I love to read pretty much anything I can get my hands on. I have about 25 magazine subscriptions, ranging in various topics from hockey to astronomy to running to cooking to fitness. I also have a gigantic to-be-read pile of fiction and nonfiction books that is getting more gigantic every day, because I now buy way more books than I actually have time to read.<\/p>\n
When I am writing a new novel I can read fiction until I get about a third of the way through the book. At that point I stop reading fiction until I\u2019m done with the first draft. I don\u2019t like to be unconsciously influenced by other writers when I\u2019m trying to hammer out the story. I\u2019ll switch over to reading nonfiction \u2013 again, just about anything will do as long as it catches my eye. The next two books in the nonfiction heap are Salt: A World History<\/em> by Mark Kurlansky and Flower Confidential<\/em> by Amy Stewart.<\/p>\n I just recently finished writing the second book of the Madeline Black series and haven\u2019t gotten too deeply into writing the third so I am trying to cram as much fiction into this period as possible. <\/p>\n Right now I am in the middle of Jim Butcher\u2019s Side Jobs<\/em>, a collection of short stories from the Dresden Files. I had read many of these stories before in other anthologies but it\u2019s been fun to go back and revisit Harry-through-the-years. The collection also features one new story, which takes place after the most recent Dresden Files novel Changes<\/em>. I\u2019m trying to work my way slowly through the book so that I can savor the new story when I get to it. Butcher is one my favorite writers and it\u2019s such a treat to get an extra Dresden story when he normally only releases one Dresden novel per year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love to read pretty much anything I can get my hands on. I have about 25 magazine subscriptions, ranging in various topics from hockey to astronomy to running to cooking to fitness. I also have a gigantic to-be-read pile … Continue reading