caught in a bad romance

I was lazier today than I intended, but I suppose that's not entirely a bad thing. I woke up earlier than I wanted to because some asshole started using power equipment nearby at 7:45am, a sin for which I hope he burns in hell. I laid around for an hour or so hoping I could go back to sleep, which was probably not an achievable goal given that I was actively reading news and social media stuff on my ipad. Finally, I got up, showered, tried to make myself look somewhat put together, and went down the street for breakfast, where my favorite cafe was surprisingly empty. It's a gorgeous weekend in SF, and it's also Pride, so I'm guessing a lot of people were either at the beach or recovering from partying or planning to party. But their absence meant that I could linger over my laptop and coffee, which was exactly what I needed.

When I came home, I procrastinated, wrote, procrastinated, wrote, napped, wrote, at supper, and wrote. All told I only got six pages; there's something wrong with this scene, and I think tomorrow I'm just going to have to skip it and go on to the next one rather than beating my head against it. Unless, of course, I wake up in the morning with the answer, which is always a possibility. But by 7:45ish I was totally frustrated, and so rather than aggravating my irritation by staring at it more, or indulging my self-loathing by reading twitter obsessively, I picked up a romance novel at random off my to-be-read pile.

I'm still halfway into THE SWAN THIEVES, but I was in the mood for romance instead, so I picked up DARK LOVER, the first in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series by JR Ward. This has been one of the most popular paranormal romance series around for the last six or seven years, and it's a little crazy that I haven't gotten into it until now. The first book has been sitting on my shelves for something approaching three years; judging from the pricetag on the back, I picked it up in the orgy of buying that I did during the Borders bankruptcy, in which I bought about a hundred books, most of which I still haven't gotten around to reading. There's been some speculation that the Borders bankruptcy contributed to the flattening growth curve of the ebook market in the US, and the analysis says that it's because there are fewer brick and mortar stores where consumers can 'showroom' books before going home to buy them on their devices. But I wonder if the real contribution is because a lot of power readers like me bought two years' worth of paperbacks in one glorious, hideous orgy of spending, and now feel guilty buying more ebooks when there are so many paperbacks sitting on their shelves mocking them. Or maybe that's just me. And clearly I still buy ebooks; in fact, I'm probably about to buy the next nine books in this series.

That will have to wait for another day, though. I need to go to bed, get up, and make some serious progress on Alex and Prudence before the weekend passes me by. Goodnight!