After a couple of weeks’ rest, I’m happily back at work.I actually feel better when I’m writing. I think it’s the guilt that I feel when I’m not working. Working makes it go away! Plus, I just enjoy creating people and worlds and I’m like a fish out of water when I’m not doing it.
I’m working on both the third book in the Broken Fate series, as well as another pet project that I’ve started and abandoned so many times it’s no longer funny. (I think I’ve been messing with it for eight years, now.) I’ve decided to finish it, once and for all, and then see where it stands. Either it’s horrible and goes in the drawer, or it’s salable and I try to get it published. It’s ridiculous that I’ve been working on it for so long. It’s time to finish it and move on.
This week’s list:
- Harry Potter: The Artifact Vault, by Jody Revenson. This is the latest (and hopefully not the last) in a series of books showcasing elements from the Harry Potter films. This one focuses on the “stuff” of the films including wands, brooms, maps, snitches, etc. I love books like this because I like to see the creativity that goes into creating films and reading about the challenges that filmmakers face and how they resolve them. (I looked at earlier books in this series in this post.)
- Smoke, by Dan Vyleta. This one is a revisionist history/magical realism book about a Victorian England where people emit “smoke” from their bodies when they commit a sin or think wicked thoughts. Of course, there are “righteous” people who have set themselves up as the police, trying to reform the evil people and use the smoke phenomenon to drive their own agendas. And there is the mystery of why smoke occurs in the first place. It sounds like part fun fantasy and part warning about the world we live in.