I just realized I am not a romantic person. I'm not. I am a person in love, but that's not what romance is, when forced to stand separately. I'm a kind of a person that's COOL TO a romantic person and if I was 20, I'd simply really WANT to be the me at 40... I travel, I like good coffee, I read a lot and love history, I appreciate languages and movies - and jazz as of recent - I write letters by hand and I praise cakes, I go to museums and I like to have sex in castle ruins. I even like my porn to have a meaningful plot. But I disdain romantic books, I don’t watch romantic movies and when it comes to courtship… I don’t do courtship. I like my relationships to simply ignite or don’t exist. Like a switch. I didn’t like being courted by the General, I wanted to hump. I had a date with a lovely young thing today, full of energy and big plans – like me at her age. If I was looking for a relationship, it would sadden me that I do not know how to ease into an affair. Now I’m just troubled I don’t know how to write a romance.

Crikey.

My one hour per day of reading – and this means reading BOOKS, not just the updates on my favourite authors and their satellites – rule sent me to the temple yesterday and I got seven books of various species: a crime, a historic romance (fuck it, close enough), a book about a city (Rome, which is fairly romantic, if you ignore all the promiscuity and bloodshed that rivaled that of Florence), a spy novel, a fantasy, YA and a guide (of biking routes, because I prefer them to hiking routes, though I plan to do them on foot..) And I am listening to I Know Why The Cage Bird Sings while doggiewalking. The trick, I find, is to read books because they are books, not because they are monuments or educational. Because all genres are cool. I’ve forgotten that a little.

I have to write a romance before I continue with Goose. Not angst. Not a sexy adventure comedy. Not something where everything happens off screen. Not a cheesy, retarded chick flick or something so deep as you would need Jane Eyre to dig yourself out of. A romance. I have no idea where to begin.