Nicole Sharp's Blog, page 3

Viva Italia…

At the ripe age of forty-something, I have trouble recalling some of my youthful motivations. Why did I want to be an astronaut? Why did I love Raggedy Ann and Holly Hobbie so much? What did I ever see in that weirdly lanky kid in seventh grade that I had a crush on? (He must have had a great personality.) I’ve also been wondering when my deep rooted love for Italy started. Was it ingrained in me? Italy was at the forefront of who we were, my family. Italy was where we came from. We had Italian ...

Michelangelo’s Shoes

After reading my book, Big Trouble in Little Italy, my aunt called me with this question: “Is there really a museum in Florence that has Michelangelo’s shoes on display?” You bettcha. The museum is called the Casa Buonarroti. Okay, I’ve got a few things I wanted to say on this topic, so hold on tight. Let’s start with Michelangelo’s full name. He was Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni. But our dude got so famous folks just called him Michelangelo. Like Cher, but way before Cher. People d...

Inspiration for Big Trouble

This isn’t a post to explain how to get inspired to get yourself into ‘big trouble’. It is more of a recap of a family vacation. A family vacation that I used as the map for my book. I just released my first book in June: Big Trouble in Little Italy. (You may or may not have heard about that. I fear I’ve been hysterically overzealous in my exclaiming from rooftops of my joy of finally accomplishing my life long goal.) I digress. If you’ve read the book, you might have a curiosity about the inspi...

What’s the point of writing?

I announced a book release last weekend and it was also announced that women’s rights are in danger(again/still?!). I spent February and March writing a short Christmas story for a compilation I’m going to be part of this holiday season, and the Russians attacked Ukraine. I have a pre-order sale page and work daily on the tiny, backend details to make my dream of publishing a reality, and the number of deaths are rising again because we’re still in the middle of a pandemic. And I am exhausted. T...

Italy – Part II

Here’s a bit from my journal while on vacation: I’m thinking of the writers who had months long holidays to write and work and immerse themselves in the culture. Who took large ships to arrive in Italy, because planes did not exist. I’ve been thinking of those writers who called the many months they spent on these shores their ‘European tour’. I wonder about the mosquitos along the Arno river in the spring, did they bother the writers? Did the same writers get colds and bat at the stinging blood...

Springtime in Italy

In a villa, in Chianti Country in Italy. I can’t get my coffee right. I love the espresso here, but I’m having trouble getting the milk ratio right. Maybe it’s the congestion interfering with my taste buds. The kids are awake, my oldest and my sister’s oldest are fighting. Again. We’re all in bad moods. It’s our colds. At least it’s not Covid though. There have been tests taken throughout the severity of colds we’ve all had, the good tests. Everything is always negative. I go to the apartment th...

Words For Troubled Times…

We’re almost to the two-year mark of when we first went into lock down. This isn’t news to you, I’m sure. I remember at the time being shocked. Shocked that the ‘end of the world’ came with spring blooming. With birds singing. With a calm outside my front door as nature ruffled her wings and shook off the final days of winter and shone warm sun upon my face. So the pandemic isn’t over, but we’re over it. I think that’s a safe assessment. We’ve all been ‘over it’ for quite some time. And we’ve ex...

Vulnerable Projects

Hello my loyal reader. How have you been? I hope well. I really do. It’s a new year and we’ve already reached February but it doesn’t ‘feel’ new. It could be the mountain of work my husband and I carved out for ourselves. We ordered new carpet in November for our entire upstairs area. The earliest install date was February 1. So, because of the holidays, we went ahead and procrastinated looking under the existing carpet. The first week of January, with 4 weeks to spare, we decided: It’s time! I ...

Damn Right

As my editor and I are working on the book that will be my debut, we’re getting into the nitty gritty weeds. For example, do I want to spell out my numbers (three fifteen) or just leave them in number form (3:15)? Do I want to italicize internal thoughts or leave them just in a new paragraph on their own, or do both? I’m not so sure. Another aspect is proper spelling. Proper damn spelling, if you will. I would like to make sure my foul language is spelled and used properly. You know, to make my ...