TIME TRAVELING TO PERPETUAL SPRING by Rachel Dacus
Join us as we celebrate our author's birthday today with a guest blog by her. Rachel Dacus talks about her favourite season. Don't forget to send her your birthday wishes on social media and grab a copy of her book, THE RENAISSANCE CLUB.
TIME TRAVELING TO PERPETUAL SPRING
By Rachel Dacus
As I’ve matured, my favorite seasons have changed. When I was a baby, I loved snow, building snowmen, sledding down our street, and having a snowsuit with mittens attached. As an older child, the season of choice was of course, summer, but at that time I was living in southern California, where it’s always summer (within ten degrees of it), so I didn’t really notice the seasons. Christmas in sandals at the beach, etc. Tanning on the sand at Redondo Beach, slathered in baby oil. As an adolescent, I moved to northern California to go to UC Berkeley, and discovered seasons. Seasons! Changes we didn’t have in Los Angeles.
The first season I discovered was torrential rain. That first autumn in Berkeley was a rare deluge. We sloshed to class wearing boots and holding umbrellas aloft only to be drenched by the time we reached campus. Then we sat in wet wool turtlenecks and jeans listening to explications of Shakespeare and Camus. Trying to be tragically hip, a poet and novel writer, I found winter as my favorite season, a writing season, a time to be cozy at your favorite café, where you might hear such exotic languages as Tibetan at a neighboring table. Rains and dramatic clouds and foggy nights. Massive amounts of caffeine. I ran indoors when the sun came out, waiting for darkness or fog.
Spring was never my favorite. I was too busy emerging from winter’s paleness and angst-driven creative spurts to enjoy the pink plum blossoms falling on my head as I walked to a café, class, or job. Spring was too much sun, weed sprouts in the pavement cracks, childish movies about Easter bonnets and Seders that went on for hours. Spring was Golden Gate Park far too crowded, too much traffic in Tilden Park, and in the suburbs, Broadway Plaza unloading buses of shoppers to throng the fountain plaza and drink their coffees on the steps and benches.
But now in my riper maturity, I prize the short spring season here. It’s a rowdy Ireland-imitator, a too-short carnival of pink, gold, yellow, and periwinkle. It’s a kind of green that makes you want to be a ladybug winging around fields of wild grass. It’s loud and pretty, effusively cheerful, and better than a new dress and shoes. It’s stylish as a hat only the most outrageous woman would wear to a garden party at an estate on Mount Tamalpais. In spring here, even the freeway noise sounds hopeful. The birdsong makes a Mozart aria seem sad.
The two short months of spring we get in the East Bay hills, before they turn brown, is so outrageously my favorite that I’d like to time travel to stay in it. Sometimes I try, by visiting gardens in nearby, more temperate zones, where things stay green longer. And when all that fails in September, escaping to the coast in places like Monterey and the Carmel Valley, where it’s early spring all year around. If I had to time travel, it would be interesting to spring-hop through the best places to experience April-May: 18th century Kauai, 19th century Paris, 17th century Tuscany (where I plan to be time traveling in a new book).
Get Your Copy Today!
THE RENAISSANCE CLUB
By Rachel Dacus
Fiery Seas Publishing
January 23, 2018
Time Travel Romance
May Gold, college adjunct, often dreams about the subject of her master’s thesis - Gianlorenzo Bernini. In her fantasies she’s in his arms, the wildly adored partner of the man who invented the Baroque.
But in reality, May has just landed in Rome with her teaching colleagues and older boyfriend who is paying her way. She yearns to unleash her passion and creative spirit, and when the floor under the gilded dome of St Peter’s basilica rocks under her feet, she gets her chance. Walking through the veil that appears, she finds herself in the year 1624, staring straight into Bernini’s eyes. Their immediate and powerful attraction grows throughout May’s tour of Italy. And as she continues to meet her ethereal partner, even for brief snatches of time, her creativity and confidence blossom. All the doorways to happiness seem blocked for May--all except the shimmering doorway to Bernini’s world.
May has to choose: stay in her safe but stagnant existence, or take a risk. Will May’s adventure in time ruin her life or lead to a magical new one?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Rachel Dacus is the daughter of a bipolar rocket engineer who blew up a number of missiles during the race-to-space 1950’s. He was also an accomplished painter. Rachel studied at UC Berkeley and has remained in the San Francisco area. Her most recent book, Gods of Water and Air, combines poetry, prose, and a short play on the afterlife of dogs. Other poetry books are Earth Lessons and Femme au Chapeau.
Her interest in Italy was ignited by a course and tour on the Italian Renaissance. She’s been hooked on Italy ever since. Her essay “Venice and the Passion to Nurture” was anthologized in Italy, A Love Story: Women Write About the Italian Experience. When not writing, she raises funds for nonprofit causes and takes walks with her Silky Terrier. She blogs at Rocket Kid Writing.
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