Friday, August 27, 2010

Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance Man of all Renaissance Men!

I made the seemingly insignificant decision several years ago to teach several co-op classes on Leonardo da Vinci...An interesting man, I thought, one we could certainly be happy spending 8 weeks or so studying. Ten years, four books and a lapbook later, I am still studying him, and still teaching about him at every opportunity.

It started simply enough. Six months after starting my intensive study about him I had self-published my first non-fiction work about him -- Da Vinci: His Life and His Legacy. And so my writing, but not my studying, ended, at least for a bit.

As I taught another series of classes on da Vinci, this time surrounding his inventions and his science, there came another book, a Da Vinci Unit Study.

And then more work, and a Leonardo Lapbook developed for the younger kids.

And as the reading and researching continued, came a Da Vinci Student Book to make it easier for these younger kids amongst us to see and appreciate his drawings, his sayings, and his amazing designs.

At that point I had an entire series of non-fiction writings on da Vinci, and there I was content to stop. Until one day, when someone casually mentioned that I should write a novel on da Vinci, maybe even an entire series of novels. But, I protested, I didn't have time to write a novel...To which one of my sons informed me that I should just start, even if I only wrote a bit, it would be a beginning...Except that the beginning took on a life of its own, and 3 1/2 weeks later the rough draft of my first novel was rolling off the presses, heading out to my various editors for their assistance. And before we could have even imagined it, Leonardo the Florentine, my first novel was live on CurrClick!

And novel number two is already in the works -- though we'll be surprised if the rough draft of that is finished in 3 1/2 months, instead of 3 1/2 weeks!

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