Drive-by blogging for a while here, as real life is holding me hostage.

Since becoming more involved in family health care, I find myself packing a lot of bags -- the bag that goes with me to visit my father in the nursing home or hospital, and now the one that carries his blanket for his dialysis sessions. I always include one of my writing notebooks and at least one book, and either Romantic Times or Romance Writers Report.

It would be easy to not-read in the middle of all of these changes, even easier to not-write, but I have to. If I don't keep at it now, it won't be important, and it is. So even if it's one page or one paragraph at a time, reading or writing, it's forward motion. It's doing something. It's a rest or a reach or a moment to dip a toe into the wonder of another time and place.

Current read is Philippa Gregory's Wideacre. Historical, yes, and in a favorite era of mine, Georgian England. Not a romance, but there is the overriding passion of the heroine (though in a romance, she'd make a great villain) Beatrice, for the land, her estate, Wideacre. No bones about it, she is twisted, amoral and evil through and through -- and fascinating.

Gregory makes us understand why Beatrice does the awful, unthinkable things she does (no spoilers, read it yourself) and though that doesn't make any of her choices right, I have found myself talking back to the book (yes, I talk to books) and telling myself "you do know you're rooting for the villain." Fascinating reading, and I have the next two related books rubberbanded together to prevent peeking.

Well, most peeking. I had to know who the protagonist of book two was. Should be a very intriguing trip on that one as well.