The Beautiful Woman Has Come

The Beautiful Woman Has Come
A Historical Novel by Debra Giuffrida

Friday, May 25, 2012

Blog Contests

Just a quick post... my fellow Panhistoria alumnus has just signed a 3-book deal! What a wonderful way to end the winter. Not only that she is having a celebration contest on her blog. Jump over and congratulate her. Her name is Stephanie Thornton and you can look for her book in 2013. I will keep you posted!

Blustery Days and Wild Mares

The wind is whipping it up outside. What is it whipping up you ask? Dust and debris (such as flattened empty cigarette packs, sheets of long ago paid invoices, folded pages of newspapers fluttering about like insane butterflies) to which my horses are having fits about. One mare twirled wildly in her stall banging her head and scraping her face. Poor thing and stupid smoker for just tossing his empty pack of cigarettes in an unsecured trash can. Which brings me to our trash collectors, they are a group of works who want to get their dirty job done with speed and an obvious lack of efficiency; hence the wind blown garbage dance in my stable yard.

The house just rocked from a particularly violent wind blast. Spooky. A once blue sky is now gray with wind born desert dust, yuck. Not fit for man nor beast.

So that gives me the perfect excuse to stay inside to write. And write I have. My novel is perking along nicely, at least the first 20 pages or so. I can't seem to get past editing just those. I look over at the stack of neglected manuscript and then back at my computer screen and all I can do is shrug. I'll get to it, just let me tweak this one sentence...

I have been catching up on reading some of the blogs I follow and most of them this week are concentrating on the first 10 pages of submissions from writers they won't tell us the names of. So I guess my preoccupation with my first 20 pages is OK. Even my best girlfriend wants me to concentrate on my first few pages. So, I am going to follow their advice and slash and burn and swap around sentences and change adjectives and try to keep my writing from being passive... Wish me luck.

Monday, May 14, 2012

New Lease on Life

This is a new day.

I have been sitting staring at the computer screen since 9 o'clock this morning and have accomplished next to nothing. Facebook, Hotmail, Google, Craigslist not withstanding, oh, OK I did email a new friend that I met at the Art Festival in Henderson this past weekend, so I guess you could say I accomplished one thing. I also requested to be her friend on Facebook, two things, and called my mother, three things. It's still next to nothing see?

I spent this past weekend on a huge slab of concrete in the heat surrounded by over 50 other crazy artists drawing with chalk. Why? Didn't you see my last statement? Crazy Artists is what I said, right? Right. And after the 100 degree heat we braved for 2 or 3 days if we weren't crazy before we are stark raving mad now! Bwahahahaha! Anyway we had a wonderful time, I met some wonderful people and reconnected with a few others that I have drawn with in the past, so the weekend was very enjoyable. Another thing it did was fire up my creative juices so I am back to blogging and back to editing my Nefertiti novel and so it have given me a new lease on life. Now all I need are a couple more people to read these words of wit...


Thursday, May 10, 2012

Editing and Art Festivals

I printed out my first novel the other day. All 271 double-spaced pages. These pages include all that I have written over the past years on Panhistoria that wonderful site that got me started writing about Nefertiti and my male counterpart Nakht-Set. I have since put aside Nakht-Set's story and have been devoting my time to Nefertiti and her brood. My only problem with that is that I can't seem to get beyond the first draft.

You see, I get so far then go back and start to read what I have written and make corrections. So my first dozen pages are killer but the rest... well, let's just say that there are serious gaps in the narrative.

So that is why I took the time to print it all out. I wanted to have those awful gaps stare me in the face so that I could devote the time and energy to them and leave well enough alone. At least until I have the full first draft complete. Good luck you are probably saying. You see I have the word procrastination tattooed on my forehead. In fact I catch myself talking myself into just forgetting about the whole thing! I think it's a Gemini thing. One side of my brain says "write, write, write," and the other side (the evil twin) says "ah, just go watch TV or play that cool new app on your iPhone!" Even at this very moment I am trying to put down the laptop to go outside and check on my horse... not that I need to, noooo, I just have this problem with sitting and working for more than 10 minutes at a time... attention span of a fruit fly.

The horse is fine. Yeah, I went out and checked on him. It's f'ing hot out there! Las Vegas in May is like any place else in the dog days of summer.

This weekend I have the honor of competing in a Chalk Art Festival. It is here in Henderson which is kinda like a suburb of Las Vegas. This is the third year that they are having it but my first competing. I have been lead to understand that the Rotary Club, which had been the hosts in subsequent years, is not hosting this year. And because of that fact a person that has never put on one of these chalk art thingies is running it. I shudder to think about it. Oh, and I haven't decided on the artwork that I will be drawing. Sigh... Here are my choices:

1. F. Schommer's painting of Alexander Taming Bucephalus. Wonderful BLACK and WHITE (did I say black and white?) copy of Alexander the Great and his big black horse Bucephalus. I want to do this but like I said, it's in black and white and I can't find the original painting anywhere. Nowhere. Nada.

2. William Bouguereau's painting entitled Charity. It's absolutely lovely. Ethereal. Stunning. A glowing woman holding to infants against her breast. Sigh... boring.

3. Sebatiano Ricci's The Fall of Phaeton. Dramatic colorful rendition of Icarus in the sun god's chariot plummeting to earth. It's number 2 on my list but I am afraid that there is too much going on and I would have a difficult time completing it.

Well that is the line up. I'll let you know on Monday what I chose and how I did... Oh, I almost forgot, there will be a People's Choice award. That's where the public votes for the drawing they liked best. But the rub is that it costs one dollar ($1) to vote!!!

See you Monday.

3.