I'm an eclectic reader whose tastes range from Homer to Nora Roberts. While I love a beautifully constructed sentence, I really love sentences that surprise me. I want characters that make me care, whether I like them or not, and a story that keeps me awake to find out what happens next. Complex writing or writing that is beautiful for its own sake, while lovely, sometimes gives me the sense the author is trying too hard and often impedes rather than advances the story. In my own writing, I try to attend to sentence rhythm and always read my work aloud. I strive to expose the internal inconsistencies in a character's motivations and lay bare the human frailties and blind spots with which we all are afflicted. My biggest weakness is that I tend to add too much back story and detail-easy to do in historical fiction. Balancing what I know about my characters backgrounds and motivations, the time period, and the setting against what the reader needs to know is my biggest challenge.