Virtuous Women

So, a number of people asked about the second book in the series. It's titled Virtuous Women, and takes place in the fall following Last Mass.

Some of you--those of you as crazy about Renaissance Florence as I am--may be familiar with a slim little book by the great Gene Brucker, called Giovanni and Lusanna. It examines in detail a case from 1455 in which a woman from a middle-class family of moderate means went to court claiming that her lover, a man from a very affluent, very powerful family, had married her secretly.

I recall reading this in a college class my first year at Hampshire College...oh God, Camp Hamp, where all of this began...and thinking to myself that the amazing thing about all of this was that no one had been murdered, given the heady combination of love, betrayal, money and family prestige involved.

Well, in Virtuous Women, someone's gonna get murdered. Probably a few someones. Murder, plus gender roles, social class, and childraising advice. Ginevra and Monna Veronica will tackle it all.  Oh, and Betta will have her baby, of course.

I'm about 90 pages into a draft, but I'm probably going to have to put that aside for a few months as I scramble to finish my masters' program. Stay tuned for snippets as we get closer to the new year, however.

Two and a half weeks in to publishing

I've sold thirty copies of Last Mass, which is five over my lifetime total prediction. Also, a bunch of people seem to be reading me on the free borrowing Kindle thing from Amazon. Someone on Goodreads put me on her 'reading now' list. And at least three people have demanded that I give them the chunks of the upcoming sequel I've already got written.

I have three rave reviews up from friends who were kind enough not only to buy and read the book, but to write about it. (I am not sure who the one who used a different account from their usual and compared me to Umberto Eco, P.D. James and Janet Evanovich is, but I have my suspicions.)

I feel really positive about this. Amazingly so. There is something about publication that allows me to move on, and look to the future things I want to finish and write and publish.