Lately I’ve reading a lot of non-fiction – mainly gardening books/magazines (hello Gardener’s World subscription!), autobiographies (Becoming by Michelle Obama) and reading around topics that interest me (Quiet by Susan Cain – HELLO FELLOW INTROVERTS/HIGHLY SENSITIVE PEOPLE). But I started to really notice that my creative well was drying up – instead of being really inspired to write, I just…wasn’t. It wasn’t solely about procrastination either (although that probably was a part of it, as much as I don’t want to admit it…) – this felt different somehow.

I thought about what had changed between the beginning of the year, and now. Aside from a shitload of personal stuff that happened, the other thing that had changed was my type of reading material. When I read the brilliant The Girl and the Stars by Mark Lawrence earlier this year, I was so inspired to write again – I loved that feeling of being completely immersed in a world and never wanting a book to end, and then once it did finish, wanting the next book RIGHT NOW. I wanted to recreate that feeling in my own books. Although I didn’t get a lot of time to sit down and write then, the ideas were flowing and I knew where I wanted to go in my writing. However since then….nothing. And I miss that – the spark of a new idea, the fire in your belly when you know you’ve just thought of an amazing scene for your book.

So I decided to go back to reading more fiction again – don’t get me wrong, I love a good non-fiction book and I love finding out about people’s real life stories, learning new skills etc, but I miss reading a book that I simply can’t put down, or that I’m itching to get back to at the end of the day.

With this is mind, I ordered two books from Waterstones – The Camelot Betrayal by Kiersten White, and Godblind by Anna Stephens. I read The Guinevere Deception last year and loved it, and I just so happened to stumble across the sequel while browsing online and had to buy it. I’d heard about Godblind a couple of years ago but for whatever reason, I never picked up a copy, so I thought the time was well overdue for me to finally read it.

Ironically – I ordered these books online just before the shops reopened after lockdown, but then we ended up going into town yesterday and I couldn’t resist popping into our local independent bookshop. Although I resisted the urge to buy any more books for myself, I did end up buying books for the Little Terror – two new storybooks for bedtime, and a children’s encyclopedia that we’re looking forward to reading to him for now, but I can’t wait til he’s old enough to read it himself and soak up all that knowledge in that tiny, amazing brain of his. Oh, and we also bought The Lakes version of Monopoly, because I’m obsessed with collecting different Monopoly sets.

The bag was free, as they didn’t have any big bags left – I was so chuffed. It might become my signature bag….

Til next time,

Z

xx