On Writing

Venice's beauty is unmistakeable. The white stone sidewalks, the sweeping arches. The mosaics. The age, the grace, the sheer heart-stopping beauty. But just as we scratch today's billionaires and discover underpaid laborers backing up their fortunes, if you scratch the surface of Renaissance Venice's beautiful buildings and start to follow the trail.... where did all that money come from, anyway? Slavery, mostly. The spoils of war, in other cases. Here are some interesting but terrible ways that people used each other in Renaissance Venice:  Aretino: One of the first writers to have most of his profits taken by his publishers! We all know how hard we work to write. Imagine doing all that and expecting money from it and not getting it (Aretino decided to find alternative forms of income by means of blackmail). Murano glass: The famed glassworkers of Murano are craftspeople who have passed the traditions down their family lines for centuries, and apprentice...

Everyone watched the boatman  Tall and lithe and lean  His music made the city  Into everybody’s dream But the stories true worth knowing  Were not so plain to see  Behind every glorious window  Was a busy little bee The women, the servants  At work in the houses  The rich take the glory  No-one sees the mouses Venice, most beautiful  Venice, most serene  Venice, most terrible  Built on broken dreams Oh the glory of her generals  (and the pain of those who lost)  Oh the wisdom of her merchants  (it was others who paid the cost) Every glorious window  Every impeccably crafted stone  Cost the blood of other people  It’s not beauty alone And now there is Venice, most beautiful.  Venice, most serene.  Venice, so terrible, yet…  In everybody’s dreams. There is no Venice but Venice. photo by Grant Zelych, copyright 2015

Venice has long been notorious for licentiousness. Young lords from many countries, including those English ones that we write so much about, went to Venice on their Grand Tours of Europe and enjoyed the wine, the women, and the song. When Napoleon marched into Venice, he repeatedly commanded them to close their churches… but the churches weren’t in very active service, anyway! It is said that too much descent into pleasure in the 18 th century is what finally led to Venice’s ruin. So devoted were they to enjoyment that not enough people were minding business affairs and the military, and they weren’t able to put up much resistance when Napoleon came for them. (Source: a puppet show I saw in Venice – some more long-winded sources below.) https://www.napoleon-series.org/research/government/diplomatic/c_venice.html https://www.introducingvenice.com/history From the English perspective, Venice was the place they went to get drunk and sow wild oats. Byron was famous for havi...

The opening scenes of "Dangerous Beauty" begin with a beautiful, mischievous young woman in the 1500s who loved books... and boys. Her eyes were wide open, enchanted with the world around her, curious. Unrestrained. Many historical novelists write about historical England, particularly Victorian England, and a big focus is often how women weren't supposed to be intelligent, weren't supposed to read and learn and love... weren't supposed to fully be themselves. The honest courtesans of Venice did not suffer from those ridiculous restrictions.  Venice, in fact, might have been the best place in the world for a women who loved to read!  Though the printing press was invented in Germany, where it really took off was Venice. Why? Venice had the money! Money meant that publishers could afford to make the books to sell, but it also meant that there was a large population of people living in comfortable circumstances in beautiful homes who had the luxury of t...

I am giving a course today to my historical writers' group and am sharing it here so others can enjoy, too.  1. Your part 2. My intro 3. First resource for the course 1. Hello!  Welcome  to Lesson 1. Today we'll be studying the Venetian Renaissance -- the first place in the world that publishing really got going after the invention of Gutenberg's printing press. We would all love to hear you say hello and say a little about who you are and what you're most interested in learning about today! It's a quick little course, but I'll accommodate all the requests I can. Renaissance Venice offers us so many rich topics -- the book business, banking, the inquisition, courtesans, libertines, commerce, multiculturalism, and the history of Venice itself, even. 2. Me: I'm your instructor, Christa Bedwin. I have spent several years in Europe immersing myself (and my son) in its various cultures and peoples and traditions, and I write time travel...

Day 6's question is following along on the research difficulties of Day 5... a big difference between cultures can mean it's difficult to understand history when we read about places in a different  language. One of the places this annoys me the most is with the roles of women in various cultures. In Renaissance Venice, there were women called "cortigiana  onesta." Who were these women, and why did this role not exist in England or America? If anybody feels like "studying" early, here's a gorgeous movie placed in Renaissance Venice that you can buy or rent from youtube. It's called Dangerous Beauty. www.youtube.com/watch?v= amqmS98FhHU Nobody posted an answer to this one... so you'll have to read the course lessons to find the answer, I guess. :)

Here’s a nice little one-day story. A surprise Valentine that magicked up for me this year. So many cool little things in the day I had to share.  For many years now I’ve decided that Valentine’s Day is just about love, all love, and I send as much of it out as I can, instead of buying into the negativity that the many people for whom all the fairytale expectations aren’t measuring up to, are ‘supposed’ to feel. Such a relief to be allowed to let go of that negativity isn’t it? I am so glad I learned how to count all the joys — my son, my friends, generous wonderful bosses and clients — so much to be grateful for. But this year I was surprised with a Valentine romance, too! My surprising Valentine  I found him about 7 o'clock in the morning. He posted on a friend's Facebook page (friend had noted that there was heart-shaped salami in Germany for Valentine’s Day) that he needed a girlfriend because then next Valentine's Day he could do up this lovely recipe he h...

The Venetians got a corner on the European sugar market long before anyone else, and guarded their production and trade secrets jealously and violently. Sugar was an extreme luxury in the Middle Ages and a massive source of profit.  Today's Question:  What Mediterranean island did the Venetians subjugate for a century to force them to grow sugar for Venice? (They didn't even allow the locals to grow their own food gardens for a long period, which forced the locals to rely on their Venetian overlords.) What queen was reigning at the time this island helplessly fell into Venetian hands? Bonus question:   Another heroine of mine comes from a wealthy family in Enlightenment-era (1790s) Edinburgh. She objects to eating sugar on philosophical grounds (she thinks people should stick to honey and good old-fashioned Scotch whiskey).  Why might she be opposed to her peers' consumption of sugar? Some sweet resources to whet your appetite: www.smithsonianmag.com...

Riley Cole offered us this great question on the Hearts through History writers' discussion list: "Jayne Ann Krentz (Amanda Quick) believes every writer has a core story they spend their careers exploring. She describes hers as romantic suspense-a passionate relationship intertwined with a murder mystery-and it's something all her books explore, across the 3 genres she writes. Have you identified a core story of your own?" What a great question! It really made me think. What an interesting definition of a writer's life -- and accurate I think. I realized it all goes back to some silly thing my mother once said to me: "Never marry someone from your home town."  (Good job, mom! I've never married anybody! *yet) In all of my romance stories, the hero and heroine are from different, often conflicting, cultures, or, they're displaced. Having been raised on a ranch as an heiress with a strong sense of land being part of one's character, t...

I'm running a little history course on 2/22 and there will be a cumulative prize pack to be won. Just for fun. Here are the first three questions in the quiz! With answers. Day 1 I'm watching a little Swedish mini-series at the moment called The Library Thief (2011). (It's nerve-wracking!) You probably know that the technology for the mass printing press was first produced in Germany (though the inventor did much of his tinkering with the idea while in another country -- Bonus point: anyone know which country (1 point) and who that was? (another point)). So, the library thief is taking his first book to try to fence on the black market... But what language would the book be in, if it was one of the first mass-printed books of Renaissance Europe?  I think a lot of people will get this one half-right (1 point), but there's a more right answer, too (3 points).   The most extensive answer & winner was from Editor  Bernadette Kearns .  So...