St. Adelaide was a cool lady

I am not being a very good dieter, but the thing about diets is that if you do badly one day you have to try again the next day. Go me!

I am not being a very good writer, either. I picked up my brand new idea book today, snuggled up with my pillow to do some awesome brainstorming, and promptly spent about an hour trying to decide the name of the CHURCH where one of the MC's GRANDPARENTS were married.

Even when I make myself think about the characters I procrastinate! AGH!

And it was St. Adelaide of Burgundy Catholic Church, just in case you're interested.

St. Adelaide is the patron saint of brides and also had the sort of shrewd longevity that lead her to not only outlive her first husband, which was not a terribly impressive feat as he was poisoned, but parlay that survival into a second marriage with Otto the Great, who was at the time Holy Roman Emperor and who, surprisingly, crowned her Empress at their wedding. She outlived him, as well, and was actually quite powerful in the court until her daughter-in-law, Theophano, had her exiled. Apparently Theophano didn't know that Adelaide would get her revenge not by any kind of scheming but just by waiting. She outlived Theophano, too, and came back to be regent in her grandson's stead until he was old enough to rule, making her effectively head of the entire Roman Empire, though I don't actually know if the Roman Empire was that large at the time. After he did grow up and take his place, she left and devoted her life to charity, which was what lead to her canonization.

This is the exact sort of awesome slow-motion power climb that my character's grandmother would approve of, so it seemed appropriate. Whether or not I will actually include the name of the church is... to be decided, but now that I've written it all out I am sort of glad I know that. It's interesting.

On the other hand, I got very little done today. I spent a good long time transferring my hand-drawn family trees to the computer, but that doesn't actually seem that important. I really love this book, but it's got to the point where it's so big I don't even know where to start. It's twisty and layered and beautiful, but it doesn't really have a "beginning". We're sort of jumping into the middle, right, and when you have a whole pool to jump into how do you choose where to land? Stupid, stupid.

Back to New York on Monday. Excited.