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 …
Category: the Renaissance
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 …
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 15th century Italy, this is a fairly impressive feat. I was ready to detail how she …
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 …
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 16th 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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …