Books I read in June....

Just the 29 books this month

Quite a few good ones this month, the couple of stand outs would be... Last Stop, Better and Kindred Hearts

Really enjoyed the Adrien English series too... but unlike most reviews I actually really liked Jake throughout and can't help wishing that we'd had his point of view and thoughts at some point.

One small thing – Piper Vaughn & MJ O’Shea

Holding On – Michael Joseph

Better – Jaime Samms

We Danced – Jeff Erno

Five at Table – Michael Joseph

Cleave (cutting cords#3) – Mickie B Ashling.... I wasn't disappointed by this last instalment, except that the ending seemed a little rushed and forced

Kindred Hearts – Rowan Speedwell

Wacky Wednesday – J. A. Rock

Deadlines – Fabian Black

Beyond Eden (Eden #1) – Kele Moon (M/M/F)

The one that got away – Raine Allie & Madeline Urban

Masters & Boyd – SDJ Peterson

Destiny Calling – Fabian Black

The Heart of Texas – R J Scott

Bound by Deception – Ava March

Last Stop – Lou Harper

Attitude Adjustments – Syn McGinley

The Cowboy Poet – Clare Thompson

Soft Focus – Reno MacLeod & Jaye Valentine

Hearts Under Fire – H. J. Raine

At his throat, a promise – Lilith Grey

Market Day, a Hammer Story – Sean Michael

Fatal Shadows – Josh Lanyon

A Dangerous Thing – Josh Lanyon

The Hell You Say – Josh Lanyon

Love in G Minor – Sean Michael

Death of a Pirate King – Josh Lanyon

The Dark Tide – Josh Lanyon

A Bad Case of Loving You – Laney Cairo

A moment of "ouch"...... again!!

I am sitting here typing this with an egg cup full of milk being held over one eye..... no it's not some strange and unusual new kink...... it is, unsurprisingly, the result of a moment of stupidity... again!!

Once a week my sister and I are expected to attend mum's house for tea... tonight was my turn and as it was some sort of Thai veggie salad with glass noodles my sister declined (my family like to tell people I am actually adopted as unlike any of the rest of them I don't really drink, I don't eat meat and I don't like hot weather... mum has promised my sister if the weather holds they will bbq over the weekend as I have guests they intend to do an all out meat bbq with a fair bit of wine...)

Anyway, back to the salad... which was very nice, and all finely chopped crunchy veggies and marinated tofu chunks in quite a nice chilli & garlic sauce..... 

So, having eaten and been entertained for an hour (in which my mother caught me up on the neighbourhood gossip, and got a slight lecture come rant about the correct form of address for the FtoM 13 year old next door but one....... which she wrote down and is going to tell the other neighbours... she's well trained like that) I got in the car to drive home....(and yes, I did put my shoes on!)

and about half way I lifted my glasses to wipe my eye as I waited at traffic lights.... and almost hit the roof of the car.... yup... chilli sauce on my fingers... bad bad mistake...

I squinted and eye watered whilst driving slowly and somewhat erratically the rest of the way home at the same times as cursing loudly ... twas bloody painful .... the milk has helped take the sting out but my eye is horribly bloodshot and revolting.... 

I phoned mum to say thank you and told her what happened... did I get sympathy... no I just got reminded that there could have been worse places for me to put chilli fingers.....though she did concede that possibly not when I was driving.....

My genres are merging!!

Aside from my now, over a year long, obsession with M/M fiction one of my other main genres is crime... with a particular soft spot for female PI's (Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone and Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski in particular) and other American based police procedural type novels....one of my favourite authors in that genre being Faye Kellerman, whose husband's books I also read... 

So the other day, in a fit of being pissed off with the world and wanting to treat myself I was browsing amazon looking for a book and might have accidentally have bought the whole of Josh Lanyon's Adrien English series.....which I am working my way through (up to book 4 so far)

So, this morning, after the mob got me up and dragged me round the park I was reading for a bit whilst reclining on the sofa wishing it was the weekend and I must have fallen asleep (thank goodness I didn't drop the Kindle) and having been mid read I was suddenly thrown into a rather strange story line in which all the characters merged... 

I've spent today, on and off between working, still reading, but now I keep expecting Milo Sturgis (the openly gay LAPD detective from the Jonathan Kellerman books) to appear, or his surgeon partner Rick to be operating on Adrien... add to that mix that I am sure Rina Decker (wife of LAPD Lieutenant Peter Decker from Fay Kellerman's books) to be browsing in Adrien's shop and annoying her husband by getting mixed up in police investigations she shouldn't....

Now the fact that I can see these characters/storylines merging begs a question or two... are these books all to following fairly generic storylines?  Are the characters all fairly generic off the shelf ones, or are they showing a fairly realistic representation?  Or simply do I read far too many of these books and need to get out more....

I just need to find an M/M crime book based in San Francisco to mix with the crowd from the Sharon McCone books - where there is a gay character in Ted Smalley her office manager (not to forget his partner Neil and his antique book business) ....

Or yes, I need to get a life outside of books....

the doormat curse.....

I have been trying to write this blog post for the last 30 minutes, but my head is a little busy right now....

I can't say exactly what I want to say... save for that I have 100% confirmed to myself that I am a complete and utter doormat, I don't learn by experience and I should know better.

One day I will learn not to offer myself up as a sacrificial victim to be walked all over or used as an emotional drain for other peoples woe and drama.

My real friends (by which I mean both in person and on line), the friends who I know give back as much as I would give to them, I have no problem with offering an ear, a hug, a piece of totally (normally totally useless) advice, or even just an opportunity to be silly for a bit and forget that real life is a bitch at times.... this I am happy to give 100% unconditionally.... knowing that in the future if I need the same they will give it in return.

Then there are so called friends, who just leech when they want something.....who have done this to me before.... when am I ever going to learn to say no to these so called friends and perhaps put myself first??

Okay, probably never, I know I am just not made that way....... but sometimes I wonder if one day I might just get up the nerve to perhaps at least not let myself get walked all over!

like father like daughter apparently....

A blog post entry in which we studiously ignore the football....

I have had a quiet weekend.... that is to say, I spent most of yesterday hiding in my kitchen trying to ignore the local fete and talent contest.... because "insert name of area"'s got talent... is such a misnomer, it really doesn't judging by the sounds coming over the microphone from the local park .... Gretchen agreed and spent a great deal of time barking her disapproval.  Normally I have zero tolerance for the dogs barking (they're a breed that historically were watch dogs and meant to give warning of incoming danger, so their bark when they get going can be heard over a mile away... and I live in a residential area with 4 of the things...)  but yesterday I kind of let her have free rein, particularly when the third glee-esque type song was sung badly out of tune by a talentless teen!

Today I did war with the supermarket, the laundry and the house before heading to mum's for Sunday lunch... which was lovely... and then I made her watch the Grand Prix.... which just confirmed that I do still have a thing for Finnish racing drivers...

After the F1 had finished, as I was relaxing on her sofa getting on with the 2nd sock of the pair (yep I might actually finish a pair in under a month!) I forced mum to watch Wimbledon (the film not The Tennis - it's a bit of a family joke, when we were kids the TV was never on much except for Wimbledon fortnight... for ages, the TV was actually known as The Tennis) .... halfway through she started asking questions about the types of films I liked etc, and the actress in this one, and what else was she in... to which I reeled off a list of films...then she muttered about my kind of obsession with Emila Fox (plays Nikki Alexander in Silent Witness and was in Merlin as Morganna's sister)...

After a pause, she then sighed dramatically and said "you really do take after your father don't you"

No my immediate reaction was to check my chin for stubble (I have PCOS - it gives me the ability to grow a beard each months - it's not attractive, it's a pain in the flippin neck).... but no it was not this to which she referred.  I raised an eyebrow at her and she continued...

"Pretty blondes....., he always asked for a 5 foot 7 inch blond for Christmas.... your no bloody different." she muttered, to which I promptly went darkly red and dropped a couple of stitches.....

Finding a focus....

This morning saw me actually get up before the dogs barked.... by 4.30 am I was in the car and off up onto the tops of the White Peak to my thinking stone in order to watch the Solstice sunrise.  Before now I've done a couple of Solstice celebrations with the local pagan grove, but I wanted to do this one alone.

My thinking stone ..... well it's a gritstone lump of rock in on a fairly high point of the moor with good views out over the peak district... it's fairly close to the picture that appears as my on-line avatar in various places.    While this morning didn't give me a brilliant view of the sunrise, cloud cover being somewhat thick, it was the perfect place for me to have an hour or so of peace and calm to try and get myself to focus on certain things as gradually it got lighter and I could see further and further into the distance.  There is something about the wide open spaces of the Peak, not to mention the peace and tranquillity, that allows me to put things into perspective.


My head has been a bit of a mess recently and I am drowning slightly in the whole work thing from last month.  I need to put it behind me, but am failing badly to do this... unfortunately, it's having a negative effect on me as I have lost for the first time since I started this job nearly four years ago the love of the job and the work I do.... I am not sure why it's sticking so badly, as far as work goes it's dealt with and the matter closed, trouble is I can't seem to get past it.  And therein lies one of those stupid problems that sometimes I can't forgive myself for things that aren't actually my fault in the first place.....I realised this morning that I have to let this go, I have to move on..... so that is the next big step to take.  I am not sure how I am going to do this, but I am going to try rather than let it build up any more inside me as I do want to go back to enjoying going into work again.

My friend AP's condition is starting to deteriorate quite quickly now.  She's at home receiving palliative care, and it does just feel a lot like waiting for the end.  Which has made me realise that life really is too short.  There are lots of things I'd like to do with my life, but as I am approaching 40 I am struggling to see where I am going at the moment.  I feel a lot like something is missing, but I am not sure exactly what or how to look for it.  There are some hang ups I still have as a result of past relationships which I need to work on putting behind me more... one of which is a huge trust issue I need to get over and I think this might be the starting point for moving forwards.  I need to learn to stop pretending my own issues are less important or less valid than other peoples and to learn to speak up when something is bothering me.  I know I have some bloody good friends out there, both in real life and on-line who will listen to me, I just need to open my mouth.  So this would be the other step to take.


It's only two things to work on at present, but they are quite big things for me.  I am not sure how I will achieve either, but I do know that I am going to make the effort and try.

I came back home feeling a little more together than I have been for a while, probably because I can at least now see a couple of things to work for....... (I was lucky, it didn't start raining till I was halfway home!)...so now I have to move forwards.

A question of "Angst"

I think I might be missing something when I am reading...... but I just don't get the concept of "Angst".... Now I don't think this is a British stiff upper lip thing, I think it might actually just be me.

I can come with the concept of plot lines where bad things happen to characters and their is much drama and woe, though admittedly I do rely on the author to sort it all out by the time we get to "The End".  Maybe it's me, maybe I don't invest myself enough in the stories. Maybe I just don't get that connection with the characters... maybe my mind is just very slightly out of kilter with everyone else.

I see time and again book recommendations and reviews, even comments about authors that refer to "Angst" but actually, just what the hell is it exactly??

I have googled (as one does) and see that there are in fact numerous definitions, and in fact a whole load of gumph about the fact there is no definition of it....... The nearest I can work out is that it's to do with anxiety, worry and dread... but when reading, is this what I should feel about what might happen next or is this what the characters are portraying??

When I am writing, I am pretty sure I don't write "angst"... I know I can do emotional (or so I've been told....) I know when I've accidentally killed off characters (yes, accidentally, I never start with that intent, it just sort of happens occasionally) I haven't felt that it's been particularly traumatic but my beta readers have said that it is.... again is this me, can I just not connect with the characters, even my own  (okay admittedly half the time I am writing I kind of feel like the character is talking through my hands and my own input is pretty minimal)

Maybe I'm just not an angsty person.... I shall try harder to find the angst to see if I can work out what on earth I am missing out on.