As a new item on the blog, I decided to introduce the "Currently reading" feature, where I'll talk about what I am reading at the moment and how I like it.

Right now, I am in the middle of:

Throne of Jade, the second volume in Naomi Novik's Temeraire series. The Temeraire novels are very well-done, in my humble opinion. The concept is simple but very nicely executed: think Napoleonic wars but with an air force. Not any old air force, though, but an air force consisting of dragons, dragons as big men-of-war of the skies with crews and captains and a separate corps. Lovely!

The Odyssey, the second volume in Homer's - well, you know the Odyssey, don't you? But did you actually read it? Like, properly read it from front to back cover? I hadn't, but I'm remediating that fault in my literary education at the moment.

More on both books in later posts...

I haven't posted anything for a while, for a variety of reasons:

1. Reading. Yes, I've been reading. Lots of reading - rather than writing. I was a voracious reader in my teens and tweens, right until our son was born. I kind of stopped making time for reading then, but now, as I picked up my pen and tried to write stuff of my own, I realised I had gotten out of touch with the voices that I love, with the stories that make me ache and burn inside.

So I started reading again. I finished Gibson's Spook Country, which had been lying around for a while, rushed through A Game of Thrones (and am now barreling on in volume two of A Song of Fire and Ice) and now, ten minutes ago, turned the last page of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. More on that later, I'm still too touched to analyse why it resonates so profoundly with me.*

2. Life. Work in times of Depression. Things that interfere and take away my drive to create.

3. Rewriting Total Immersion based on some valuable input from the SFF Writing Workshop people.

* Still listening to Sigur Ros, also to their previous album Takk, which is even more dramatic and makes for a great soundtrack to George RR Martin's epic fantasy!