Category Archives: Settings

Unusual Churches and Temples Posted by ALK3R

Happy Sunday Everyone,

Looking for unusual settings for your stories? The link for the 25 photos ALK3R posted is below with one example from Belgium that is my favorite. On my other blog, I enjoyed seeing the 400 Year old Colonial church that emerged from a reservoir “as if it was a ghost attempting to come back to life.”  Click here to see it and learn more.

Thanks ALK3R, both of your posts made my day.

For the link to  25 Unique and Breath-taking temples click here.

The See-through church in Limburg, Belgium:

church-see-through-in-belgium

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The People We Met in Las Vegas Were Friendly and Helpful

Las_Vegas Me foot on hydrant  2016 (30)As a writer, the people I met in Las Vegas impressed me with their friendliness. I’ll remember them and might use some of their characteristics in my writing.  At The Fashion Show Mall close to our hotel, I met three young women at a kiosk who became instant friends. Kate from the Philippines, Helen and Suja from Korea The three are around 30 years old, and took care of me when I had walked the ten miles on the strip in 115 degree heat and dragged myself through the air-conditioned mall on my way back to the hotel. They noticed I was over-heated, sat me in one of their chairs, Helen rushed to get me a glass of water, and  they chatted with me until I cooled down. A couple of afternoons, I returned to the mall to have lunch at the food court  and stopped by for visits with my three new friends.

At Caesar’s Casino, Mitchell and I met Michael who told us about what shows to see while we were in town. We ran into him again on another day and it was like seeing an old friend. I have to admit, one day I wanted to see the statues that perform by the huge aquarium at Caesar’s. I became lost and asked for directions several times, inevitably ending up where I began. A woman selling skin care products at a kiosk noticed my confusion, invited me to sit down, and told me tips about navigating the sections of the huge casino. We traded business cards and intend to keep in touch.

My favorite casino/hotel is New York. Winding streets with delicatessens, restaurants and little shops decorated like the ones we’d find on the  streets in New York are quaint and fun, like a setting in a novel. In the photo above, I’m waiting for Mitchell to take a ride on the roller coaster.

Las_Vegas Me Deli close up good 2016 (34)

Mitchell’s sister and family live in New  Jersey and didn’t know we were in Vegas. We texted photos in the New York Casino and had her guess where we were. This Greenwich Village coffee cup puzzled her but she didn’t fall for the idea we were actually in New York.

 

 

 

 

 

Las_Vegas Me typing kitchen background2016 (2)Back at our hotel, I took notes about the people and settings to use later for stories. Since we have a Hilton timeshare, we were given a suite free for our stay at the Trump Towers which is now owned by Hilton. The shuttle driver from the airport pretended he wouldn’t take us to the Trump Towers. I convinced him we were there because it was free, not for political reasons. He gave us a broad smile and let us on board. (Timeshares offer free days if owners go for an hour presentation on what’s new so we might upgrade.)

 

Julaina Kleist-Corwin

Editor of Written Across the Genres

Author of Hada’s Fog

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The Eiffel Tower’s Dedication Ceremony in 1889

lighted Eiffel TowerOn this day in 1889, Gustave Eiffel presided over the dedication ceremony for the Eiffel Tower. The French Prime Minister Pierre Tirard and 200 construction workers attended.

Out of more than 100 submitted designs, Eiffel, a noted bridge builder,  won the competition for a monument to be built on the Champ-de-Mars in central Paris. The tower is 984 feet tall and at the time was the world’s tallest man-made structure.  The completion of New York’s  Chrysler Building in 1930 surpassed the tower in a man-made structure’s height.

When the Paris international Exposition opened, the tower served as the entrance gateway to the giant fair. It was almost demolished in 1909, but its value as an antenna for radio transmission saved it.

Every seven years the tower is painted with 60 tons of paint. It started in a reddish-brown color, ten years later, it was painted yellow, then yellow-brown and chestnut brown. Between 1925 and 1936, a quarter-million colored bulbs illuminated to spell the 100-foot vertical letters of the automobile company Citroen. It was visible from nearly 20 miles away.

Eiffel engraved the names of 72 of the country’s scientists in the first-level gallery. In 1909 Eiffel installed an aerodynamic wind tunnel at the base of the tower for thousands of tests including those on Wright Brothers airplanes and Porsche automobiles.

I’ve been to Paris three times and the Eiffel tower always impresses me.

Information is from the following links you can click here and click here.

 

Julaina Kleist-Corwin

Editor of Written Across the Genres

Author of Hada’s Fog

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Radio City Music Hall Could Be a Setting for Fiction Writing

location news in historyRadio City Music Hall, a magnificent Art Deco theater in New York City, opened December 27, 1932. Until the late 1970’s, the theater alternated between showing first-run movies and as a site for gala stage shows. “More than 700 films have premiered at Radio City Music Hall since 1933.”

The Christmas Spectacular with the “high-kicking Rockettes, a precision dance troupe”, has been shown there since the 1930’s. Over a million people see the show annually.

“In 1999, the Hall underwent a seven-month, $70 million restoration. Today, Radio City Music Hall remains the largest indoor theater in the world.”

For more information go to:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/radio-city-music-hall-opens

As I read this information, and remembered my two visits to Radio City Music Hall in the 1970’s, I imagined several different characters and their possible stories with the music hall as a setting. Art Deco is one of my favorite designs in buildings, clothes, jewelry, movies, and art. A story set in a time and place that I find fascinating would make writing about it enjoyable.

For more settings in fiction writing, go to:

https://timetowritenow.com/category/settings/

 

Have you thought of a setting you’d like to use in a future story? Let me know in the comment section.

 

Julaina Kleist-Corwin

Editor of Written Across the Genres

 

 

 

 

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Have You Been to the Guggenheim?

Guggenheim outside view

Guggenheim Art Museum www.timetowritenow.com

October 21, 1959, on New York City’s Fifth Avenue, The Guggenheim Museum opened for the first time. “Mining tycoon Solomon R. Guggenheim began collecting art seriously when he retired in the 1930s. With the help of Hilla Rebay, a German baroness and artist, Guggenheim displayed his purchases for the first time in 1939 in a former car showroom in New York. Within a few years, the collection—including works by Vasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Marc Chagall—had outgrown the small space. In 1943, Rebay contacted architect Frank Lloyd Wright and asked him to take on the work of designing not just a museum, but a “temple of spirit,” where people would learn to see art in a new way.

“To Frank Lloyd Wright’s fans, the museum was a work of art in itself. Inside, a long ramp spiraled upwards for a total of a quarter-mile around a large central rotunda, topped by a domed glass ceiling. Reflecting Wright’s love of nature, the 50,000-meter space resembled a giant seashell, with each room opening fluidly into the next.”  Wright worked on it for sixteen years. http://www.history.com

 

Over 900,000 people visit the Guggenheim each year.  When I was in my late twenties,  I was one of the statistics. Being a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright,  the museum’s architecture fascinated me.

Now, as a writer, I’d like to write a story with characters in the Guggenheim, maybe a mystery with someone hiding in the spiral.

 

Have you been to the Guggenheim?

Guggenheim inside view

 

 

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