We All Scream for Ice Cream

My name is Fiorella. I am an ice cream-aholic.

I love biting into the creamy confection, savoring the buttery taste, feeling it melt in my mouth.  And I love the whole experience again an hour later.  Yes, I'm hooked.

Which is why I bought apples, oranges, raspberries, lettuce, and grapes at HEB yesterday.  Now watch--I'll probably get hooked on raspberries.

Five Literary Insights

Fio's finally figured it out.  "Dark romance" means high drama.

Fiorella goes about writing the same way she does everything else--in layers. First the bold strokes, then refinement after refinement.  It's like building an onion.

Two things are important in writing a romance--the story and the way you tell the story. And since there are only seven original plots, the way the story is presented is prime.

Idioms are the joy of language, the frosting on the cake

Fiorella thinks she wrote a lot easier when  she was a young heifer, but she has more to say now that she's an old cow.

Self-evaluation

Fiorella taught her last two-hour romance-writing class at the public library last night--and she came home high as a kite.  It's a wonder she even needed a vehicle.  There's a joy--and a challenge--to teaching, to communicating something you are passionate about to people who listen to you, who want to learn and understand.  And there's also joy to learning that you know more about your subject than you realized.

Yep, six years in RWA, and Fio's picked up a thing or two.  And she's learning more every day.

Physics, Fiorella-style

It's finally happened--Fiorella has slipped into an alternate universe.

As usual, Husband went off to work before Fio had quite awakened.  As usual, Sonia Dog begged for a bone and a treat.  As usual, Fio adjusted the thermostats and brought in the paper.  As usual, she raised the front room shades by pulling on the back cord.

But when she tried to raise the den shade by pulling on the front cord--as usual--the shade went further down rather than going up.

Yes, it had reversed itself overnight.

And if that doesn't prove string theory, nothing will.

Pimpinome, A Review

Brother and his wonderful wife took Fio and Husband to see--and especially to hear--Pimpinome, a Telemann chamber opera which premiered in 1725.  The plot was weak--it was more of a  caricature than a story--but the music was terrific and the singing was GREAT. Soprano Meredith Ruduski and bass-baritone Peter Walker portrayed a flirtatious servant and the rich man she suckers into marrying her. Ruduski owned the show--she was Vespetta to the core, but Walker, who basically played the supporting tole, bowled Fio over when he switched into counter-tenor to portray two women gossiping together.

The program was staged by the Texas Early Music Project, and the small orchestra used vintage instruments--harpsichord, traverso, viola da gamba, theorbo, and traverso as well as violins, viola, cello, and guitar.

The audience gave the production two curtain calls, but Fio could have stood there applauding all night.

Always Stylish

How weird.  It's currently stylish for little girls to dress like princesses, teenage girls to dress like sluts, and adult women to dress like men.  And, yes, even as she writes, Fio is wearing jeans and an oversized sweatshirt.  Yesterday, when she visited Friend Beatriz in Austin, she wore Husband's leather jacket over jeans and a tee.

The pendulum swings as the pendulum swings.

Show Me the Money!

As Shakespeare would say, long have I loved this speech from Othello in which the villainous Iago is persuading the naive Roderigo to frank his nefarious enterprises instead of committing suicide.

       Come, be a man. Drown thyself? drown
cats and blind puppies. I have professed me thy
friend and I confess me knit to thy deserving with
cables of perdurable toughness; I could never
better stead thee than now. Put money in thy
purse; follow thou the wars; defeat thy favour with
an usurped beard; I say, put money in thy purse. It
cannot be that Desdemona should long continue her
love to the Moor,-- put money in thy purse,--nor he
his to her: it was a violent commencement, and thou
shalt see an answerable sequestration:--put but
money in thy purse. These Moors are changeable in
their wills: fill thy purse with money:--the food
that to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall be
to him shortly as bitter as coloquintida. She must
change for youth: when she is sated with his body,
she will find the error of her choice: she must
have change, she must: therefore put money in thy
purse. If thou wilt needs damn thyself, do it a
more delicate way than drowning. Make all the money
thou canst: if sanctimony and a frail vow betwixt
an erring barbarian and a supersubtle Venetian not
too hard for my wits and all the tribe of hell, thou
shalt enjoy her; therefore make money. A pox of
drowning thyself! it is clean out of the way: seek
thou rather to be hanged in compassing thy joy than
to be drowned and go without her.

RODERIGO

Wilt thou be fast to my hopes, if I depend on
the issue?

IAGO

Thou art sure of me:--go, make money:--I have told
thee often, and I re-tell thee again and again, I
hate the Moor: my cause is hearted; thine hath no
less reason. Let us be conjunctive in our revenge
against him: if thou canst cuckold him, thou dost
thyself a pleasure, me a sport. There are many
events in the womb of time which will be delivered.
Traverse! go, provide thy money. We will have more
of this to-morrow. Adieu.