Fly-by

Fly-by means this will be short.

I think.

I often think I'll be short and then I yap away. The last post was like that--it sort of grabbed me by the hair and ran with me.

I've been absent because my life has done that recently. I've been working on a lot of smallish things--scribbling, RWA meetings, making regular appearances at the day gig, spending time with the beloved and the sister people--that aren't particularly fascinating to report, however interesting they were to live. So no report on those.

As usual, I've been reading--I'm a reading fiend who currently has 25 books out from the library, with half a dozen on hold, and more books than I can count in the TBR pile. Right now, I'm reading Sea of Thunder: Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign 1941-1945 by Evan Thomas--I started it last night and so far it's very readable. (Not all history books are, I'm sorry to say, so this is high praise than it might sound.)

I started it after finishing A Royal Affair: George III and His Scandalous Siblings by Stella Tillyard. My first exposure to Tillyard was Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa, and Sarah Lennox, 1740-1832, which was turned into a two-part series for Masterpiece Theatre; that got me curious so I went back to the book. As Tillyard says somewhere in A Royal Affair, her career has tended to focus on the impact of siblings on a given personage, rather than parents, children or society. Since I am very close to my sisters, this is particularly interesting. I didn't know anything about George III's brothers and sisters; what I found out made me sad.

And before all that, I read the latest Loretta Chase, Not Quite A Lady, which was, as usual, fabulous. I've only read it once...which may sound peculiar unless you know that I've read Lord Perfect something like half a dozen times in the last year. But I know I'll read it again.

And that's pretty much where I've been, mentally at least.