Website Redesign and Hiatus

Theoretically, anyone who pays notice to my online existence will probably have noticed that I haven’t been around much lately. Anyway, regardless of whether anyone has noticed, it’s true.

There have been a number of reasons for this, the first and most important being my ongoing health and personal issues. I’ve been sick for quite a while now and although the cause is being treated (it’s nothing life threatening, just persistent and unpleasant) and I’m a lot better than I was, it has taken a lot longer to sort out than I had hoped. Mostly this is because I’ve had to swap medications a number of times as I have had trouble tolerating them. The first few I trialled (each for at least 3 months) made me just as sick as the condition they were meant to treat. Sometimes modern medicine takes a while to get it right and that’s just life.

While lately things are starting to seem more hopeful in this regard, being various degrees of sick for about two years has caused me to fall behind in many aspects of my life. I’m just starting to feel well enough to start catching up on it all.

Most importantly, I need to finish my degree. I’ve been delayed so many times now it is starting to get to me and as this is my last semester (assuming I pass) I can’t really afford to mess anything up.

All in all, I haven’t had the time or energy to write reviews (of a quality that I’m satisfied with) or maintain this blog. I apologise if I’ve let anyone down.

Also, under the pressure to review all the books I promised to review and watching the backlog pile up I somehow stopped enjoying the process along the way.

So, what I’m getting at is that I have decided that at the moment I need to concentrate on other areas of my life and will be putting this blog on hiatus until the end of semester (around the start of July). I may appear here and there if I find the time, but until then I will not be taking on any new commitments.

When I return I will probably start off reading and reviewing the books I personally want to read (as opposed to those that might get me the most hits) and sorting through my backlog. I also plan to use the site less as a pure review site (I can always send my reviews to bigger sites with broader reach such as RD for that) and more as a personal author blog with genre news and reviews.

Hopefully, I’ll have more writing to speak of in the near future as despite the above mentioned setbacks my mentorship with Kaaron Warren seems to be progressing well and I’m currently polishing a few more drafts (slowly but surely). Hopefully I’ll be able to send them out in the next few months.

I have also started to redesign this website to be a bit simpler to better suit its new purpose. While I loved the previous design for a busy review blog, it was a design that was really made for having a lot of content and regular updates to fill it up.

Cheers,

Michelle

Image: ‘Moonlight Construction’ by Evan Ludes (www.framedbynature.net)