I have decided to get back to work on the second Odic Touch book. I've asked for Beta readers to help me with what I have so far. I just have to get the email addresses and give the first chapter a quick look to make sure there aren't any (or at least not many) errors.
I need to get right on that, because I'm pretty sure I'll be busy all weekend going over the Relic edits. Hopefully there won't be any big changes that I'm uncomfortable with. I'm sure whatever changes there are will be fine.
In order to get unstuck creatively, I've been making several moderate changes in what I hear daily and what I read. Having reached that decision, I put down The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard and picked up Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography & Other Writings. However... I couldn't really commit myself to reading it, so today I picked up something else: Isaac Asimov's Buy Jupiter and Other Stories. I can deal with short story collections because there's not one large plot I need to follow. That's particularly handy when reading more than one book at a time!
The other "different" book I pulled out to read is The Annotated Milton: Complete English Poems. Epic poetry is different enough from what I usually read, and I have a great respect for Milton. He composed a perfectly-defined epic (proper meter and everything) while blind, and dictated it to his daughters. That's amazing! True, there were other blind poets, but I have a soft spot for classic British epics that I lack for the Greek ones, particularly Beowulf and Paradise Lost.
At some point, I'd also like to read my collection of Bukowski stories, and one of my Christopher Hitchens books... preferably sooner than later.
As for the "different" music, I've downloaded on Rhapsody a lot of rock and pop from the past decade, as well as some new-to-me blues artists and jam bands. I've found some good stuff that way.