Reading RITA books

The silence you've heard from this quarter is due to my having been stuck into galleys on Christo (not my favorite pastime) and reading the RITA entries whose scores are due on Monday.

It's always interesting to read RITA books because they are almost always by authors I am not familiar with. There is a sort of grab bag experience about it. When I open a book I never know what I'm going to get -- and none of the regular reasons I pick up a book (I like the author, I like the back cover copy, I like the cover art, it's in my line, I like the way it begins -- or ends) apply.

They are just here -- and I read them.

So for the past week I've been reading. I have found a couple of authors whose back-lists I'm now going to be looking for. I was delighted to find an author whose books I'd more or less lost track of is doing a bang-up job still. I was bored a couple of times. I tossed one across the room.

But I came away feeling that the genre is healthy, that there are more good books out there than bad ones, that new authors are coming along that I want to keep an eye on, and that "old" authors still have their finger on the pulse of what makes a good romance.

I've sent in my scores. I've almost finished the galleys.

And I have about half of Demetrios's story roughed out (not written, but rough drafted. Very rough drafted!). I'm going to have to figure out where they go from here, though. Here being out in the middle of the Mediterranean!