Time traveller

Everytime I return to the farm I step back in time: to a calmer place, a slow-paced lifestyle, to moments wherein the eddying breeze, fragrant with lilly and rose, is the only distraction on a heat-shimmering summer's day. Rain has proven elusive. Thunderstorms swirl around, promising relief with a far-off crack of thunder and a single jagged pierce of white light.

My daughter behaves as if born yesterday, finally able and more than willing to do all the things I did easily and much earlier when a girl: climbing trees, reaching out a hand to a skittish barn cat, exploring woods and copses, watching mesmerized as hummingbirds frolick in phlox and, best of all, riding a bicycle up and down the laneway, finally in solitude mastering balance and coordination.

For quiet moments indoors she has her Tamagotchi and an online connection to her Webkinz cyberworld—after all, she is a city girl who has learned the wonders of the Internet. For me, I'm taking time off writing to learn a new program required for an upcoming writing contract, and when I curl up in my girlhood single bed at night I have in-hand novels reminiscent of the sort I read twenty-odd years ago beneath the covers by flash/torch light.

Below is my summer vacation reading list:

• The Bride and the Beast by Teresa Medeiros — a rare find thanks to my favourite second-hand bookstore in Montreal, a short, fairytale romance involving a dragon and a virgin sacrifice
• Highwayman Husband by Helen Dickson — abandoned half-finished as Regency-era intrigue overpowered pent-up passion
• The Wicked Lover by Julia Ross — currently winning my envy as two wartime spies circle and parry, both disguised, haunted by the past, yet drawn to each other
• One Night in Paradise by Juliet Landon, my first Elizabethan romance
• Deceived by Nicola Cornick, another Regency romance by one of my favourite authors.

My only worry is that I won't have enough to read for two whole weeks! Too bad I failed to get my hands on Delicious and The Gladiator's Honour. I suppose I can always resort to my daughter's cache, two books from The Royal Diaries series plus a treasure trove of facts about fairies. In fact, I am suddenly flooded with ideas for young adult books featuring romance, past and present. Gosh, perhaps even a tale involving a changeling or an outcast from the fairy realm.

There's nothing like a change of scenery to get the creative juices flowing again. Perhaps I'll end up writing in spare moments while on the farm, just as I did as a child.

Tell me what's on your summer reading list. Do you plan to step back in time or embark on a modern-day adventure?