Joyce DiPastena's Blog, page 15

Summary Sunday

My sister's gone. I miss her big time, but on the bright side, I got some good writing in again on Lucianna's story. I see the end in sight! Here is a sampling of new sentences from this week.

Monday: There was too much spite in Serafino’s face to hope he might be driven from Vere Castle without exposing her.
Tuesday: “But my hopes are dashed and once and for all, I wash my hands of you.” Serafino struck his palms together twice in Lucianna’s direction, as though literally divesting them of something unclean.
Wednesday: “But you did not marry Vincenzo,” Siri said as Lucianna allowed herself to slip into the increasingly soothing rhythm of gathering and folding Sir Balduin’s scattered clothes. Siri gave a tiny gasp. “Or did you?”
Thursday: Lucianna gave a sharp shake of her head, but her stomach continued to feel like heaving, molten lead.

Friday: No, she could not live like this, grieving for a man she loved, knowing him still so near, feeling his revulsion for her stretching between their castles.

Summary Sunday

My sister is visiting this week and next, plus I was sick one day (I know, excuses, excuses!), so my work on Lucianna's story has slowed down a bit, but I did get four days of minimized writing in to keep the story advancing. Here is a fresh sampling of where the story is going!

Monday: Sir Balduin reached for Lucianna’s nearest hand, the one she still had balled into a fist. She flung it behind her back in a panic.
Tuesday: (sick - blah)
Wednesday: “And see! He is a slob as well, I will forever be picking up after him.” In truth, the disorder of Sir Balduin’s chamber had somewhat dismayed Lucianna.
Thursday: “I believe I have some say in this matter, sir,” Sir Balduin said to Serafino with a fierceness that startled Lucianna.

Friday: (Lucianna): I will lose him either way. Better one swift, searing break than to watch the long, slow withering of his love.

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Summary Sunday

I made better progress with Lucianna's story this week. A particularly fun episode to write was an exchange between my hero, Sir Balduin, and Triston's young son, Perrin. I've only included two snippets of that scene here, but I look forward to sharing it with you in full when the story is finished. :-)

Monday: (Seven year old Perrin to Sir Balduin): “One day Papa suggested that Siri was eating too many sweets and Siri burst into tears and said, ‘I am not fat, I am having a baby,’ and Papa said, ‘That is not what I meant—’, but I never found out what he did mean because he just started apologizing until Siri quit crying, and then she apologized too, and then they looked at each other all goggly eyed—you know, the way you and Lady Lucianna used to look at each other—and the next thing I knew they were kissing, so I left the room.”
Tuesday: (Seven year old Perrin to Sir Balduin again): “Father Michel said it is not refined for a baron’s son, but he won’t let me swear, either. I have to say something when I am vexed. So I say bah.”
Wednesday: Serafino appeared to be trying to charm Siri with one of his angelic smiles and some words that flowed from his lips in those same enchanting accents that Lucianna spoke in.
Thursday: The symbol had suddenly become dear to Sir Balduin again on the day he had asked Lucianna to be his wife. As he had let out his anxiously suspended breath at her blushing assent, the obscure future he had grown to envision for himself suddenly took on vibrant meaning at his anticipation of sharing his life with her.

Friday: (Serafino to Sir Balduin): My sister may be, shall we say, a little beyond the bloom of youth, but she is still a maiden whose virtue I consider myself honor bound to defend.”

Summary Sunday

I only got four days of work in on Lucianna's story this week, but four days is still progress! Here is a new sampling of sentences for her story:

Monday: Lucianna stared at Serafino and the wooden plate in his hands, heaped with roast venison in a sauce that smelled of pepper, a chicken pasty, and a pork tart, all topped with a kidney stew that was surely soaking the pasty and tart shells to mush.
Tuesday: The abbess herself had christened the babe Lucianna for she had been discovered on the bitter cold morn of Saint Lucia’s Day.
Thursday: Lucianna had called Sir Balduin many things in an attempt to drive a wedge between them, but she had never called him that! “Did he say I called him a buffoon?”

Friday: She, Lucianna, who had always been called tigress, fury, spitfire, even once by an overawed suitor in her youth, an Amazon for her bold, fiery ways, had in truth been a pathetic, selfish, frightened child to have allowed Serafino to manipulate her so shamefully for nearly thirty years.

Summary Sunday

I'm making a little extra progress with Lucianna's story while I'm waiting for the final beta reads of The Lady and the Minstrel to come in. Lucianna's story will probably slow down again when I go back to revisions on L&M, but until then I've been giving her a little extra time.

Here are some new sentences from her story this week.

Monday: Lucianna parted her lips to deny that she had had anything to do with the dish, but Sir Balduin preempted her with a robust smacking sound that followed a morsel of chicken he had chewed and swallowed.
Tuesday: Poetry, like Italian, dismayed him, though, making him question his wits when he faltered, upsetting the confidence in his intelligence he realized he’d always taken for granted in plainspoken conversations.
Wednesday: “Foxy hair? Milky smile? You are not only drunk, you are an atrociously bad poet.”
Thursday: Sir Balduin did not see how he could redeem himself after this disaster, yet he could not prevent the return of a fresh flutter of hope at Serafino’s words.

Friday: It was Lucianna’s tigress nature Sir Balduin had come to love, once he had realized it stemmed not from dignity or pride or disdain as had first appeared, but from a fiery protectiveness for those she cherished with a dauntless passion.

Summary Sunday

Some writing days were better than others this week, but I managed to make some progress with Lucianna's story. Here's a sampling of sentences for the week.
Monday: The humiliation and grief Serafino had cast upon Lucianna that day would flare up from its long-buried depths if she thought Vincenzo remembered her as anything more than a vague, pitiful moment from his past.
Tuesday: He would not guess that she had deliberately chosen for her dining attire colors that would wash her complexion out and allow all the flaws of her forty-four year old face to shine through. 
Thursday: Lucianna kept her gaze strictly fixed on the tables below the dais where the rest of the household knights and men-at-arms dined, no matter how hungrily her eyes longed to drift to the face of the man who sighed rather dispiritedly beside her, starved for his features after his week’s-long absence from Vere Castle.
Friday: (Sir Balduin to Triston) “He confessed to me in that naïve way of his that the cadence of the horse’s paces sometimes drifts his mind into melody—aye, sir, absurd! But that is Acelet for you.”

Saturday: Siri had said she would not try to change Lucianna’s mind about Sir Balduin, but if a hodgepodge on his trencher gave Sir Balduin hope that Lucianna was having second thoughts and encouraged him to try to change her mind himself, Siri must think her conscience at quits.

Happy Easter ~ Because of Him

Summary Sunday on Saturday!

The Lady and the Minstrel is in the hands of its first round of beta readers, so while I'm waiting anxiously for my readers' reactions, I'm working on a new novelette, or possibly a novella. We'll see how it turns out in the end. I thought it would be fun to write a little follow-up on the romance between Lucianna and Sir Balduin that began in Illuminations of the Heart. I'm discovering that Lucianna has all kinds of secrets in her past that she's been hiding from me and everyone else until now!

Now that I've got a new project underway, I've decided to resume my Summary Sunday reports where I share with you one new sentence (or more) that I wrote during my writing sessions the previous week. Usually I share these sentences with you on Sunday, but since this Sunday is Easter, I decided to share them on Saturday this week instead. :-)

So here's a little taste of what I'm working on for Lucianna's Story. (I don't have a better name than that for it yet.)

Monday: It had never bothered Sir Balduin before that Acelet sometimes called him “old grumbler,” anymore than Acelet had ever objected to Sir Balduin calling him “young Acelet” when the youth was trying very hard to prove himself a man rather than a boy.
Tuesday: (Acelet to Sir Balduin) "He’s taught me the words for all sorts of shades for women’s eyes to incorporate in one’s poetry. I had no idea eyes came in so many variations, had you?”
Wednesday:Lucianna had imagined the angels who embroidered the holy altar cloths in the celestial city must all employ needles so divine for their sacred, joyous work.
Thursday: “You mean Siri knows that absurd story you and your dear Elisabetta concocted, you mean,” Serafino said with a sneer in his voice.

Friday: They had had years to create an elaborate, convincing, and tragic tale of Lucianna’s unknown parentage. Two young girls who had become inseparable during their time in the abbey, and desperate and determined to maintain their sisterhood when Elisabetta’s father finally called her home.

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