A new Illuminata is up with another “Writer’s Block” column from me. It’s sort of a five year retrospective on the major points I’ve made in the column over the years. Hard to believe I’ve been doing it for that long. Sometimes I feel like I’m living in an SF movie where time has sped up for me while the rest of the world moves at the same old rate. Maybe it’s just getting older, but I'd sure like the whirlwind to stop for a while so I could get off.
Between the opening agonies of the school year and the fact that my son has been having a few health problems lately, I haven’t had much energy for fiction. I’m still doing the non-fiction thing. In reading, I'm halfway through Garan the Eternal by Andre Norton. Some of you may remember my mentioning this book a few entries back when I was talking about “Childhood’s Books.” Unfortunately, “Garan” is not satisfying my need. It’s very weak. On the other hand, I also started an old Star Trek book that I had lying around and it’s actually pretty good. It’s Star Trek: Log One, which contains stories from the short lived Star Trek animated series. These are adapted by Alan Dean Foster. Nostalgia reading, I guess you’d call it. Or if you want to use Freudian terms, I’m “regressing” back to an earlier time in my life when life was just plain better.
Like you, in times of stress I often reread old favorites. For me, however, the preferred genre is the Regency romance. My icons are the late, great Georgette Heyer, plus the modern talents Loretta Chase, Jo Beverley, Mary Balogh, Laura Kinsale, and Mary Jo Putney. And, of course, there's the original Regency novelist herself, Jane Austen. Something about stories set in that charming era, crafted by those wonderful writers, restores a sense of calm and security to me.
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