A Sign of Life

It's been quite a while since my last blog post. The reason is that I was sort of suffering from a blogger burn out. It had become quite difficult to keep up with my reading and review obligations. At first it was mostly because of an increase of other activities in my personal life: I not only work full time but I also decided last year to go back to school. I’m studying Communication and Multimedia Design, and it’s been putting quite a strain on my spare time, as you can imagine. While I didn’t want my social life to suffer too much from all that, there was nearly no time left to read and write reviews.

On top of that I had to come to terms with the loss of a dear person whom I admired. The mourning process spiraled me down into some serious doubts about my life and my choices. It was a tough period in which existential questions dominated my mood pretty much all the time. The only reason that I still kept reading was to escape from the pain and the self-research. I’m thankful for the books that had the ability to make me forget for a short period. But writing reviews just wasn’t going too well.
I’m doing much better now. Doing fun stuff with friends and having good conversations with a few others and my husband helped me to get my head sorted. I’m done with being depressed; it’s time for smiles again. Last week hubs and I went to Lisbon, the sunny capitol of Portugal, and now I’m ready for the spring to begin.

As for blogging: I noticed that I wasn’t the only one who dealt with some variation of blogger burn out. Quite some blogs and websites I used to visit did throw in the towel and either went on a hiatus or did quit all together (like Brief Encounters, Booklovers Inc and Jessewave) and others don’t blog as frequently as they used to do anymore. It’s sad, but understandable. And it’s not a new phenomenon either; it has been like this ever since I started blogging back in 2009. I’ve seen many bloggers throw in the towel over the years.
I also noticed that I’m not the only one who doesn’t read exclusively M/M novels anymore, I see quite some (Goodreads) friends mixing M/M with M/F romance or other genres now too. The M/M genre couldn’t hold my attention as it used to anymore. I still read M/M books but only the ones that really pique my interest or that are written by my favorite authors.
I’m not sure how I’m going to handle this blog yet; I don’t want to go back to the weekly reviews, but I do miss blogging. I just don’t want the full email inbox that comes with the review activity returning. And I don’t want the review copies piling up again. So for now, I keep reading the books that I buy and when I feel like it I might write about one or two on the blog, without the pressure that comes with accepting review copies. I’m not sure if this will work for me, I’m probably too lazy without the obligation to write about a book, but we’ll see.

To conclude this post with something more bookish, here are a few books that I look forward to reading:

Of course, Ball & Chain by Abigail Roux, the 8th Ty and Zane book! Need I say more?

Goodreads link

To satisfy my Motorcycle Club romance obsession, the anthology Riding Desire with 14 alpha bad boy biker romances:

Goodreads link

Two of my favorite M/M authors come with a new title in March: Marie Sexton with Normal Enough and Rhys Ford with Dirty Deeds, the 4th book in her Cole McGinnis series:

Goodreads link

Goodreads link

Then a M/F romance that piqued my interest because of the darkness and scarred hero: Destroyed by Pepper Winters:

Goodreads link

And last but not least, a military romance from one of my favorite M/F authors: Danger Close by Kaylea Cross, the 4th in her Bagram Special Ops series (release date April 1):

Goodreads link