Note to self: don't read books that make you cry while working retail.

I'm in a bit of a creative sulk at the moment. Everything I write is unmitigated crap. I manage a few sentences and then despair at the mediocrity and occasionally go so far as to throw my pen across the room, because a girl should never pass up a golden opportunity for melodrama, and anyway, I only use cheap biros.

I don't have these fits very often, so I'm wallowing not entirely sure what to do about it. As a stop-gap measure, I'm reading a lot. This isn't necessarily a good idea, because I'm noticing how brilliant everyone else is. Stunning, superlative genius! Oh woe, for I am unworthy, etc, etc.

Specifically, I've been re-reading Catherine Jinks's Pagan books. I did a class presentation on Pagan's Crusade, and got the other three out of the library to give people something to fidget with while I was rabbiting on. Of course, I might as well read 'em while I got 'em...

A joy. I love Pagan. His ferocity, his wit, his bite, his scathe, but also his heart, his stubbornness, his love, his compassion. How he is the strong one, because he hasn't been blessed, but how Roland is the rock upon which he is built.

Also, the history, because it's beautiful and accessible and viscerally important. Pagan is where I first learned about the Cathar heresy and its bloody, stupid end. Earlier this year, while browsing Guy Gavriel Kay's website regarding the Lions movie, I stumbled across the historical notes to A Song For Arbonne (which, at second reading, eclipsed aforementioned Lions as my favourite Kay EVER). I was stunned and fascinated. I had, of course, correlated the appropriate parts of Europe in Arbonne, but hadn't realised that it was about that particular Crusade (possibly because of the vast difference in outcomes).

Also, possibly, because there's very little of the Languedoc of Kay's imaginings in the Pagan books before Pagan's Scribe, which, being the last and also not narrated by Pagan himself, I didn't read for ages and had (until today) only read once before. It does show something of the beautiful, advanced-for-its-day gentleness and artfulness of the south of France. It's the more poignant for the ephemery of its depiction, the fleeting glimpses, and then the rampant destruction. But since the Pagan books are, if nothing else, gleefully unsqueamish when it comes to historical detail, it's not really as beautiful as Kay's creation.

Guy Gavriel Kay romanticise something? Perish the thought!