Right now, Raven and I are sitting in my apartment with our respective linguistics books, listening to Vivaldi.

Yesterday, I bought an entire opera album on iTunes.

We just made a pact not to become douche-bags about our newfound culture. (I say that in the German sense of the word. Wait, did I just break that non-douche-baggery pact? Fine. We promise not to buy matching mini-coopers.)

If you're still reading, I guess now is a good time to explain how a pair of globe-trotting fantasy writers staggered into the cultural scene. Actually, I guess you could say we've always straddled the line, and recent events have just tipped us over it like a frat boy at a co-ed twister game. (I never said the culture had to extend to my metaphors.)

Raven and I have both been oddly absorbed in the non-fiction section of the bookstore recently, most notably in the linguistics, psychology, history, and literary criticism. We've both read non-fiction before, but never this avidly. There's something about being out of school for a few years that makes your brain feel like it's beginning to atrophy, and Raven and I seemed to reach this point almost simultaneously.

In truth, it was researching for our own fiction that lead us to the non-fiction section, which would have been less of a shock were we not both writing contemporary fantasy. Raven--who decided her heroine would be both Chinese and interested in philosophy--started looking into linguistics and philosophy. My non-fiction list is a bit more eclectic (shocker).

Raven's Reading List
1. Through the Language Glass
2. Little Book of Language
3. The Unfolding of Language
4. The Stuff of Thought
5. You Are What You Speak
6. Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue
7. Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sarte
8. The Problems of Philosophy

Scribe's Reading List
1. Please Understand Me (Psych)
2. Guns, Germs, and Steel (Hist)
3. Dreaming in Chinese (Linguistics)
4. A Truth Universally Acknowledged (Literary Criticism)
5. Through the Language Glass (Linguistics)
6. Please Understand Me II (Psych)
7. (Everything on Raven's list...)

Also, this just happened:

Raven: That's why you don't argue with the Asian. It's okay. I still love you. I just won't tell anyone else.
Scribe: Just don't tell anyone I said that, and you won't have to make excuses for loving me despite my ineptitude.