7 Quick Takes

1. I'm well into writing the new book now, and it's all my husband's fault. Well, my husband's and my brother's. Ever since I wrote that novella, for my husband's birthday, they've both insisted I need to give the romance a break and write more sci-fi. So, I am.  And I'm loving it.

2. (I am, of course, including romance in my sci-fi.)

3. I'm loving writing sci-fi, but it feels like I'm writing a comic book. Maybe it's just that it's so action-packed compared to your average romance novel, but I feel like this book has so much incident that it's going to completely lack any subtlety. Don't get me wrong: there are clear character arcs and lovely little ethical dilemmas and all that good stuff. But there's also all these brightly-colored scenes full of violence and action and plotting and war and mayhem.

4. I think my real problem is that I have trouble believing anything this much fun can also be good.

5. A Civil Campaign is fun and good.  Agent of Change is fun and good. Survival is fun and good.

6. I think I need to get over myself.

7. To end this Quick Takes post on a completely different subject, I finally figured out what it is that Brooke Fraser's song "Something in the Water" reminds me of. It reminds me of my favorite Christina Rossetti poem, "A Birthday".

They're both all about that glorious, top-of-the-world, falling-into-true-love-and-sure-of-it feeling. Absolute delight and absolute security. Crowned-the-queen-of-love sort of security. No wonder I love both song and poem so much.

Here's the song:



And here's the poem:

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a daïs of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
-Christina Rossetti


I guess I did come back to romance in the end. :D

For more quick takes, visit Jen's awesome blog over at Conversion Diary.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell