Mansyur S - Benci

...but it always manages to be my day to blog when I have to work. Since I work nights, I'm sleeping during the day and then limited computer access makes me a day or two late every time.

So, this is a day late - again.

Now...if I could only find a topic.

Winter blues. That's a good one.

How does it pertain to writing? Glad you asked. If there is going to be a time of year when my creative energies lag, it's going to be in the winter. Now that we're deep in the middle of winter, I have to say, I'm having a little trouble staying focused once I sit down at the computer to write. It's not that I'm discouraged, or have writer's block, I just have a need to decompress after a year of continous writing. I'm still doing work, but not as quickly as I did say...two weeks ago.

Currently, I'm working on my follow up to Fatal Error, titled Mind Games. Lots of chase scenes kind of wears a writer out. So, I've been concentrating more on my reading lately. Trying to renew my creative juices. Just finished Angels & Demons by Dan Brown. I liked it, it moved faster than I thought it would. Then I read Prior Bad Acts by Tami Hoag. - I have to say...after reading that novel, it reconfirms my stance that she is one of the best suspense writers out there. I fell in love with her work when I first read A Thin Dark Line years ago. After that book, I had to pick up everything she ever wrote. For me, her characters are so real and flawed and believable. They stick with you days after you've put her book down. They are gritty and messy, and damn...I want to write like that when I grow up.

I've also been picking up sci-fi books by authors I've never read before. I read Distraction by Bruce Sterling a few weeks ago. Great book. Different. I was looking for a book without a love story...as I wanted something completely separate from the romance I write, but wouldn't you know it, there is this quirky kind of off-center love story in the book that so totally works. It was absolutely charming. I've also picked up Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson. I am about a day or so away from starting on that one, but I'll let you know. Apparently he wrote the Mars trilogy, that I still have yet to read. I see it in the library whenever I'm in there, and keep thinking...yeah, that's on my 'to read' list...(That's different from a TBR pile.)

I think as writers it's very important to also be readers. One of my goals this year was to expand my reading boundries. Thus, the search for sci-fi that is not necessarily romance, and the suspense and intrigue without romance. I think if I see how other writers tackle that aspect of a story, I can incorporate it much more easily into my own stories.

I don't think I could ever write a book that didn't have some romance in it. I'm just not made that way. I have written books where the romance takes a back seat, or wasn't the central focus, and that's ok.

So, what have you been reading and is it for research, pleasure, or other?

-Kat