I know where I come from

After my interview with the awesome Jill Hathaway, I started to think about how being a small town, midwestern girl affects my writing.  And since I think pictures just make everything better...I should probably say how it changes my writing with pictures...

When I started writing HOW TO DATE AN ALIEN, I knew that I wanted Alex to be from a small town, but it didn't make sense to have the Alien Operations Center in the midwest, so I first tried Roswell...too bad I've never been to Roswell, so I found somewhere just as good.

Arizona!  One of my best friends actually moved to the state when we were 10, so I've visited a few times and have to say that I don't mind not having humidity!  The mountains gave a perfect backdrop for the Operation Center and getting to talk to my friend about differant thing Arizona is always helpful.

But Magan isn't Columbia in New York and you've never been there?  Exactlly...and neither has my main character.  In a small farm town, some of us went to college and some of us stayed home and worked or got married and had children.  Out of those of us who went to college, most of us didn't go too far from home and alot of those who did ended up transferring back.  I touch a little bit on that and just how amazing it is that a girl from a small Illinois town would be applying to Columbia.

And of course how could I forget what it's like to be the small town Italian girl?  No, Alex is not based off me and my life in any way, but sometimes we just have to take what we know and put it in our writing.  Like me, Alex is half-Italian and knows what it feels like to stand out in a small town.  As an adult (and since everyone now thinks they're Italian...thanks Jersey Shore...) I've learned how my differences make me unique and that normalcy is very overrated (thanks Kiersten White!)

Monday Musings

So...you've all been waiting to hear about my honeymoon in Sicily, or maybe you haven't but you're going to hear about it now.

For those of you who don't know I am an officer in Toastmasters (an international speech club), so naturally, I chose to write a speech about my honeymoon.  And you all get to here it first (with pictures!)

Mongiat.  It's the Italian word for eat and that's exactlly what I did on my honeymoon, eat.  My husband, Tim, and I were engaged for a year and a half, so we thought that after all that waiting we should splurge and spend two weeks in Sicily for the honeymoon. 

The first week was spent in the old city of Palermo, were we spent the week in the posh Hotel Porta Felice, that was netled down the street form beautiful parks and even a botanical garden.

IN the mornings Tim and I would be treated to a large breakfast buffet as we sat at the rooftop restaurant, overlooking the city.  Now a Sicilian breakfast buffet is a little differant than what you would get in an American hotel.  We expected maybe a few pastries, dry ceral, and eggs if we were lucky.  What was got was a feast.  One huge table was piled high with Italian sweets such as cannolis, cookies, and cheesecake.  Then, if that wasn't enough, just to the side of that was a big buffett of differant meats, cheeses, and breads.  Plus, I even got my eggs and bacon, but this was not ordinary bacon.  This bacon was about a foot long and atleast an inch thick.  Finish that off with a canoli and you could have almost rolled Tim and I out of there.

After breakfast we would usually make our way down one of the main streets, Vittoro Emmanual, shopping at differant shops or taking the beautiful old churches and theatres that were plentiful in the old city.

We couldn't walk around for too long because the city loved it's siestas.  Between the hours of One and Four it was lik ethe whole town would shut down.  Sometimes, if we were lucky, Tim and I would get to sit down at a Traitorria (more of a smaller restaurant with a fixed menu) and enjoy a lunch of Pizza.  Of course when you order something for Five euros you expect maybe a small hand helf pizza, but that was definitely not what you get in Sicily.  We would ge ta huge plate piled with a thin pizza crust and just topped with differant cheeses, meats and salami.  By the time we were down eating it, it was definitely clear that w would need a siesta ourselves.  Now we expected that we would be able to wake up and walk around abit and eat dinner maybe around 5 or 6, well like everything else in Sicily this was not the case. 

By our second week in Sicily, we had started to get the routine down.  Since that second week was spent in the beachfront town of Giardini Di Naxos, they had shorter siestas for the tourist and by that time Tim and I were pros at this Sicilian eating game.  We would be up for breakfast in the morning and then spend the rest of the time by the pool eatin gpineapple granitias.  Our tummies might have been grumbling by 5'oclock, but don't worry there was plenty of places to eat Gelato!

(There is more to the speech,but I don't want to bore you all.  More pictures will probably come up!)