Rosaria of Venice -- Choosing a Cover, and the May 24th Kickstarter

I'll be Kickstarting Rosaria of Venice, the alternate history steampunk Renaissance novel I wrote and am now revising, this month on May 25. The proceeds are to pay for cover illustrations (front and inside) as well as editing and proofreading.

While I won't be commissioning the final works until the Kickstarter campaign finishes, I have already been working with illustrators on concepts for the front and inside covers. The illustrator I hired to do the front, Amelia Davis, has finished color mock-ups of three possible covers:

I'm really liking how they turned out. In fact, I can't decide which one I want to use as the final. So I'm going to let the backers decide. When I run the Rosaria of Venice Kickstarter campaign from May 24th to June 14th, everyone who backs the project will get to vote which thumbnail becomes the final cover. 

So please save the date, and consider pledging if the book strikes your fancy. (If you want a taste of what the book itself is like, you can read the opening chapter here.) I will be posting more information here over the next few weeks, so please check back or subscribe to the Runicfire RSS feed for updates!

An American Accident: How Columbus's Landing Amounted to Sheer Luck

In the popular culture, we afford Christopher Columbus a peculiar degree of reverence. My childhood books and history lessons portrayed him as a visionary, fighting against the ridicule of ignorant, flat-Earth scholars and kings to sail West to India, and who through grit and perseverance achieved both the discovery of the Americas and that the world was round. This, of course, is nonsense—which, I’m happy to say, most adults I’ve met seem to understand. Scholars knew the earth was round since antiquity, and the Renaissance was no different in this respect. Furthermore, while Columbus may have been ignorant of the Americas’ existence, I do believe the Aztecs, Mayans, Inca, Mississippian and various other inhabitants of this land were quite aware of the fact.

The Devil in the Details: How Contact with the Americas Affected World Cuisine

Historical fiction—even alternate history—poses a unique challenge to authors: the ordinary circumstances of the past are not those of the present. In writing my novel, I came to a scene where the protagonist jury-rigs a primitive battery. This being 15^th century Italy, this is a fairly impressive feat. I was ready to detail how she affixes wires to a potato and exploits this household root to produce a current.

Then I stopped. I had forgotten one important fact: there were no potatoes in 15^th century Italy.

The Renaissance Man Versus the Industrial Machine

In my continuing research for my novel, Rosaria of Venice, and its sequels, I came across an interesting book. It is titled, simply and appropriately, The Italian Renaissance, and is authored by J.H. Plumb. So far, it is at once the most concise and comprehensive resource I have found on the time period.

I find its description of the forces behind the Renaissance’s flowering of art especially interesting. Several factors, apparently, contributed to the rise of the artist in Renaissance Italy. The rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman works, and the technique behind them, is an obvious one. Likewise, the spread of education played a role. But one of the most important factors was wealth, including that of newly successful merchants.

Telling Time in the Renaissance, Part II: From Water Clocks to the Pendulum

Last week, in Part I on my series on Renaissance time keeping, we discussed the Julian calendar’s Roman roots and its Gregorian revision the 16^th century. This week, we explore the evolution of the clock in Renaissance Italy and its implications.

There is no clock like the Present. It is a colored steel circle with a single hand. Instead of counting the hours, minutes or seconds, it turns a tiny bit each day. A full year later, it will make a complete revolution of the clock face.

The Kickstarter Handbook, which references the Kickstarter campaign which funded the Present’s creation, credits its creator, Scott Thrift, with saying: “I’m at war with seconds. The second hand is a recent invention. I think it’s only 120 years old or so. It damages the way that life actually is. There’s a larger scale at work.”

Value judgments aside, Thrift is completely mistaken about the second hand. Second hands measuring 1/60ths of a minute have been in use since 1670 or earlier. Their introduction in the last century of the Renaissance represented advancements in the design and accuracy of clocks. The roots of these breakthroughs stem from the centuries prior to the Renaissance, and their attainment made the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions possible. Few things have changed the world like the reckoning of time.

This Week on Runicfire: March 4 – 10

This Monday we open with a set of links to articles on prison reform, the plight of the VFX industry, and the potential ramifications Obama's pending decision on the Keystone oil pipeline may have on the environment.

On Wednesday I'll be putting up a brief piece on filmmaking.

And Friday shall feature Part II on "Telling Time in the Renaissance:" my series on how the people of the Italian Renaissance kept track of time. You can find Part I here.

Enjoy the week, and stay tuned!

Telling Time in the Renaissance, Part I: A Change in Calendars

Time is a slippery beast. You may believe otherwise, if you live in today’s West. Here, the moments march lockstep in time with the news ticker, Twitter feeds and the stock market bell—every event branded with a number. The precision of industry disguises the artifice that is our experience of time.

In the world of our ancient forbears, however, we had less evidence of time’s passage. The seasons flowed one into another with each year’s refrain, and the phases of the moon signaled the strength of the tides. When those cultures saw fit to measure these intervals, they faced a panoply of decisions in the face of the elements. As civilizations grew, they sometimes saw fit to change those decisions and alter their measure of time. The Renaissance saw at least one such change to fruition.

This Week On Runicfire: Feb 25 – Mar 4

We kick off this week with a roundup of interesting links on Monday, regarding such diverse topics as the film industry, the use of the Wii in medecine, and the hardships Moroccan women face in the wake of a changing political economic climate.

Wednesday's post will touch on the art of superheroines, and how we can improve it.

And on Friday I shall continue blogging on research for my novel, via a short essay about calendars and timekeeping in the Renaissance.

Be well, and please stay tuned!

SFWC, Self-Publishing and the Second Renaissance

I just returned from the San Francisco Writer’s Conference. This is my first year in attendance, and in the aftermath I have so much to say that my thoughts render me mute. What do I feel? I think I feel like I have finally come home.

The conference is of too great a scope for me to sum up in one post, but I discovered a common refrain: e-books are changing everything. One of the first panels I attended was about digital publishing. Guy Kawasaki spoke at Saturday morning’s keynote about—yes—digital publishing, and Friday’s afternoon keynote featured romance author Bella Andre, who discussed how she earned a spot on the New York Times Bestseller’s list as a self-published author.

The Renaissance: Real and Reimagined

This is the first part of a series in which I discuss a portion of the research behind Rosaria of Venice, my forthcoming alternate-history novel, and other matters related to that research. If you like what you read, please keep an eye out for new updates, and tell your friends!

There was a time, centuries after the fall of Rome, when northern Italy blossomed with the rediscovery of ancient culture. Perspective returned to painting, form to sculpture, and new artists expanded upon the ancient techniques. These times saw the rise of the printing press and the spreading of literacy. The new age brought political turmoil and religious revolution through the Protestant Reformation. The works of figures such as Copernicus and Galileo shaped science into a semblance of its modern form. Through the cracks of feudal Europe, the modern era broke soil.

We call this period the Renaissance.