When I’m working on a book– and I’m working on the next Team W book right now!– I find it very hard to read anything in a similar style.  But I also can’t write if I’m not reading.  (Reading is like air and water to me.  If I’m not in the middle of reading a…

I’ll confess: I’m in a reading slump.  I’m longing for something new to read, but I can’t decide what it is.  A new mystery series, perhaps?  (How I wish there were more Julia Spencer-Flemings!)  Or some stand alone fiction? What I need is that book karma where the right book falls into your lap entirely…

Happy 2019, all!  I hope everyone’s holiday was merry and bright and the new year has started off as new years ought to do: full of promise and sparkle. I began the new year by finally, finally reading a book I impulse bought months ago: Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, in which the lives of…

This week, I’ve mostly been reading up for my portion of the next Team W novel, and if I told you which books I was reading, you would absolutely know which section I was writing! I am, however, starving for fiction.  Next up: Charlotte MacLeod’s Rest You Merry, which Karlene recommended last week.  Thanks, Karlene!…

‘Tis the season!  (Or getting there.)  I’m re-reading an old favorite, Trisha Ashley’s Twelve Days of Christmas, which combines several of my favorite things: a stranded house party, an old manor house, a quirky cast of characters, and a perky first person narrator.  And food.  Lots of descriptions of food.  You might want to have…

Every now and then you need to escape a bit.  So this week, I’ve been hiding in the gentle and bucolic world of Angela Thirkell’s 1930s Barsetshire, a fictional county peopled with (generally well-meaning) eccentrics of all kinds, from kindly vicars with literary aspirations to overbearing dowagers with Gardens (you know, the sort of gardens…

What am I reading right now?  The proofs (the final version before the actual book) of The Summer Country.   I can’t wait to share this book with you in June!  ARCs should be appearing fairly soon, so stay tuned for some contests. In the meantime, I also had the privilege of an early peek…

This week, I’ve been reading background material for the next Team W book in anticipation of our Grand Plotting Retreat this coming week.  But, of course, I can’t tell you what those books are, because it would be a dead give away for which section I’m writing.  So my lips are zipped. But I can…

This week, I went back to an old favorite: Nancy Mitford’s Love in a Cold Climate.  The cleverness of it, the beauty of the language, the humor, the characterization, never ceases to delight me. And, of course, Halloween wouldn’t be Halloween without a bit of theme reading, so I picked up Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party,…