Historicals Dead? Mushrooms & swamp foot

I'm lazy today. For a great conversation about the reasons behind the demise of interesting historically accurate romances, visit Tara. She has links to a fantastic blog post. Apparently the discussion originally started on the AAR ATBF & continues here at the ATBF message board.

Not that anyone who comes here would be surprised to hear me say, but I'm finding it increasingly hard to find quality historical romances. I'm turning more & more to other genres & returning to straight history. I've had serious struggles with romance for the last two years & I don't see the situation improving much. Most of my TBR came from the UBS as most of the books are older novels many of which are long out of print.

Family Interlude

We went for a longish (4 miles) trail hike yesterday in the damp. There are mushrooms galore in unique shapes & colors. This from a woman who loves the oddly shaped Japanese mushrooms, but somehow thought most 'American' mushrooms all were shaped like the button mushrooms in all of the markets. We even saw one that is pale blue with narrow concentric rings that resemble the rings seen on hand thrown pottery. Truly- it was blue. Supposedly a rare shade in plants. Then again, it was rainy & gloomy in that patch of woods.

We also found a puddle full of frog eggs, a rainbow shaped beaver dam, a large dark hole we decided had to be for Alice in Wonderland.What else happened? Oh yes, I slipped on a moss covered rock in the middle of the creek & walked three+ miles with swamp foot. Slush, thump, slush, thump. Repeat. Son #2 made me promise we'd return next week to check on the froggies to be (& play in the creek).