The book ban

I now have seventeen day ban on reading anything other than my text books. I know, sad times. It’s just that I really do need to do well in this upcoming exam, and I keep getting side tracked by all the lovely authors out there sharing their wonderful stories with me. I have enough to do with editing and writing my own stories right now to keep me busy between revision sessions, and seriously, I have to take drastic measures to avoid distraction because I don’t think my knowledge of contemporary romance is really going to help me explain the many different ways in which you can categorise Athenian vases!

You might wonder why, at this stage in my life, I have chosen to do a degree. Sometimes, I wonder that too! No, the fact is that straight out of high school it just wasn’t the right time for me to go away to university for a number of reasons, and then even though I tried a few different kinds of courses, I basically just got sucked into the working world and never really got around to going.

The reason I finally decided to do it now was that there are two genres of romance that I love, contemporary and historical. Obviously, contemporary is the most straight-forward to write because it doesn’t require much research in comparison with historical. Now, I could, and do, just read a lot of factual history books to learn about the era’s I want to write about, but then once, when I was surfing the net I stumbled upon the OU, an online university that allows you to do a degree from the comfort of your own home, for those of you that don’t know. When I saw the classical studies degree I thought, why not? It kills two birds with one stone for me really, I get to learn a lot about the history that I want to write about, and I have a qualification to show for it at the end.

So, until the 17^th of October is over, I’m afraid I won’t  be allowing myself the luxury of reading and enjoying fiction, but you can bet I’ll have a list as long as my arm of stories I want to read at the end of it. Let’s just hope it’s worth it and my commitment pays off this time around! Thank you all for reading J