and ancient doorways, on stones laid by workmen hundreds of years before. We ate amongst the celebratory students in a piazza at Pisa, at a trattoria in Lucca full of boisterous friendly people. We talked with Roberto about the schools there, and employment problems and food and history. Roberto was a graduate in Physics from the University of Pisa, but he is working in England to earn a living, since there were no teaching jobs for him in Italy. We ate wild boar and chick peas and drank wine.

On the third day, Roberto's family invited us to lunch. I found myself speaking remnants of French, which I hadn't needed since college some 30 years ago, with one of his cousins, who was fluent in Italian and French. She translated between me and Roberto's mother, who was very sweet and welcoming and gentle but did not speak English. There were at least five courses of many kinds of fish, and despite the language barriers it was wonderful. Our Italian lessons (okay, our comprehension of our Italian lessons) left us only understanding a few words here and there, but listening, just listening, to the ebb and flow and emotion and joy in the conversation sometimes was enough. I remember at one point one of the women, in a flurry of Italian, stopped and looked at me and said, without any accent at all, "New York Cheesecake" and made a face of ecstasy. Who needed a translator with something like that between us? My husband is still missing the smoked swordfish. 

Throughout our time there, we were treated so beautifully by Michele, our initial contact, and some of the other organizers, Stefano, Megghi, and Simone, as well as a wonderfully warm receptionist at the Hotel Marchionni. Every day they did all they could to make sure we were happy, and their English was far better than our Italian, yet they never made us feel uncomfortable about not being able to speak in their language. I spent a lot of time looking up words in my phrase book, but I couldn't learn quickly enough. Even after the tournament had ended, they went out of their way to guide us and take us around. 

Michele took us up to Cinque Terre, to a little town near the lower point of five towns called Riomaggiore, which was his home. It was the most breathtaking day of all. We, along with another American artist Rob, and Stefano and Megghi and their puppy Muttley, ate lunch and took pictures and climbed all around the walkways in the cliffs and over the rocky inlet ("No, honey, you can't go into the caves"). We watched the moon rise and the sun set. We listened to the clock tower bell and talked with the old fishermen. We thought about moving there.

They took us to dinner at Simone's wine bar, where Megghi's mother had made a perfect lasagna. Now I know what I've got to do better with my own. The artists worked at heavy wooden tables to finish up cards for Michele and we drank local wine. Simone picked out some for me to bring back, since who better to trust with a decision like that than an expert? His place was called, of all things, Nebraska, and if you are ever in a little town called Camaiore you must go.  Sit near the fireplace, or in the room full of bottles, and be happy. 

On the last day we went to Florence. I have to say that by that point I had come down with a terrible cold. My husband suggested I stay in the hotel, but I had come all this way. Our discussion over whether or not I should rest rather than attempt the trip was ended by the opera-singing workman on the scaffolding outside our window and his ever-present drilling and hammering. 

Florence was. Here I got to use my (desperate, by that point) necessary phrase -- "Dove il bagno, per favore?" We walked through the Uffizi and through Medici history, saw works by Fra' Filippo Lippi and Da Vinci and Michelangelo and Caravaggio, then went out into the streets and met Michele and Rob and Stefano once more. After lunch Rob and my husband went up to climb around and photograph an ancient fort ("let's just keep going until someone stops us") and I walked through the street market with Michele and Stefano. They bought me dessert and Michele and I both went through our translation lists (he on his phone, me in my book) for the word "almond", which wasn't, in the end, in either place, and didn't ultimately matter since the flavor I'd meant was mascarpone. Stefano found out that this particular bistro served over 3,000 espressos a day during Christmas. We walked through the diamond vendors on the Ponte Vecchio and along the Arno River to the car.  We ate dinner at a little restaurant along the boardwalk of Viareggio, a sleepy little place where no one rushed us out even though it was late. We talked about our homes (Rob is from Portland, but originally Toronto), our work (Michele is an architect), and our families. Countries, and cultures, are not so different as people might often think.  We went back to our hotel for the last time, walking along the street that edged the sea, through chilly December air. 

The fact of the matter is that you can meet some people in your lifetime that come and go, and some that you feel are old friends even in a small space of time. There was a moment at the airport when we said good-bye to Michele where none of us seemed to know what to say -- you realize you have made this connection and you wish it could go on -- and you hope to god it will. If any of them were to ever come to the States, we would urge them to come to us, as our friends, as a new part of our family -- just the way they treated us. 

Like I said at the beginning, a little part of my heart remains there--in Riomaggiore, in Viareggio--with the places and with the people who made it the most wonderful time of the year. 

Merry Christmas With Love, everyone.




*BHE, in case you've forgotten: Best Husband Ever, (c) 2012, Various Milliner, Ltd. What else could you call the man who takes you along on an Italian holiday?


 

Romance Writers, Look... Just... Please... Don't.

Okay, I'm going to start with the disclaimer that I've recently cut my hair short and all of these cowlicks I didn't have two weeks ago are now making me look like a rejected Muppet. So it's possible I'm just having a bad hair day and I'm cranky.
That being said, I wanted to mention some things that I've noticed a few Romance Writers doing that are driving me, and a few other editors from whom I gathered a consensus, up the metaphorical editorial wall. We've come up with a couple of topics:

1. Quit with the hair tucked behind the ear thing already. It's a tender gesture, and many heroines have unruly gorgeous hair (without f-ing cowlicks, I bet). But probably more than 30 of the 40 romance stories I've worked on this year have had a moment where the hero tucks that stray strand or lock of the heroine's hair behind her ear. To this I must say: There are other gestures you could use! How about that little brush of the backs of his fingers against hers, or the gentle nudge of a knuckle to her chin, or the way he tips his knee forward to tap hers? How about he leans in and just whispers by her cheek? I had a boyfriend who used to tuck my hair behind my ear (he also liked me to tilt my ankles a certain way and he later became a shoe salesman, but that's a different story...) and it drove me crazy. So maybe this one's just me, but then again, maybe not...

2. Location, Location, Location, or Sex on a Horse. Second disclaimer: I have honestly only read of people having sex on top of moving horses three times, and of people having sex on a camel once. Personally, however, I think that many times is really too many. If you ride horses, you know that there's a certain rhythm to the different gaits, and two people in the midst of lovemaking will have to really concentrate to match that, not to mention staying balanced and holding on to the horse, since it's a long way down. Having never tried to "go equestrian" myself, I could be wrong, but I do have a friend who damaged her lover just by being overly vigorous on a downward move, and they were on a completely non-moving bed. If nothing else, think of the poor embarrassed horse, having to face his horse friends' snickers the next day. How would you feel if two horses were entangling themselves on your back? 
The point is that if you are going to put lovers in unusual situations, please think about the logistics. I read a story where the desperate lovers were robbing a bank and got carried away back in the vault. I couldn't focus on the romance because I was worried they'd be locked in there by the quick-thinking bank manager and suffocate. One love scene placed the couple on a boat in the windy Puget Sound in early Spring -- I kept thinking "Not on the deck! Not on the deck! Go into the cabin, for heaven's sake, before you freeze off your important bits!" I read one fantasy where the lovers were riding off on a unicorn-like creature. Fine, I thought, maybe he floats. That could work. 
Let's not even discuss camels. 

3.  Just stop talking and do it. Communication is good. Especially between two people who are intimate with each other. Sometimes dialogue can make a love scene, or even just a quiet private moment, explicitly hot or passionate. Good stuff. But speaking during intimate encounters should not derail the tension and intensity a good love scene should have. If your characters are lovers in a romantic suspense, for instance, and they're in the midst of that driving force that takes their breath, neither of them should be thinking, or talking, about the terrorist or murderer they're trying to thwart: "pant, pant --'I really hope we catch Marko the Devilish tomorrow' -- moan, pant..." . If your heroine is a hometown girl working things out with that long lost sweetheart and everything depends on the success of the fund-raising picnic the next day, don't have her express her distracted thoughts, in the middle of their doing something spectacularly hot, of having enough sandwiches on hand in case his grandmother brings her knitting friends along. Even if Gran's sweet as pie and the reason they've been thrown together in the first place -- here's the Golden Rule: No Granny in the Bedroom. Ew. 

4. You said that already. I know this one's hard to avoid, especially since it's virtually impossible to write an entire novel at a single sitting, and also to remember every word you put into your story. But many writers have a tendency to re-state the back story, or elements of their characters' descriptions, again and again. Please remember to re-read your work, from beginning to end, after you've let it sit for a week or two, or have someone you trust read it, so they can tell you if you've written phrases like "He was doing it all for the men in uniform, who deserved the best he had" or paragraphs that start "She had always wanted to help the children of the town by ..." over and over, or even if you've just repeatedly described a character as having "piercing/intense/sparkling (choose your adjective) blue/green/hazel eyes." 

5.  You could have finished this thirty pages ago! She loves him but there's a Big Misunderstanding. He loves her but there's another Big Misunderstanding. She apologizes, and even though he loves her he can't forgive. Then he apologizes but even though she loves him she can't forgive. Both of them spend pages regretting how things turned out. They want each other like nothing else, but then they avoid each other like the plague. There are at least three black moments.
Look. People have conflicts. Resolutions make for stronger relationships. The bigger the comeback from the deeper the black moment, the happier the ending. But don't make your characters bounce too much-- don't make them so intractable or clueless that their actions become implausible, or worse, so repetitive they become frustrating to the reader. You never want a reader to think, "Jeez God, Jake's/Amanda's/Luke's/Chloe's so stupid! How many times can they go back and forth? Why don't they just talk about this?!" Try seeing the highs and lows of your story, keeping in mind whether the peaks and valleys in the relationship help the story progress or just put your hero and heroine through a tangled up obstacle course.

And finally:
6. Stop naming your heroes Luke and Jake. What. You think I'm kidding? You try reading 40 romance novels a year and you'll see what I mean.

Do you have any pet peeves that you've noticed when reading certain types of stories? Are there any plot points or too-often-used character traits that make you cringe or groan?