My dark reading list in paradise resulted from chance. One book bought, one a gift, one borrowed. All loaded up into the suitcase minutes before rushing out into the cold and dreary Portland world, and then all read with a steady drip of dark rum mixed with POG juice (papaya, orange and guava, for the uninitiated) and the irregular heartbeat of waves breaking against the sand.

The cowboy and I were taking a creative breather from the frantic pace of cover design, editing and production of the third book in The Cowboy and the Vampire Collection. I was hoping a drastic change of scenery – inside and outside my head – would recharge my creative juices just before the onset of the next phase of craziness when the book is published in May.

I was quickly reminded: be careful what you wish for. The outcome of a dark-lit marathon in paradise? Question everything. Everything. Yep, that’s what happened after my spate of beach reading over a quick visit to lovely Kauai, garden island of Hawaii. Human life, the conundrum of mortality, the evolutionary context of consciousness, gorilla brains, the right way to live, the worst way to die, married love, married pain.

Oh yea, and on top of that, imagine this scenario too: the bleakness of your poetic soul as the Berlin Wall bricks you inside inch by daily inch, throwing you into an uncorking rodeo of human-on-human lord-of-the-flies style pecking orders in post-World War II East Germany.

Should I have stuck with light romance or zombies? No. In paradise, I discovered there’s a little more breathing room to think things through, a little more time to let the dark side surface peacefully, a little extra space to forgive, to try to understand. In fact, it’s the best time to go dark. Read the three resulting tropical reflections>>aracer.mobi