Summertime…and the reading is easy…

Okay, I know that’s not how the song goes BUT it does seem that summer, sunshine and reading are the perfect cocktail for a hot July day. While working on my writing with limited results, I realised that my psyche was craving stories – not the ones I was trying to write but ones that could inspire, tantalize, entertain and motivate me to delve into deeper parts of my emotions, dreams and imagination. Who am I to argue with my psyche? If I can’t write, I can most certainly sink my teeth into a little reading. Except, as I discovered, there’s been no little about it.

It all started with Karen Spafford Fitz’s Vanish. From there I moved on to the vampyre series House of Night by P.C. and Kristin Cast before tackling Orca’s Seven the Series by seven extremely talented young adult writers. I then discovered Shade & Sorceress by Catherine Egan and Moira Young’s Dust Lands series. Through them all, I’ve been entranced, entrenched and enchanted. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion was a fresh delight and The Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima (the Seven Realms series) was spectacular. In between, I’ve included a few series romance authors like Carolyne Aarsen, Patricia Davids and Emma Miller, just to name a few of my favourites. On deck are The Exiled Queen and Grey Wolf Throne, books 2 and 3 in the Seven Realms series, Into the Abyss by Carol Shaben and The Twelve by William Gladstone. Saved for Hawaii in October is Richard Castle’s Frozen Heat (yes, I do know he’s not real but that’s okay) plus the new Heat book due out in September.

So have I been writing much of late? No, but I’ve noticed the past week or so that my imagination is tingling and my fingers are starting to itch – happily announcing that the muse is returning and with it, a new found spark of energy eager to ignite and spew new life into my manuscripts.

I needed to let my brain relax and absorb, to escape my everyday life and leap into someone’s else reality for a while. Books are manna to this writer’s soul and without a steady transfusion of story, I hover on the edge of a wasteland that, at times, edges into real starvation.

I don’t just LOVE to read. I NEED to read, just like I need to eat and sleep. I also need to WRITE but without reading, my writing suffers or at worse, dries up and literally dies.

With my psyche rejuvenated and momentarily sated, I can now slip from reader to writer for a few blessed hours/days/weeks of connection, reflection and inspiration.

And that is why I write. Perhaps one day, my words will inspire,  entrance and entertain someone in the same way I have been over the past several weeks through these wonderful books by amazing authors.

I can only hope. :-)