It's official; I am in a phase of not reading. The image, of my furry friend Michelangelo, expresses what this is doing to my fragile psyche. Over the Christmas holiday (which in my family technically lasts until January 6th) I had planned to devour a whole stack of books I'd been slavering over for months, many of them Christmas or winter themed, and my total count of books read over that week is...wait for it...zero. Zero. Nothing.

It's not for a lack of books to read. :points to aforementioned stack and also to TBR mountain range: Those, I got. It's that nothing seems to stick, or my brain won't follow it. All of these books are books I actually went somewhere and selected from all the other books in that place, so I wanted them when I got them. So why aren't they doing the job now?

Before trying-to-be-helpful people swoop in with "maybe you've outgrown romance and now want to read my favorite genre instead, oh happy day" (this type of person generally goes away from said conversation somewhat singed around the edges) that's not it. Historical romance is my home and I'm not leaving. that's the way I naturally read, and the way I naturally write. There's nothing I love more than a big, thick bug-squasher of a historical romance with swash and buckle and an alpha heroine who gives the alpha hero a run for his money. Those, alas, aren't exactly thick on the ground these days, and that might be part of my :points to Michelangelo:...that.

Though I know everything in publishing goes in cycles, I don't like the phase of the cycle where I can't read. Makes me want to stomp around in circles and shoot fire out of my eyeballs. If I knew what was causing it, I could fix it, but I don't, so I can't, and some battles can't be fought. So for now, I'm not reading, apart from flipping through some art magazines, but I must confess I'm mostly looking at the pictures. This will change eventually, but for now, it is what it is.