Reading Tai-Bo
I needed a pick-me-up as I looked back on my newly revised manuscript and realized how far it had to go, and so I read some truly dreadful Christian fiction that a good friend sent my way. It’s a short story collection of romances and I’ve already blogged about the first one where a Dr. falls in love with the hugely pregnant widow next door, who has a Christmas name, and delivers her twins in a snow storm. Well, I wanted to feel better about my own writing and so I read the other three stories. The collection had a Christmas hero theme and so one of them was about an EMT who saves a beautiful widow’s daughter from choking in a restaurant and another was about a snowmobiler trapped in a mountain cabin with about a zillion stray animals and her ex-fiance, and finally a Fire fighter Santa Clause who falls in love with a fierce but lonely widow and her six-year-old son. Very gushy, but effective. I had a great time reading them and instantly felt better about my own stuff. Don’t know why 3 out of 4 of the heroines were widows? Perhaps having girls trapped in snowstorms awaiting rescue would have gotten old after awhile. I guess that the authors did not stop to consider the fact that both Dr. Dobson and Dr. Laura advise against remarriage when children are in the home due to the high rate of child abuse among step fathers. But the harsh realities of life seldom make for good romantic fiction and that is true in both the secular and Christian markets.
Well, then the hunky hubby got me two delightful books for Christmas and so after my spirits were bolstered from relaxing in the lovely marshmallow fluff of romantic literature, I started reading from both of them, simultaneously. I know, I know. But one of them is non-fiction and I believe that it is perfectly acceptable to have at least one non-fiction and one fiction book going at any one time. In fact, you can even start to stack up the non-fiction books and not get too bleary-eyed, it’s when I read more than one novel (fiction) at a time that things begin to get confused.
The novel he got me is historical fiction set in Bible times. Definitely not romantic fluff, for although people do fall in love and occasionally live to enjoy it, these authors are not afraid to kill off characters left and right if the situation calls for it. The reading can get a bit teary and so I also began “Fiction Writing For Dummies” as well, which is fun and hilarious and greatly informative and the hunky hubby assures me has no reflexion upon my intelligence whatsoever…right answer Mr. Anyway, each new writing book I read teaches me about a billion new things about writing, which I promptly forget, and so when I buy the next one, I get to re-learn everything plus whatever is unique to that book. So, my break has been good. Full of words and a few late nights. How was your Christmas break? What did you read during the holidays? Were there any heroines stuck in snow storms? Or bitter widows fending off romantic firehouse Santas?
