a little encouragement

No, I didn't throw away my keyboard--or forget about the blog--after my last post.  I have been too wrapped up in Columbus, not focused enough on the '60s (if I want to stay on the Dean's List), and just caught up enough in maps and changing perspectives.  My inner writer needs feeding.  I went through my old notes and found a wonderful Ray Bradbury quote:

To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling.

You must write every single day of your life.

You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.

You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.

I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime.

I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you.

May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories - science fiction or otherwise.

Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.

I love that!  Before my wrestling match commences, my inner reader wants to encourage you to try Seanan McGuire's Rosemary and Rue.  Rather than trying to sum it up, I'll give you one of the author blurbs on the back: "...everything you'd ever need in an urban fantasy.  It's a smart story, cleanly told, that allows both humor and heartbreak to take their turn on stage, but more importantly, the 'urban' and the 'fantasy' are of equal importance."

It struck me as a fantastic blend of the "old" urban fantasy with its emphasis on the mythic and the "new" hard-boiled/kick-ass urban fantasy.