Welcome to this week’s Margarita Moment! If you enjoy this post and are a newcomer to my little island life inspired blog, sign up for your free, weekly escape (Look along the right sidebar.). It will sail to your inbox on Mondays, more or less, depending on life’s currents and my novel writing schedule. Thanks for visiting.
Hey, all! You’re in for a treat today. Rylie snuck away from writing her secondary applications for medical schools to share a photo montage about Venice, Italy. She studied abroad her last semester of undergrad this past spring. If you missed her earlier posts, you’re invited to check out Off to Brunnenburg, Eating Northern Italy Style, Hiking the Italian Alps, Meran, Italy, and Dorf Tirol, Italy. I promise her photos are worth the click.
Venice
Hi! Rylie here. Like Mom said, I’ve been swamped with essays for medical school, but I want to show you the most incredible pictures and memories from this beautiful city. *drum roll* And the highlights are:
- Traveling by waterbus down the Grand Canal
- Seeing someone buy a freshly killed shark at the Rialto market
- Getting gelato from every store near San Marco plaza
- Waving to gondoliers
- Finding as many paintings with Jesus in them as we could at the Gallerie dell’Accademia
- Having – and hating – my first cappuccino
- Getting lost on the way back from San Marco and unsuccessfully asking the police for directions
- Almost knocking over a statue at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection
- Going to over 40 stores to find the perfect Murano glass earrings
- Watching two kittens play-fight in the garden outside our restaurant during dinner
- Getting a beer glass for free at a pub after asking the bartender if I could buy one
- Sitting on the Arsenale pier at night to watch the waterbuses finish their route
- Getting lost in the back alleyways in San Marco
- Learning that a dead-end in Venice is an alleyway that ends in water
Fiction Fest
Five writer lessons I learned at Connecticut Romance Writers’ recent Fiction Fest:
1. Secondary character subplots must match the story’s main plot theme. (Kristan Higgins)
2. When ridding of that pile of papers on your writer desk, turn it over and start from the bottom. Quickly choose which items can be thrown and which need to be kept. Then file time-sensitive papers by the month, with files for the current month in files from 1-31. Check the following day’s file folder at the end of each workday to prioritize the next day’s to-do list. (Lisa Lelas)
3. Hybrid authors are fast becoming the trend in publishing. (Roxanne St. Claire)
4. Smashwords provides free books on its website for those authors going the indie route. (Jim Azevedo)
5. Attending writing conferences are worth the time, money, and effort invested. (Jolyse Barnett)
Farewell to Summer
Are you silently mourning the passing of summer, pretending to be Turning Fall Into Spring? Are you nostalgic for the sunny days, reliving Summer Highlights to keep warm on chilly nights?
If you answered yes to these two questions (and even if you didn’t), this photo is for you:
How have you welcomed the new season?