Happy Easter. I’m celebrating this wonderful feast of new life and joy for all by spending time at home with my beautiful family. Lots of chocolate has been eaten, and everyone’s feeling good. What better way to celebrate ANYTHING than by eating chocolate.

In between chocolate and joy I’ve managed to read a book, which I started yesterday and finished today – Claiming the Courtesan, by Anna Campbell.

It’s a regency romance with lots of tempest and passion and dark brooding heroes and the like. Quite a departure form my usual reads, which focus mainly on children’s and young adult titles. And, though kids’ books are my favourites, I’ve really enjoyed the change. I don’t remember when I last read a historical romance, but it is a genre I confess to enjoying. I also find I read such books as a reader much more than I perhaps do when reading children’s books, where I often read as a writer or a parent or a teacher. So, reading Courtesan was a little like a holiday for me.

If you are a writer, do you only read in your chosen genre? Or do you take the time to read other genres from time to time? When was the last time you read a romance, a thriller, a detective novel? It’s a good thing to do, reading outside your area, even if only to remind you that you can read just for the pleasure of it. No need to be studying the market, no need to be wondering if you can use that technique, or if you would have treated that scene that way, or nay of the other writer questions we tend to ask ourselves as we read. At the same time, you might find you DO learn something from reading outside your area. It might be that you observe some cleverly constructed dialogue, some interesting use of viewpoint or similar, or even that you glean some useful information about a region, a time period or whatever.

Back to Courtesan. I enjoyed it, and am looking forward to reading Campbell’s next novel, which is further down my review pile. If you are a fan of romance at all, I can thoroughly recommend this one.