Brideshead Revisited and Venice

As you know, I go to the movies every Saturday morning. Today I saw Brideshead Revisited and loved it. The atmosphere of extravagance and beauty was soul-restoring. The story is rich, poignant and ultimately heartbreaking but a great testiment to the effects of blind belief, the battle of religion versus atheism, the entitled versus the unentitled, the strong versus the weak.

But most of all I loved the scenes set in Venice. I have visited there many times and always, always love it. My husband and I wander about imagining our life if we moved back to Italy and maybe to Venice in particular. We pick out an apartment (from the outside) we would like to live in and then work out how we would live. Our son is starting college next year so our main responsibilities towards him are over (bitter sweet as it is). The financial responsibility continues of course but the actual child-rearing is over. We have done our job and now we have to hope we have done it well and he can do the rest by himself. So perhaps soon we can start to think about ourselves again. Is Venice in our future?

A birthday

The little girl, in the photo has a mother, two great grandmothers, two grandmothers, five great aunts. She does have a father (and a great one at that), one grandfather and an uncle but that’s nine female influences to the three male ones. How will this influence her? The females are, without exception, strong, assertive, successful women. The chances of her growing up the same are high.
Her birthday party happened today, which called for a family reunion, and she spent her time mainly in the arms of a woman who absolutely adored her. She was blissfully happy, totally alert, the centre of attention and accepted it as her right. Without a doubt she will grow up confident, independent, a leader and a thinker. You could see that today. She thought her way through the party, drinking in every nuance, every shadow and every word.

You know the woman who enters a room and all turn to look at her?

Please meet my great-niece, Sofia –one year old today.

Happy birthday, sweetheart.

Great Review

I've just received a great review for my second book, Rough Justice, from Coffee Time Romance.

The last sentence says: Ms. Perazzini is an extremely talented writer, giving life to the thrill seeker in all of us. I am so excited to have read this, and eagerly encourage you to purchase this fantastic book.

To say I am a happy girl is an understatement.

If you want to read the rest of the review, this is the link:http://coffeetimeromance.com/BookReviews/Roughjustice.html

If I knew the future...

Over at Jennifer Jackson's Blog, she proposed the question: If you could see the future and knew you would never be published (or published again), would you continue writing?
I only read about half of the, at that moment in time, 74 comments and at least 90% said they would write anyway. However, I think I would be a part of the minority and stop writing.
I am not defined by my writing. It is not my heart and soul to the degree that without it, I would feel empty or bereft. I am a creative person. That defines me, certainly, and without a creative outlet, I would feel unfulfilled. But many ways of expressing oneself creatively exist. I ran my own business as a fashion designer (I trained while living in Italy) for a decade before selling it. I renovated homes for ourselves, family, acquaintances and aquaintances of aquaintances for many, many years. Writing is another step in my life and I am determined to be successful because I think I am good enough to be published and I would love to earn a living (even if not large) from this profession. But if I knew this would never happen, then I would turn in a different direction. Life's too short and there's too much to do to waste time fiddling with words that are just for me. For many of you, that will mean I am not a true writer, but then is the teacher who becomes a pianist not a true teacher? She was while that was her calling but who says we have only one path in life? I know for a fact that I have many and if writing is not to be one, then I will move on. Why torture oneself?