Monday Updates:

READING:
- Have been starting a lot of books lately but not being able to finish them for some reason. I think the reason may possibly be that I can't be bothered writing up reviews for them. Sometimes I look at the reviews some other people are posting and think, man I can't be bothered writing up something as good as that.
- Have been going through a bit of Is It Just Me? syndrome. By that I mean I'm reading books that I should normally like but there's just one thing about them which sets me off and I go into a round of: is it just me or is this book such and such. Mostly this has been happening where I don't feel that great a connection to the characters or the motivation behind their course of action.

WRITING:
- Still trying to write those last chapters of Seeder's Poison. Am not struggling so much as re-reading and thinking, If I don't kill someone in these last few chapters, this is gonna be pretty boring. My supposed last chapters have actually turned into 10 chapters but to be fair, my first chapter was 7,000 words and the last few chapters have only been about 2,000 words max. I am going to need some serious editing.
- Am currently agonising over whether to bother getting traditionally published or to try my hand at self publishing. Pros and cons for both sides and I'm swaying towards self publishing but I am so technologically stunted that the thought of formatting and converting my MS into another format is a bit daunting. But I am too much of a tighta$$ too pay someone else to do it!

TV:
- What's that? With Gossip Girl on a temporary hiatus, I have been getting back into my gardening. Just in time for Autumn (Fall for you guys). I can sense this turning into a bit of a book/gardening blog mish mash!
- For some reason the husband has decided that he wants to see The Hunger Games with me but he can't stay up late for us to see it opening night so I'm not going to be able to watch it until the 24th. Bit annoying. Especially since he has no idea what it's about and doesn't want me to tell him. What's the point in that? Luckily I've already organised a repeat viewing with some friends who I forced to read the books.

LIFE:
- Can't complain. Although have taken to wearing band-aids on my fingers because I use the scroll button on my mouse way too much. They should document that as a real illness.
- A huntsman spider has taken up residence in my room. I've named it Charlotte. I was going to take a photo for you guys but then I remembered most people don' like spiders the way I do. They're very useful. Unlike mosquitoes which I still maintain can be eliminated from the this dimension without anyone caring.  

Monday Updates

READING:
- Books I've started: Hammered by Kevin Hearne, Magic Slays by Ilona Andrews and Across The Universe by Beth Revis.
- Have done almost nothing about my review books which is fast becoming a mountain of guilt that is weighing me down constantly. Time to do something about it.

WRITING:
- Still trying to write those last chapters of Seeder's Poison but struggling. I have somehow turned into that person who talks and talks about doing something but never actually does it.
- Dreamed up a good back story to my angel book. Dreams are such useful things. Don't worry, it's got nothing to do with sparkly emo vampires.
- Can I take a second to beg you guys who have captcha  comments enabled to get rid of it? They've changed the format and it's now so hard to make out what those letters are!!!!

TV:
- Besides Gossip Girl I haven't watched any TV all week. How good am I? But don't be fooled into thinking I've been writing. Oh no. I have just discovered online shopping. Some people are just gluttons for punishment.

LIFE:
- I think I've taken procrastination to a new level. I keep getting emails and reading them on my iPhone and then completely forgetting to get back to people later on. Then I set myself a mental reminder to do it and it never happens!
- Not so sick anymore, so have been able to go out and about a bit without feeling like a dementor is sucking my soul out.

In other news, Tammi at Young Adult Book Reviews and I are thinking of hosting a whole month of The Hunger Games appreciation events in March. Would anyone be interested in doing a read-a-thon, book and movie reviews and such? Drop me a line if you are. It's going to be an exciting month of awesomeness. I am so excited about this movie even though I'm still cursing the casting choices

Misc Monday: Multitasking Madness

As I write this post, I'm also checking out books on Smashwords, emailing people, reading a book and doing up a shopping list. Oh and did I forget seriously blog stalking? To an untrained observer, this might all seem very impressive. Until they take a closer look at my output to productivity ratio. Which is very much on the low side.
        I am convinced that whoever came up with the idea of multitasking has a lot of time on their hands to get all caught up in the different tasks. Me, I have scant little time and what is supposed to be a time saving device has turned into a bit of a time guzzler instead.
        Take blog stalking for example. Any normal person would open a few pages and read a post and leave a comment right? That's too easy for me. I open all the unread blogs on my blog roll, then all the ones I find interesting on my dashboard. From there, I troll through all of them, reading, not necessarily commenting unless I know exactly what I want to say. If there's an interesting link that someone has posted, I'll click on that as well. Before I know it, there are about twenty tabs opens on my screen and I'm having trouble remember something I read ten minutes earlier. It just so happens that an alert on my phone might go off with a text message or I need to put a book on my goodreads to be read pile. And then I'll get an email which I need to respond to right away.
       I feel the same way about my TBR and also the books I have agreed to read for review. Right now I'm "reading" about six books and have another few waiting to be picked up from the library. I've taken on so many, on the assumption that I will be able to do it all. The fact of the matter is: I can't. As BJ suggested in THIS POST deadlines and taking on too much usually leads to situations of high stress. High stress leads to sickness (at least that's what I've noticed for myself). So I've decided to dispense with the multitasking farce and stick to The Hare and the Tortoise philosophy: slow and steady wins the race.
       So guys, I guess what I'm saying is that I'm going to stop trying to be more than I can be.

Misc Monday: 2012: The Yes Year

I don't think I'd be pushing the truth when I say that in general, we book bloggers are the quiet types. Speaking about myself specifically, I would go even further to say that I've got one foot in the hermit zone. I would much rather stay home and read/watch TV/stalk people on the internet, than go out and interact with real people. Sometimes, when it's a special occasion, I'll even feel a little resentful that something is taking me away from my life of quiet contemplation.
       I'm not 100% sure exactly how this happened either. It's not as if I was a social butterfly once upon a time, but I had a few close friends and a wider social group. Now they're lucky to see me on their birthdays. On top of this, I find myself judging people/situations well before I've even been asked to go somewhere. So far, I haven't been very fussed with the decline in my social life, but I've been beginning to think that it's hindering my writing.
        You see, the couple of times that I've come up with great story ideas, it's always been while I've been out with friends or at work. Very rarely do I have great inspiration sitting at home. This leads me to think that I could be missing out on situations that could resolve some much agonized over plot holes I've been trying to fill. Plus, I tend to think I'm closing a lot of doors on opportunities.
        For example, I have somehow developed a strange aversion to garage sales. I think it's another symptom of my OCD. So when I had no choice but to go to one whilst my younger sister and her husband were driving me home one day, I wasn't impressed. That is until I came across a stash of near mint YA books for the price of $1 each. I walked out of there with 10 books for $10! Then at a recent work Christmas party, which I did not want to go to because I just couldn't be bothered, I told a colleague I was writing a YA novel and she said that she actually knows a publisher!
       So the moral of the story is, as much as I would love to continue being a half hermit, I think it's better for me to get out there once in a while and embrace the real world and all it has to offer. So 2012 will be my official year of saying Yes to opportunities and invitations I would have tried to get out of earlier. Who knows, maybe I'll meet my potential agent on the train to the library one day :)

Misc Monday: Post Planning

Those of you who read my blog regularly may have noticed the utterly random schmozzle that I call blog posts. Whilst gluing together words to make sentences with some meaning, I started to wonder how so many of you manage to write such fun, succinct, informative and unabashedly honest posts and reviews.
     Normally, I'll come home from work and after counting off the days until the weekend I'll remember that I should try and stick to my blogging promise of at least one post every 2 days. What follows is a frantic dash to try and write a readable post in between watching various cartoons and unmissable TV.
     I've read a great many reviews during my long stalker hours and I really hope that the bloggers who write such reviews have spent a long, long time on them. If not, I think I need to reevaluate my commitment to this blogging business.
    As with everything I do, my intentions are always good. I fully intend to read books objectively and write super professional and unbiased reviews. Somehow, in between the reading and the review, my emotions get involved and what comes out is usually a list of all the things that irked me about a book. There are so many bloggers who can dislike a book and yet convey their dislike in a logical and a unemotional way. This doesn't seem to be my forte.
     After many hours of dissecting the reasons behind my apparent lack of professionalism, I've come up with these explanations:

1. I am not a professional critic: Nor do I intend or claim to be. I read books and write how I feel about them. Once upon a time, I analyzed books as part of a subject at school and it ruined many classic books for me forever. Until someone decides to pay me a full time salary to read and write book reviews, I maintain that I can be as unprofessional as I like.

2. I like reading negative reviews: Good reviews are fantastic, but let's face it, negative reviews make us laugh. I find that I learn so much more from a negative review than I do from a positive one, simply because when people don't like something, they tend to be much more passionate and colourful in the choice of language and depiction. Super professional reviews don't have the same pizazz for me.

3. Time is of the essence: I like to procrastinate. It's taken me almost two hours to get this far in the blog post because I've been looking at FB, Goodreads, NaNoWriMo and doing various other things to waste time. Before I discovered the dot point review system, it would takes me ages to finish a book review because I was so busy trying to write a Pulitzer prize winning essay. This is not effective time management.


4. We don't need no education: There have been times in these last few months when I've felt as if reading and blogging have been part time jobs on top of the full time one I already have. This is a big no no for me. I don't ever want reading to be a chore like school was for me, so if I have to give up professionalism for fun, then so be it.

5. Supply and demand:  Sometimes, I see all the review books and requests that other bloggers get and feel a bit envious. These times, I wonder if I too could be reaping the ARC rewards if I put a little more effort into my reviews and posts...then I look at my TBR pile.

How about you guys? Do you ever struggle to write professional sounding reviews? Do you put off writing reviews because you don't think you can say what you want to without sounding like you're ripping into a book? Please tell me I'm not the only one!

Misc Monday: I Am Officially Freaking Out

I think I've redefined the meaning of stretching yourself too thin this month. Or should I say for the coming month. To qualify here is a list of things I have going on for the next four weeks:

- NaNoWriMo
- Sister's hens night
- Sister's wedding (of which I am a bridesmaid/florist)
- November giveaway
- Must finish Aussie Author Challenge for above stated giveaway
- A million and one books to read/review

Yeah okay, so the list doesn't look that daunting when it's presented so neatly but I kid you not it's more than it seems. I realise that none of the stuff on the list is mandatory and I could just say no and take the pressure off myself but c'mon, let she who is without a toppling TBR pile cast the first book. Nobody? I didn't think so!

I thought my 5 days off work would help but the internet was down for 2 of those days (you didn't notice because I have perfected the skill of squint typing into an iPhone and I know where the 3G hotspots are in my street!). Also, I've been hit with another mysterious headache so looking at the computer screen has been a bit nauseating.

Anyway, enough of that. I promised I would give myself this post to freak out and then I'd just get on with it. Thanks for listening guys!

Misc Monday: Apologies and Promises

When I first started blog stalking it always really amazed me how bloggers would always put where they received their review books from and it blew my mind that many of them were given review copies. The whole idea was totally foreign to me because at the time my books came from one of two places: the bookstore or the library. Now that I'm 5 months into the blogging thing, I'm at the other end of the spectrum. I have so many books I want to read and usually get about 1 book review request a week. Which brings me to the apology bit of this post.
      I've accepted quite a few review books and haven't been able to get around to reading many of them. That thought really bugs me because I've always been able to prioritise my time well. So I apologise to all the great and patient authors out there who have taken a chance on me and my blog. I appreciate each and every one of you.
      What am I going to do about it you ask? Well from this moment on I promise that for every print book I read I will read one of my review books until I've caught up. Getting the e-reader will certainly help because a lot of my review books are e-books and I used to print them all out which was a bit of a paper guzzler.
       Anyway, this seems like a bit of a random pointless post. Thanks for reading guys.

Misc Monday: Updates & Stuff

This is a mixed bag of a post. Where all of the little updates and things that don't really fit into any of my other posts go to be seen.

First off, I am doing my first guest post over at Dark Side of the Covers. Be sure to pop over and check it out. I blog about a topic that's very close to my fingers: Blog Addiction!

In reading news, the TBR is getting way out of hand. I have at least 20 books on loan from the library at one time and I end up reading maybe 2 a month and then having to constantly renew or return books. Somehow this doesn't stop me from putting new books on hold though.

In writer news, I am searching for a critique partner to motivate me to write my next novel which I am planning to finish by May next year in order to enter it into a writing competition. I have a few options about where to post my request but I'm a bit skittish because, and I feel like a bit of a sap for admitting this, I am worried about idea theft. I wasn't at first and then a few people I know suggested it to me and now my OCD has turned it into something bigger. Do you guys ever freak out about people stealing your ideas too or am I the only paranoid one?

In reviewing news, I've decided to keep my reviews short and in a list format for now so they don't take so much time to write. That way I don't feel like writing a review is a chore and won't have so many backed up like I have been doing lately.

Finally, a lot of my blogger friends are going through rough/busy times at the moment so I just wanted to say hang in there guys. Hope things get bright soon.

Anyway, it's the start of another week everybody! Only 4 more days until the weekend :)

Over and out.

Obsession in Real Life

Hey All,

You may have noticed my lack of presence on the blogosphere lately and this post explains why. The jist of the story is that I've had to go back into the real world and be a real person. As you can see from this weeks icon, I am not happy about it! Mostly because in my every day encounters, I haven't come across any vampires, werewolves, shifters and least of all any super smokin' hot guys.
          All jokes aside, I've had to do my fair share of socializing with non bloggers this past few weeks and have noticed that whilst I seem pretty outgoing and laid back on my blog (at least I hope so) it's a pretty different story in the real world. I'm still friendly and stuff but I don't find that I go out of my way to be extroverted. In fact, I get downright annoyed when I have to leave my lair and venture outside for groceries or petrol (gas for you Americans!) or work.
         Also, I have developed a very low tolerance for bullsh@t. Suddenly, I am that funny sidekick character who can't shut their mouth and who is either there for comic relief or to be sadly killed of in a later book. Sometimes, I find that I even zone out in the middle of a conversation a la JD from Scrubs style and imagine a number of funny scenarios that would take me away from the boredom of my current situation.
        All in all, I think I may possibly be going crazy. But it has at least prompted me to wonder what my fellow blogger friends are like in real life. So tell me, who are you? Are you exactly the same? Are you like me and feel more comfortable in the world of words? I would really love to find out :)   

*On another note, I have taken everybody's advice and decided to be kinder to myself. Therefore, I am going to start changing the way I write my reviews so they don't take up so much of my time! Woohoo for shortcuts.

Very Miscellaneous Monday

Spring has finally arrived in Australia but instead of being all revived and whatnot, I find myself in a bit of slump. I think it's because time has flown by so quickly in the last couple of months that I feel as if the arrival of spring is a bit premature. I've haven't done much in terms of the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year. There's a lot of housework to be done, work is a dementor slowly draining all happiness from me, I get guilty pangs when I'm doing anything but writing and I spend wayyyyy too much time idly blog stalking. Not productive blog stalking, just idly reading random posts that I don't comment on and have no intention of ever following. Overall, I think I'm putting too much pressure on myself. My only solace is that I don't seem to be the only one. I've seen a few post from bloggers I follow saying the same thing so I feel a bit better admitting I'm just Clark Kent and not Superman.
       To counter all this sluggishness, I'm going to give myself a break until the New Year. Yep. From now until after the silly season I'm just going to do whatever I feel like without worrying about deadlines, books I haven't been able to read yet and  reviews I haven't posted. So there!!

The following is just a bunch of miscellaneous thoughts I didn't know where else to post:

1. I've been dying to share think link with someone forever but have never had a chance. It's hilarious. 7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail (Quickly)
2. I am deathly afraid of ghosts but have started The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong and really want to finish it. Not sure what to do now. I didn't sleep properly for weeks after watching The Sixth Sense. Fear vs Extreme Curiosity. *edited authors note: read to chapter 4, haven't been able to sleep for 2 nights. Think it's time to give up. Spewing because the book is so good.
3. Have finally caught on that novel writing is a long process and no amount of OCD on my behalf is going to change that.
4. My conspiracy theories about fantasy being less than respected is proven in this episode of the First Tuesday Book Club where authors such as Emily Rodda discuss the perception of fantasy writers amongst the industry.

That's it from me for now. I might be a bit absent from here for a bit but I'll still be lurking around. Having said that, I might learn so self control and be back with a vengeance. 

Lan

Misc Monday: Bubblegum YA (Can you see me??)

This post is inspired by something I read on Lani's blog and also something that has really ground my gears for months now. It's that funny face or that uncomfortable smile someone makes when you tell them you're reading/writing a YA sci-fi/fantasy instead of a great literary novel.
          You see, I am starting to get very serious about my writing so I've joined quite a few writer's groups both online and in real life. Maybe I'm just being overly sensitive but I get the distinct feeling that I am being ignored. Or I'm not being taken seriously because of the genres that I read/write. The reaction I received when I told my writing group I was writing an urban fantasy was less than stellar. You can literally hear the cyber crickets chirping after I've posted something to the group in my various online writer's groups. 
         After much deliberation and blog stalking, I've decided I no longer care. So what if I'm not reading the next great literary novel? So what if the cover of my book has a vampire or a fallen angel on it? No I don't think I would prefer to be critically acclaimed but hardly read.
         To all those who scoff at young adult fantasy and sci-fi : BITE ME! (pun intended).