Next week I get to read again!

The Fraser family is moving to our new house on Monday, so my life has become all about packing and cleaning the old place while painting and shopping for the new one. I'm as busy as I've ever been in my life, and as frazzled and unfocused.

Why am I blogging, then, you may ask? Because I operate on a schedule of 20 minutes work, ten minutes break. Lather, rinse, repeat four times, then take a half-hour break. I split my breaks between actual relaxation and catching up on email and blogging.

When I'm this busy I can't read new-to-me fiction. If the book is so wonderful I can't put it down, then I don't put it down. I can't run the risk of falling into a book just now. I've got far too much to do between now and Monday to lose even a single evening.

And if the book is pretty good, the kind of book I'd enjoy but not consider an all-time favorite, I can't focus on it or appreciate its strengths. I don't like it as much as I normally would, it goes unfinished, and maybe I never try that author again--and s/he and I both lose.

It's not that I'm not reading at all this week. I have a complete Jane Austen on my bedside table (though I'm planning to pack that part of the house tonight) and most of LM Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott's works on my Kindle. Nonfiction is much easier for me to stop and start, so I'm absorbed in a book on household organization that I expect to find helpful as we set up our new place.

But I miss getting lost in a good NEW book, and I've already planned what I'll be reading Monday evening when the moving van rolls away:

Song of Seduction, by Carrie Lofty, is one of the debut books from my publisher, Carina Press. It's set in 1804, so my favorite era, but in Austria instead of England, also a plus since I like unusual settings. It's getting some great reviews so far, so I'm looking forward to diving in.

Naamah's Curse, by Jacqueline Carey, releases on June 14, and I've already pre-ordered it for my Kindle. It's the second book of the third fantasy trilogy set in an alternate version of our own world where, among other things, the French are part angel (and the France-shaped place on the map is called Terre d'Ange) and Britain (which goes by Alba) was never invaded by the Romans or anyone else and is therefore still a Celtic kingdom in the late medieval and early modern eras. These are big, lush epic fantasies, unusual for the genre in having first person narrators and lots of sex. They're 700 pages or so apiece, and I devour them in a day or two. If you've never read them, start at the beginning with Kushiel's Dart and prepare to be engrossed.