What are you reading at the moment? Here's what I'm reading. I find reading helps me to be creative as long as it's not a parking ticket or a dentist bill.

Smoking in Antarctica By Steve Braunais
"New Zealand's funniest and most merciless columnist"

I just bought this book online from Awa Press a couple of days ago.
  www.awapress.com/
I don't write book reviews, mostly because the books I choose to buy are always really good and I don't have a lot of cutting things to say about them.
Might sound shallow but that's me.

I'm in the business of writing to make friends not enemies and I believe you can catch more bumblebees with honey than vinegar.

If on a rare occasion I buy a book that I am luke warm about because I've been inadvertently seduced by the cover art and blurb, or some well meaning relation has bought it for me for Christmas; I give it away as rapidly as possible. I don't want it polluting bookcase.

I try to never say anything about my reading pet hates in public, because after all, the writing is someone's baby.
Although of course it's a temptation, isn't it?  Here goes, just this once...
I absolutely loathe Mills and Boon Romances.
 I can't stand a lot of best selling blockbusting historical sagas or tombs about rich, powerful, good looking women finally lassooing their men or women.
I never buy womens magazines like The New Idea, although I have been known to flick through them while waiting for the dentist.

Brilliant as usual
I like black humour, irony, white humour, vulnerability, poetry and poignancy.
Steve's writing to me contains all these elements; his latest book is no exception.

I religiously read his column on the back page of the canvas magazine, which lives inside the Sunday Star Times every Sunday morning instead of going to church.
If it's fine and warm I sit out on my deck my plate of Portebello mushrooms on toasted rye with a soy latte,  and propped up in bed with my cat and husband, if cold and rainy.
It's a ritual.

Steve  is creating a novel at the moment and has four publishers interested it. Wouldn't that be every budding and unpublished writers idea of divine torture?

The great thing about having your own library of books is that you can dip into them whenever you like.

I hardly ever lend books out because I can't stand the stress of worrying about when they will return. They are like my babies.
 I  let people hold mine but I encourage them to buy their own copy or trot off to the public library after they leave.

 One of  the best investments you can make in your creative life is a book.

Ps If you want to check out a really amazing book review blog,  try beaming into beattiesbookblog.blogspot.com/ -he updates it all of the time and has some eclectic choices. He's especially supportive of New Zealand writers.

Creative Quote of the day
Your desire is your prayer. Picture the fulfilment of your desire now and feel its reality and you will experience the joy of the answered prayer.
Dr. Joseph Murphy


Interested in mosaics? Check out my website at http://www.jkeen.net/