Do you read to challenge yourself? Do you prefer to read for fun only? Do you ever pick up a book on the theory of something/anything and try to wrap your brain around it? Do you read outside your favorite genre? My view is that it’s healthy and probably even essential to read well beyond your genre and comfort zone if (and this is a big if) you want to be a published writer.

Seeing as I brought it up, I’ll share my current literary workouts (and I’m leaving out the mss I read for work as that’s a separate issue).

First, the easy one. I’ve just started the 1,100 page monster bio on T. E. Lawrence titled aptly enough, Lawrence of Arabia, The Authorized Biography. I’m fascinated by Lawrence and this should give me lots to chew on. I would categorize this as being well within my comfort zone.

Now here’s the really challenging one that has me nervous. I’m going to start reading Kathryn Smith’s Let The Night Begin. It’s a romance…with vampires. In my life I don’t think I’ve read a book that could ever be classified as a romance, and nothing with vampires either. I have no idea what to expect. Love, romance, erotica, sex…where’s the cavalry charge and hand grenades? Some readers have been kind of enough to offer comments on the “romance” between Konowa and Visyna and I’ll admit, it’s a rocky one. And I’ll also admit that’s part by design, and part because I genuinely am not sure just how one makes a romance work. So, long past time I started to do a little research. It could be that a vampire romance isn’t the one to start with, but in fact I think it’s exactly the one I should start with. Now where did I put those scented candles and garlic…

Not sure if I’m the last person on the planet to see it, but I finally watched it last night. I played it on my flat screen at home and paid attention to the story…I’m thinking the real focus was meant to be on the 3D. Some neat special effects to be sure, but I’ve clearly missed the hype. I’m not being contrary for the sake of it, I happen to like a lot of pop culture from anything Pixar makes to anything NIKE makes, but for me Avatar never rose above the special effects. It was clearly all about the visual. I think I’ll try it again at a theater in 3D and see if my opinion changes.

This Thursday the S&S UK mass market edition hits stores in the UK (and I believe NZ and Oz) and includes for the first time anywhere (drum roll please) a teaser section for Ashes of a Black Frost. I do plan to post some of that eventually, but for now you can find it in this edition (and I believe online in the “Look Inside” feature at places like Amazon.co.uk).

Cheers,

Chris

I’ve had surgery, everything from having my jaw wired back into place to removing a perforated and gangrenous appendix (the doctor’s first words to me after the surgery “When you’re in that much pain it’s ok to scream. It’s what lets us know you’re really sick). I crashed a car going 160km (99 mph for you non metric types) and remember thinking “that’s a very large pillar of concrete accelerating at my windshield which strongly suggests I’m about to-” My heart’s been so broken that I wonder if I’ll ever try again. At different times in my life a knife, a gun, and a pitbull have been waved in my face (ok, the pitbull was more menacing my knee caps, but it felt like my face). And I checked off the donor box on my license thereby dooming myself to be harvested for parts, minus my appendix, but you wouldn’t have wanted that anyway. Still, I don’t think I’ve lived through an experience like I did this morning. Two hours in an MRI is not for me. I did deal with it, but it took so much force of will to endure that hours later I’m still lost. The intensity of the experience was so strong that I could have cut steel with the thoughts in my mind. It felt like a near death experience looping over and over and over. If there’s ever a next time I want enough drugs to kill three rock & roll singers and a horse.

There are a few simple joys in life that I rank right up near the top of what makes a perfect day, and one of them is reading in bed before bedtime. I’ve done it since I was a kid and it’s better than any feel-good drug on the market (although there was a time after my appendix perforated that a few shots of morphine or something like that had me smiling at the dancing unicorns on the ceiling). Rumor has it there are other fun things to do in bed, too, but as I’m single I can only speculate on what those might be…