My vacation allowed me to catch up on some much-needed reading and I was so happy to be able to read The Cinderella Bride by Barbara Wallace, my friend and blog partner at the Moody Muses. This was Barb's first book after her fifteen year journey to publication. It was a treat to be able to read this triumph and celebrate Barb's success! 
I cannot wait for Elin Hilderbrand's new release in just a few weeks, so to tide me over until then I dove into a book from her backlist - The Love Season. There are so many reasons why I love her books, but this time of year they fill a particular need in that they are set on Nantucket, which always evokes the feeling of summer, warm weather, and ocean breezes for me. I so look forward to being able to return to the island -- at least in my mind -- when her new release, Silver Girl, comes out on June 21. 
I got some great reading done over my recent vacation, and I tried to read outside my writing genre as much as I could. I couldn't wait to jump into The Black Order by James Rollins. Part spy novel, part historical thriller, it was a detailed and intricate book that had me wishing I could read faster. This is the first book of his that I've read, but it's the eighth one in his Sigma series. You don't have to read the first seven to get the eighth one . . . and I am glad there are so many others out there to be read! In Copenhagen...a suspicious bookstore fire propels Commander Gray Pierce on a relentless hunt across four continents - and into a terrifying mystery surrounding horrific experiments once performed in a now-abandoned laboratory buried in a hollowed-out mountain in Poland.
In the mountains of Nepal...in a remote monastery, Buddhist monks inexplicably turn to cannibalism and torture - while Painter Crowe, director of Sigma Force, begins to show signs of the same baffling, mind-destroying malady...and Lisa Cummings, a dedicated American doctor, becomes the target of a brutal, clandestine assassin.
Now only Gray Pierce and Sigma Force can save a world suddenly in terrible jeopardy. Because a new order is on the rise - an annihilating nightmare growing at the heart of the greatest mystery of all: the origin of life.
I hope you will give it a look!
xox,
bex
My vacation let me catch up on books I otherwise wouldn't have had the chance to read, so I was glad to have this time away! I love a good mystery, so when I saw the book, Through the Heart, by Kate Morgenroth I was intrigued. Part mystery, part women's fiction, it was a kind of hybrid I hadn't read before. There is a neat twist to the telling of the tale because the murder doesn't actually happen until the end . . . and leading up to it, not only do you not know who-dunnit, you're also not sure who the victim will be. 
With so many books in my to-be-read pile, my reading tends to gravitate toward the kinds of books I want to write, so I rarely depart from my usual tendencies to read something different. But every so often it's a nice break to venture outside that zone. A Kiss at Midnight by Eloisa James is a fun and satisfying Cinderella story - a great departure from my usual fare. I recommend it!
I just finished reading a book of fiction. When I first picked it up I thought it might be women's fiction but it turned out to be more literary . . . and the book was fine, it just that it reminded me why I tend to favor books with happy endings. Have any of you read The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine? I am curious to know what you thought about it.
Revisions are done! I think I have done all I wanted to do on this last round and I am relieved to have gotten this work done. I know projects can always be changed and improved, but the endless possibilities can prevent progress from truly happening or get in the way of being able to get closure on one project and explore the possibilities of the next one. I am excited for this book and hope at least someone out there will love it as much as I do. 
I just finished reading Kristan Higgins' latest, My One and Only. If you are a fan of her work, you're bound to like this one, too! It's a great read for summer, whether you can curl up on a porch, lay out on a beach, or put your feet up on your deck, it's a great way to lose yourself for a few hours. And what better way to usher in the summer?!
Revisions, revisions. I am almost sick of them but am perversely driven to keep trying to improve what I've got. These past few weeks have had more packed into them than I have been able to juggle . . . or at least juggle well, so I haven't gotten the writing done as quickly or in the fashion that I'd like. I am looking forward to some time off, so I want to get this work done before then. I am pushing, pushing, pushing to make progress on what remains of my revisions. Sliding deadlines are helpful but they are deadly, too. 
Last week I mentioned that I'd be attending a writing conference over the weekend, which I did and had a blast. It was great to catch up with writer friends that I hadn't seen in a while, meet new ones, and get some great ideas about my current and future books. 