Melissa Rea - Author

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Happy Birthday Giacomo Casanova

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Today is my friend’s birthday. Though he has been dead for 290 years, Giacomo Casanova is one of my dearest friends. I didn’t meet him in one of the Venice Casino’s he loved so much. I didn’t have the pleasure of hearing him entertain all gathered at a Paris salon with his sharp wit and irresistible charm. I fell in love with history’s most famous libertine by reading his memoir, Histoire de Ma Vie.

portraitHe wrote about his singular life with such exuberance and honesty, I somehow felt he was speaking only to me across the years. Now that’s good writing.  This work, all thirty-seven hundred pages, inspired me to set the record straight about my friend. He is thought of today as a notorious womanizer, the ultimate love-them-and-leave- them sort of guy. He certainly was that. But for all his conquests, most of the time, he loved them with all his heart.

Casanova searched continually for the one woman who could make him constant. He found her when he was twenty-eight in the love he called Henriette in his writing. She was his perfect love. It ended after a few months and his heart was never quite the same. He did, however, live to love again well over one hundred times.

In my book Conjuring Casanova, I speculate what he would be like if he were here today. His imagined discovery of our technology is a guess based on his curious and brilliant mind. His love of the female characters I have created for him, well that’s just some fictional fun. I have a feeling he would approve.

So I wish my friend the happiest of birthday posthumously and will celebrate with a glass of prosecco and a few pages of his work and mine.

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It All Begins Today, My Writer’s Journey.

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profile_picture_4Today I am a published author! Conjuring Casanova is officially published, June 7th, 2016. It has been out in the world in a limited way for a while. I have done one reading and signing in Washington DC and many of my wonderful friends and family have pre-ordered and already have their books.  Today, is the day it is real to me.

People ask me all the time, “Have you always wanted to write?” The answer is, “Of course.” You are born a writer even if you never have the courage to write a word for anyone to read. You may be born with a certain amount of talent. Stephen King thinks so and says in his book, On Writing, “Great writers are born.” He goes on to say that is rare and most writers must work very hard to become a good writer. I certainly hope he is right. That’s my plan.

The joy of writing is not just in the weaving of words but in the sharing of the stories. It is in the fact that when you share your words, you can touch others in ways you can’t imagine.  Holding the book in my hands was a little teensy bit thrilling, but when I opened it and my eyes fell on the printed words, I felt it. Those are my words and now they can be shared.

There are so many people to thank I could fill ten blogs. There’s an idea. I do have to thank Giacomo Casanova who died in 1798. That funny, sad genius of a man came into my life unexpectedly through his words. He shared his history and his deepest feelings with me in his memoir, Histroire de Ma Vie.

His Casanovawords inspired me in so many ways. His reputation was certainly not something to emulate and was never really my interest at all. I was struck by the opportunity to share the inner thoughts of a singular man from another century.  Casanova never blamed others for his misfortune. One of his greatest was that he never found a single lasting love. He sure looked hard enough. While his sadness touched my heart, it the undeniable passion in his words that inspired me. It was in the intimate sharing of his story that I found value. I loved the vivid details of his daily life so passionately related. Thank you Giacomo Giracamo Casanova and thank you to my readers past, present, and future for allowing me to share with you. This is a journey we can take together.

 

The Inspiration of Undies

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Le-Lever-deFanchonNicolasBernardLépicié-1773I know readers are curious souls and I thought you might want to share the thoughts that went through my head and led me to write Conjuring Casanova.  I was writing a three-book romance series which someday may see the light of publishing. It takes place in  1760 and if one is going to have romance in the eighteenth century, some understanding of the women’s underwear of that time is a must.

Giacomo Casanova

I worked the internet and found, “No better recordings of the ins an outs of daily life in the eighteenth century can be found than in the pages of Giacomo Casanova’s memoir, Histoire de Ma Vie.” I ordered one volume; there are twelve. In the pages I discovered this crazy-for-life,  hilariously honest and gifted writer sharing forty-nine years of his everyday life. The other eleven volumes quickly filled my shelves.

I knew nothing about the man. His rep was certainly not attractive. He knew plenty about ladies undies back in the day. He was the quintessential womanizer. How could I like him so much through his words? Yet every time I read his words I felt like “my friend” was talking to me. A friend who just happened to be an eighteenth-century libertine.

bee and flowerOne day as I held my friend’s book on my lap, devouring his words, I asked myself a simple question: What would I think of him if he was here today? Et voilà, Conjuring Casanova was born. The picture, a not-so-subtle reference to a man who spent his life in the unending pursuit of the flower of womanhood. As it happens, “Melissa” means honey bee, so how could I resist this pretty picture?