A Disruption

As some of my readers may have noticed, my book review posts dried up in the last two weeks, and now I am off schedule. I wanted to let all of you know that my blog will return to task, but posts are going to be a little out of kilter for the next couple of weeks. I had two of my three hard drives go caput two weeks ago – luckily, my e-book library survived, but Windows on my PC did not.

Luckily, as you are seeing this post, a new main hard drive was acquired, and my PC is back up and running (though I’m still working on reinstalling everything). I fell behind on my reading during the death of my computer, but I should be catching up shortly. In the meantime, book review posts will be released as I get them finished until we’re back on schedule.

Thank you everyone for having patience!

Some Sporadic Posting

Hi guys! I wanted to touch base with my readers and let you know that there may be some sporadic posting going on for the next month or two. You may have already noticed that my Free Fiction Fridays have been missing for a little while – well, this is why…

To keep things succinct, my family lives in a rented home. We’ve wanted to buy our own home for awhile now and we’ve been looking into it, but we weren’t planning any sort of move in the immediate future – just sort of keeping it on the radar. Unfortunately, we were approached a few weeks ago by a random person claiming to own our house. As it turns out, our landlord sold the property we live on without informing us, or the property management team we pay our rent through. No one had any idea. To make matters more complicated, the new owner also bought the house without viewing it, and had no idea that the house had leased tenants. So now we’re all in a scramble to try and figure things out.  Long story short: We’ve been given till the end of August to move out of our house, during one of the busiest work-months for my husband (he frequently travels in August).

So, here I am, packing and cleaning, and moving an entire house mostly by myself, and my husband is trying to deal with his work, a funeral of a friend, and trying to find us some new place to rent by the end of August. Times are stressful. My kid is sick with lung issues, my husband has mobility issues, and I’m basically the sole manual-labor for this endeavor.

Although I’m going to continue to try to post book reviews on schedule as they have been, I can’t promise that they’ll be on time, or that Free Fiction Friday will appear until we’ve moved. I hope everyone can have some patience, and I’ll get things back on track as quickly as I can.  Thank you for reading!

An Unexpected Break

Well hello there! As you can imagine by the title of the post, I’m taking a short, unexpected break from the blog – not too long, but long enough I thought I’d mention why I may miss a Free Fiction Friday or review during the interim. The TLDR; of this, is that I got sick, but let’s talk about what happened.

Around Christmas, I became ill. I basically thought I had a bad case of food poisoning. I was nauseous, my stomach hurt, I couldn’t eat without pain, and I ran a low-grade fever. I spent two full weeks just drinking water and soup broth and hoping it would pass. And it did. Eventually.

For about a month, life returned to normal. I as able to eat normal food again, and life went on as it always had. Until February 1st, when I got sick again. I ate a sandwich. Just a sandwich – nothing special – and once again, I was extremely ill. The symptoms were the same, but much worse. I couldn’t eat at all, and I was having a difficult time consuming enough water to stay hydrated. I was in pretty poor shape to be honest. At one point, I tried to eat 5 saltine crackers for my first meal in days, and spent the next 19 hours writing in nearly unbearable pain.

Finally, I had enough. I couldn’t even contemplate making it one more night on no-sleep, barely drinking, not eating. So, I broke down and had my husband take me to the ER. I thought I’d get there and at best, they’d give me some fluids and some pain meds, and probably send me home, and at worst, they’d tell me I had indigestion. I didn’t care at that point, and obviously I wasn’t making entirely rational decisions, I was just desperate not to be in pain.

No one here should be surprised, except maybe myself, that things didn’t go as planned. I was admitted to the ER immediately, and after a battery of tests, it was decided I was going to need surgery. It turns out, I didn’t have food poisoning. I was transferred to a second hospital via a medical transport ambulance, and, I spent the next week there. It turns out, what had actually happened, was that my gallbladder threw a stone – and this isn’t like a kidney stone, where you pray it will pass, and life goes on. It’s bad news when your gallbladder tries to pass a stone. Mine got stuck in a duct between my gallbladder and my pancreas, and all hell broke loose. My gallbladder essentially died. My pancreas, unable to function, became enflamed and infected. My liver enzymes began to rise as my body tried to figure out how to stave off disaster.

I could have died. Easily. frankly, it’s a miracle my gallbladder didn’t rupture, I didn’t get sepsis, and my organs didn’t completely shut down. I was close. Real close.

In the end, I spent a full week at the hospital, with countless bags of antibiotics, Morphine, and anti-nausea meds to try to keep me functioning. I had emergency abdominal surgery to remove my necrosing gallbladder – and up until the last two days, I was restricted from eating or drinking entirely, because it turns out that’s the only way to keep your pancreas happy when it’s throwing a fit. No food. No water. I literally survived on IV fluids.

I had multiple MRIs, ultrasounds, even an echocardiogram (because they thought I had a heart attack – don’t worry, I’m A-OK), but I tell all of you this to emphasize how truly sick I was, and how sick I still am at this moment. I’m heavily restricted right now on what I can and can’t do. No lifting over 10 lbs is one of the more annoying ones. I’m still in a lot of pain, and it’s going to be roughly 6-8 weeks of recovery before I’m back to normal… so if I miss some posts, you know, just understand that it wasn’t really a choice I made, but a necessity for the moment.

What I learned: listen to your body. Don’t try to tough it out when things go wrong. I didn’t have to suffer like I did, and honestly, it probably would have been a lot better for my health if I’d just gotten checked out earlier – but you know how it can be. I didn’t want to look stupid going to the ER if it was something I could handle on my own. Don’t be like me. Seriously. It wasn’t a fun experience.

Equality.

Today is Black Out Tuesday, and you’re going to see a lot of blacked-out social media posts everywhere. I’m not going to black out my social media, because I don’t want to jump on a bandwagon, and I have something to say. Instead, I’m going to share my thoughts loud and clear.

If you don’t believe in equality between all people regardless of nationality, race, gender preference, economic status… or whatever… I think less of you. It doesn’t matter if you are a friend, family, or stranger. We are all human, and we are all sharing this planet, and it’s time we acted like it. It is so hateful, small-minded, and selfish to think less of another human being because of things they can’t control and have no choice in – and you should be ashamed.

It’s time we all step up and shame these people loudly and publicly because it’s unacceptable. It’s inhuman. Grow up and be a better person. I will not unfriend or unfollow you from this point forward If I see you spewing hate towards others… instead, I will call you out. I will make sure that everyone knows what a piece of trash you are until you become accountable for your actions, and I will encourage others to do the same.

These people hide behind friends and relatives who let them get away with their hatred because they don’t want to strain relationships… but we can’t allow that anymore. It’s time to stop making excuses for letting racism and hatred continue. We need to stop this cycle here before another generation grows up thinking this hatred is acceptable, normal, or something to be proud of… because it’s not. It is the fear and anger of small-minded, selfish people, clutching desperately to all that they have and fear to lose… like small children clinging to their toys to make sure no one has more fun than them.

Woops! I disappeared.

Hello people of blogland! I know, I know, it’s been awhile. I have been so ridiculously busy lately that it’s not even funny – mostly with just living life, enjoying the summer with my family, and keeping up with breeding fish, which I’ve been doing for the past year or so now.  You may have noticed that I disappeared for a bit. Don’t worry. I’m still here, and I’m gearing up for some reviews. At the moment I am slogging through the few hundred review requests sitting in my inbox. It will probably take me a little while to get through them all, organize them, and decide which ones I’m adding to my list, so be patient. It will happen. I’m not gone.

All of that being said, this is a casual reminder, that if you don’t read my review faqs, and don’t send me a copy of your book with your review request.. well… your request goes in the trash. There are a lot of you.  I don’t have the time or willpower to reply personally to every single request – so if you don’t hear from me, don’t freak out. I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth, I’m just quietly buried under piles of e-mails.

Anyways, give me some time. I’m sorting things out, and then I’m going to start scheduling reviews and free fiction fridays again. I may or may not do some articles to give you more info on what I’ve been up to the last few months, so keep an eye out. As you may have realized, even when I’m not here actively posting and scheduling reviews, I am still accepting requests and editorial work – so keep sending them my way. I will get to them when I get to them, but I’m still open.

Sorting Book Review Requests…

Although I am currently in the process of sorting through a year’s worth of book review requests, I feel the need to take a moment and talk about what I’m seeing in my inbox.  A few years ago I wrote an article about the various reasons I reject book review requests – and it still applies, but that information, readily available, seems to be mostly ignored. So we’re going to talk about it again – authors, listen up.

Book reviewers can’t read every book that’s sent to them. We’d love to, but we simply can’t. Over the course of this past year, I was sent more than 300+ review requests to my inbox. Assuming I was able to read and review a novel every single day of the year with no days off, I still wouldn’t be able to get to them all.

As it is, I post two book reviews every week, which is still quite a bit more than most people read. That’s 104 books a year, if I don’t miss any scheduled posts. I would wager a guess that as an author, you don’t read 104 books a year. You probably don’t read anywhere even close to that. Only die-hard readers will pick up and finish that many books. Unfortunately, that means that less than a third of the books that are sent to me are going to be read this year. It sounds staggering, but I want the authors out there to realize that even if you have the best book ever written, chances are I still can’t get to it. I have to be picky. Really picky.

There is a reason I have a FAQs section with a clearly outlined process to getting your book reviewed. It’s a weeding out process. And guess what? Out of the 300+ books I was sent in the last year, only about 50 of them bothered reading my FAQs and sending me appropriate information. That helped, a lot. If you didn’t send an attachment of your book to in my inbox, your e-mail went directly into the trash folder. I didn’t read it. I didn’t look at your title, your cover, your blurb, I didn’t even read your name. I just looked for an attachment and trashed those without. Why? Because I don’t have time to e-mail several hundred authors to inquire for more information about a book I still may not want to read.

From there, I read blurbs. If I read the synopsis to your book and didn’t think “ooh, this sounds interesting.” I trashed it. Because, again, I don’t have time to read every book – and I don’t want to read 104 books I don’t find interesting. I don’t like giving negative reviews – it’s painful to everyone… so if I read your blurb and your book doesn’t strike me right away, I pass it up. I look for books I think I’m going to love.

Although I’m not done, I’d venture to guess that out of the 300+ books I was sent, I will probably add less than 10 to my To Be Read list. Whatever space is left over will be filled with review requests that haven’t been sent to me yet, or books I randomly pick up off amazon or out of my library – sometimes I just randomly pick a book out of all the books that are sent to me – and here’s where that FAQs comes in handy. Are you paying attention?

If you sent me a book file, and I don’t put it on my TBR list, it goes directly into my library…. and there is a chance that I will still read it at some point – even if I initially rejected it. Sometimes it pays to pay attention.

So what can you do as an author to get yourself read? Here’s some tips:

• Send your book to reviewers that specialize in and enjoy your genre. You are far more likely to be read by these book reviewers. I love romance. I am 200% more likely to read your book if it’s a romance and I’m emotionally invested in your characters than if you don’t have romance. That’s just a fact. If you write historical fiction—find a reviewer that specializes in historical fiction. You’ll be more likely to get read, and more likely to get a good review.
• Read the book reviewer’s FAQs and stick to the procedures you find there about sending book review requests. Don’t waste our time – because we won’t feel bad about trashing your review request. We don’t have time to cater to every author. There are a lot of you.
• Don’t pester your book reviewer. Don’t send several e-mails to remind them to have a look at your book. It’s annoying, it’s invasive, and we will probably trash your book.
• Don’t be freaked out about sending your book file to reviewers – especially if it’s clear that that reviewer regularly does book reviews. We aren’t going to share your file. We’re not going to upload it to pirating websites or send it to our friends and family. If it gets out of our inbox at all, it’ll go directly to our library, where it will stay. You aren’t going to lose anything by sending it to us – because we have too many books to read already, and we weren’t going to buy yours just to give it a shot. We may purchase it afterward if we really like it though.
• Have a good cover. If it looks like you photoshopped the cover yourself, we aren’t going to read your book – because we’re going to assume you put about as much effort into writing your book as you did on that cover.
• Hook us with your blurb and your first page. Make sure they are incredibly well written and grab our attention – because that’s what we’re looking for. I’m making snap judgments… and if that snap judgment is that your book sounds interesting, you are beating 70% of the competition.
• It’s okay to send us your review request more than once – as long as you do it better the second time around. Adjust the blurb. Edit your book, get a better cover. Provide more information. Try to sell me on your book… and be sure to include that book file. It may make it the second time around.
• If you find an author that gives you a good review on one of your books – send them more books. They are more likely to pick them because we already know we’re not wasting our time by reading your stuff. You’re more likely to get more good reviews.

These are just a few tips – but they are important. Read them. Learn. Apply. I guarantee you will have better results than just blindly e-mailing every reviewer you find.

The Missing Year…

Hello ladies and gentlemen of blogland! I know, I know, it’s been awhile. Almost an entire year to be exact. So what’s up? Where have I been? Well, to be honest, I was super busy this past year. I moved just days before Christmas last year, which was crazy and exciting, and awesome – but it meant that I had to take some time off to organize my life, move everything I owned, and get my family back into a sort of routine.  We started homeschool for the year, and that involved a gigantic hands-on science project.

We started breeding fish, aquatic snails, and insects… and it took over our life. We went from having zero fish tanks, to having 17, four daphnia cultures, 150 betta fish, a couple hundred snails, guppies, beetles, worms, springtails…. it was nuts, and it took a lot of time and hard work to care for it all. We learned a lot, we started up a YouTube channel to share our journey, and it’s still going strong.

But it ate our life.

We had some family members pass, my daughter started High school, and I did some copyediting jobs. There wasn’t a lot of free-time involved. I even broke a finger and a foot. I didn’t have a lot of time to read, watch TV, or even hang out with friends. We had a blast – don’t get me wrong, but I’m glad to say that I’m back. My goal for this upcoming year is to better schedule my life and accomplish more, and in that vein:

Hi! I’m back. So let’s get started.

Free Fiction Fridays, as always, fall on Friday – and luckily I was able to keep up with them decently well this past year. That will continue into 2019. Same time, same place. Book reviews are being picked back up, and should fall on Mondays and Wednesdays – so keep your eye out. I’ve already gotten the next two weeks read, reviewed, and scheduled to go. I have a year’s worth of review requests sitting in my inbox that I haven’t looked at, but I will be sorting through shortly—so as long as you followed my procedures for putting in a review request, I should be getting around to picking through them in the next few days.  I may, or may not share some pictures and stories with what’s going on with my family in the upcoming weeks (weekend wrap ups!), so keep an eye out.

I’d like to get more writing done this year, more art, and continue on with YouTube, this blog, and reading/copyediting as I have in years past. We’ll see what we can get accomplished!

End of the Year & Moving

Hello, ladies and gentlemen of blogland! Wow, it’s been awhile. Moving is not fun. Sure, being in a new house is fun, even looking at houses is fun, but the actual moving? Not so much. My family and I went through a pretty rough time for a few months trying to deal with realtors that were never on time, often tried to swindle us, or simply never showed up. It was frustrating. A few times we found houses we really liked, but the realtors bogged down the process of paperwork and we ended up missing out because they lost paperwork or simply hadn’t filed it yet. It got to a point where I told my husband I was going to go look up houses to rent myself (since buying one wasn’t going well)… and one of the first houses I found was one of the largest and nicest homes we’d seen – and had sat completely empty for the past 10 months. We were finally able to get a look at the house, and it was everything we wanted, and 10x nicer than the other houses we’d put bids in on. Paperwork took an evening, and by the next day, we’d been contacted to sign a lease. Two weeks later, we were moving in.

We spent eleven years in a 900 sq. ft. home with 1.25 baths, and 3 bedrooms. Windows didn’t close. Doors didn’t close (including the bathroom door). Grass was growing through the carpet. Two of the bedrooms had two exits – and doors into each other. The laundry hookups were in a shed in the backyard instead of in the house. It was infested with roaches, the wiring was shot, and the appliances, heaters, and air conditioners were so old, that they’re not allowed to legally install them in houses anymore. It was a hellhole. We’re now in a 2334 sq. ft. home, with a double car garage, two stories, 4 bedrooms, a large loft, formal dining, breakfast area, fireplace, and 2.5 bathrooms. It’s five years old, clean, newly painted and newly carpeted, and we couldn’t be more grateful to be here. I’ve finally got my own office to work in that I’m not sharing with my 14-year-old. I cannot express how thrilled I am not only to be here but to be done with the whole process. We’re still unpacking, but we’re fully moved.

Obviously, I’m behind on my work here at the blog. Free Fiction Fridays and Reviews have been on hold for quite a while now because of the chaos that was going on in our household. I have hundreds of review requests sitting in my e-mail that I’m going to have to sort through in the near future. I’ve got a few books read and waiting to be reviewed and posted—and we’ll get to those soon. For now, I’m glad to say that I’m back. Things may still be a little spotty around here for a few weeks as we continue to unpack and get used to our new place, but with any luck, posts will be back to their normal schedule very shortly!

I hope everyone had a great holiday season—I am so looking forward to the upcoming new year!

It’s that time of the year…

Ah, August. August for me is met every year with a tiny bit of trepidation. My birthday falls near the end of the month (August 25th), and a few days later, the school year starts for our household. This is a time of enjoying the last clinging moments of summer, and a time of preparation for school and the upcoming holidays. Around this time of year my household gets extremely chaotic—and to add to that this year, we’re in the process of trying to move. (FINALLY).

This means that we’re spring cleaning the house, throwing out 11 years worth of clutter, scrubbing things down, boxing stuff up to be given to charity, and packing the rest for the upcoming move. We’re preparing for school during the week (since we home school) and cleaning, and then on the weekends we’re running household errands and meeting with realtors. As you might imagine, it’s hectic.

What does this mean for my reading? It means things slow down a bit. There will be reviews, but they will be more sporadic than normal until everything gets settled and back on routine. There will be weeks when there are no reviews, one review, two reviews… it’s hard to say. That being said, I will be endeavoring to continue to read when I can and to continue with regularly scheduled Free Fiction Fridays every week. I’ll be posting small updates to twitter as things change, so keep an eye on the feed for updates!

Let 2017 Begin!

Hello, ladies and gentlemen of blogland! Wow, it’s been quite a year. Honestly, it didn’t go how I expected. I wanted to get more done. I’d planned on working to get writing done, to be healthier (which I should have known was a fail when we got sick the first week of last year), even to get more reading done. I hesitantly set myself a 50 book quota at the beginning of the year to go easy on myself, and still ended up barely making it to that quota. There’s certainly been a lot of ups and downs this past year that I didn’t expect—mostly having to do with health. I’m still learning to cope with my severe allergies, anxiety, and my husband’s health as well—and it hasn’t been an easy year on any of us.

So what are my plans for 2017? I’m not entirely sure. I may wing it a bit and see where things go. I’d still like to find more time to write and definitely read. I’ve got a huge pile of books clogging up my TBR to look forward to. I did some editing this past year, and I absolutely loved the experience, and I’ve got a few editing jobs sitting in my inbox I still need to review and get back to various authors about (man it’s going be busy this year!) Also this year, I’d like to continue to work on my health, and my family is tentatively looking for a new home in the upcoming few months, so I’m looking forward to getting out of this death-trap.

Right now, my plans for the blog are this: Reviews on Mondays, with make-up reviews on Wednesdays for weeks when life gets a little too busy. Free Fiction Fridays will be back on their usual scheduled day, and probably weekend wrap-ups again on Sundays with updates for when the reviews for the next week will be scheduled. I’d love to do more than that, but again, I think it’s probably better to under schedule myself and get more work done when I can than to stress myself out with more than I can handle. If I find extra time for more reviews, then they’ll be posted as I go, otherwise, I’m not going to worry about it.

Posts will resume as usual tomorrow (Monday, January 2), and I will be getting back to the authors/publishers that have sent me editing requests and book review requests as quickly as I can over the next week, so keep an eye on your inbox’s!

Thank you so much to all of my followers, and fellow readers, authors, and publishers out there that have supported me in this past year. Running this blog for the past few years has been such an exciting and fun endeavor. Here’s to another year! I hope you all have a great New Year.