Buffy's Ramblings

 GOOD NEWS! I'm returning to blogging, reviewing, writing, etc.  However, with feedburner going away, I was looking into other solutions and, as my mother and grandmother used to say, got a wild hair up my ass and decided to build a whole new website.  That's right, go big or go home, right?  Anywho, the new site is  here  and is under construction, but still functional.   I will transfer reviews  - with new a new rating system - over to the new site (for the most part) but that is likely all that I will manually transfer.  I will leave this site up for referencing old posts (such as old tour posts with fun things from authors), but nothing new will be posted nor will any comments on old posts (though I will monitor comments on this post in case anyone has questions about the move).   I know I've been gone a long time and for that I greatly apologize.  It took a while to build up a following and I hated taking a break - su...

So, life ain't perfect.  I'M not perfect.  However, I think things are better than they were.  Tara is in Kindergarten this year (holy moly!) and V is in preschool two mornings a week.  That's exciting, plus I take V to the rec center the other three mornings a week giving me an hour or two of kid free time five days a week.  The hubby takes the kids to his parents on Sundays (so he can watch football via RedZone since we don't have cable) so that's some solo time too.  This helps my sanity a TON.  I'm still doing a little searching regarding some identity outside of "Mommy", but that will take time.  I think I'll really find that out when both kids are in school full time.  I want to write, and I want to be a firefighter, but for different reasons, both are incredibly intimidating endeavors.  The firefighter aspiration will take a LOT of work as well given that I'm currently overweight, need to train to jog and gain strength, and have...

This is a hard post to write, but it's time to write it.  I failed.  I failed to get my writing truly off the ground.  I failed to keep up the networking, popularity, and quality of my blog.  I didn't research to learn how to improve the blog itself.  Buffy Kennedy was a dream, but my bigger dream was children and I had two.  Now my focus needs to be on them. Right now, they scream a lot and they learned that from me.  Right now, I don't engage enough with them so they're bored, and cranky all the time.  I'm not happy with or proud of the parent that I am.  I complain too much about everything and can't seem to make new friends or keep up the friendships I do have very.  I'm no happy with the person that I am.  To be honest, my husband isn't either and I certainly don't want that to grow.  I have a LOT of work to do to improve myself and that has to take priority over everything else.  This will be my last post.  ...

I just want to say that I apologize for being so scarce on the blog.  I'm doing my best to keep up with at least a post a week.  I worked hard when I first started this blog to get some following, and I know I've pretty much shot that all to hell by having kids, but I can't bring myself to just shut it down.  When I get back to writing, I don't want to have to start completely from scratch.  Plus I still love showing some awesome authors some love. I also want to apologize to some people.  I apologize to all those to whom I owe reviews (the list of names is long at this point).  I apologize to Tara Lain and Dianne Duvall for not always being able to keep up with what's going on with them and not always being able to fulfill my street team responsibilities. I'm struggling.  At first, I thought it could just be attributed to normal adjustments related to having two small children, but...it's not.  I'm pretty sure I have Postpartum Depression...

Adjusting to life with two children, one being a cranky two year old and the other being a newborn, is...hard.  I'm a little behind on a lot of things I wanted to do, but most importantly (at least of the things relevant to the blog), I'm behind on reviews I wanted to post.  So, as filler, I'm hoping to get some reviews up on books I've already read in the past.  The reason I'm mentioning it ahead of time is because they're books that have already come and gone in terms of hype.  For instance, I plan on sharing my thoughts on Twilight  and its sequels, JR Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood  series, and maybe even the  Harry Potter  series.  Oh and can't forget Hunger Games .  So yeah, that ought to keep y'all entertained while I try to catch up on some reading (which is a ton harder to do than ever before)!

I've done a couple posts in the past about cancer awareness over the last couple years.  However, starting in January of 2015, I'd like to post every month about the various cancers or illnesses for which that month represents awareness. If you have a story you'd like to share, email me and I'll include it in the relevant post.  I hope that this will not affect my blog followers as I know it's not book related in any way, but I think it's really important to be aware of cancer and illness. After all, sometimes it takes losing time with and ultimately the life of a loved one to an illness before you realize that the illness exists and the impact it has.  Maybe those future posts will help, or maybe it'll just bring out appreciate for others plights, or simply send out positive vibes to survivors. <3

I'd like to get some readers of the blog a little more active.  I know a giveaway gets people to participate, and that blog tours get me exposure, but I want readers to get involved for fun, not just to win stuff.  I am going to try to do NaNoWriMo again this November, so I'm going to be busy then, but in December I think I'm going to try to reinstate my Flash Fiction.  Hopefully I'll get some participation there. Does anyone else have any ideas?  Get readers to get involved and be creative?  I guess I'd like to develop a relationship with those that read my blog; get to know y'all better!  Instead of just being all "thanks for reading!" I look forward to hearing y'all's thoughts :-)

So here's the deal.  My daughter is just over a year old now, and she's a huge hand full.  She's still nursing (frequently) and plays best if I'm on the floor with her.  She's also still sleeping with us, so when she goes to bed, so do I.  I am barely keeping up with posting 1-2 reviews a week right now.  My wonderful, supportive husband knows how much I don't want to shut the blog down, so he's willing to help me, however, being on the verge of shutting down the blog, I have to wonder how much it's really worth it.   IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE THAT STILL READS THE BLOG? If I still have some kind of following or readership, I will do my best to keep up the blog until things get better and I can even make it more interesting again (like start writing my own stuff again beyond reviews).  If I don't get any comments, particularly of the "I still read - please don't shut it down - I like you!" persuasion, there's not much point ...

Evernight Publishing Teams Up with World Vision to Support the Education for Girls Fund. During the week of July 14 – 21, the full amount of every book purchased on the Evernight and Evernight Teen websites will be donated to World Vision’s Education for Girls Fund . 57 million primary-school-age children are not enrolled in school; 53 percent of these are girls. These children are at greater risk for exploitation, early marriage, and lower income-earning potential. World Vision addresses barriers to education and works with communities and local governments to improve the quality of education children receive. Help support World Vision’s Education for Girls Fund by purchasing a book or two (or more!) from Evernight Publishing and Evernight Teen ’s websites. The full price of each book purchased from July 14th to July 21st will be donated to this important cause. Look for authors'  blog  posts about what education means to them during the special fundrai...

Obviously, I'm a new mom. With that, some adjustments have had to be made, and more are needing to be made as well. Starting March, I will be hosting blog tours very infrequently (probably only for my street team authors and such). There will be reviews posted weekly. I will try to at least post two a week, but I make no promises. We're going to be moving around this summer so that'll only add to the time I don't have to work on this. Do I still intend to write? Yes. When? I have no idea. I'm currently drowning in depression and swamped with all things baby. I really, really don't want to shut the blog down, so this is my solution. If things don't change once the moving is all done, I may have to take it down. Thank you all for reading and I hope you'll stick around.

I'm going to be MIA a bit. Any giveaways might take a bit longer to select winners and get things mailed out (that were done by me anyway) and I won't be promoting much that wasn't already scheduled. My daughter decided to show up 2 weeks early so I'm a busy new mom trying to figure out the whole deal. I'll get things done as I can!

So just to update y'all...I had a huge oops a week or two ago and ended up deleting my outline of all my articles.  I was really upset, mostly with myself, and it's made me procrastinate some.  I am aiming to get the articles posted on Sundays.  Well I'm finally getting my thoughts together again so hopefully this will be the only week that I'm behind (2nd Trimester will post tomorrow morning).  I'm going to TRY to get ahead so everything that can be written ahead of time is done and ready to post, particularly because I'm spending more and more time offline napping or just because at 37 weeks my belly is big, in the way, and UNCOMFY.  Anyway, enough of my whining and excuses.  Just wanted to let y'all know that I'm not wussing out, just been a little too pregnant and lazy :P

So as many if not all of you know, I'm very pregnant.  I'm about 31 weeks out of 40 so I'm in the home stretch so to speak!  I feel like this is such a natural yet life changing experience and I have learned so much on this journey and I wouldn't mind sharing it.  Now that might just stem from taking a Bradley method birthing class and hearing birth stories and all and being like "this is so awesome, but overwhelming too and I should totally share my experiences" etc etc. Anyway, I'm thinking of writing a serial feature for the blog about my pregnancy and later the birth.  And I don't just mean the "magic" and "joy" of pregnancy, but the nitty gritty reality that is having a baby.  There's so many things that people don't talk about until it's too late to change your mind lol.  The discomforts of pregnancy are MANY...  It might be informative to some people, it'd be good for me to get back into writing and in a ...

Ok, so I've gotten way behind in my reading, partly due to my over zealousness in scheduling, and partly due to some depression over the *ugh* that has been this year.  I'm trying to pull out of the darkness, but it's not an easy or slow process.  So with that being said, I will review what I can, when I can . Starting after the first of the year, I will also be focused more on blog tours with occasional reviews and occasional reviews of my own rather than an actual schedule and sought after authors that I've stalked myself (I think I scare some people...not cool).  I will still host some of my favorites whenever I can ( Tara, Dianne, Sandra, Jenn, et al. <3 ), but mostly others will be through tour host sites that do a lot of the work for me.  Why is this important to me?  Because I dove into blogging so deeply in March that I didn't give myself any time to write, and while that was necessary at the time to help me grieve, that's really worn on me lately. ...

Sometimes, it's the little things in life. There are times in life when you can't help but appreciate the small things.  My husband is a goof and likes smiley faces, so he draws them on my dry erase board or even a piece of paper I'm using, and gets all excited when he sees a graphic of one, whether it be in a game or even as a picture to have printed on his checks next to his name and address.  If I drop ice on the ground and throw it in the sink or someone has just emptied several ice cubes into the sink, I like to run hot water over them just to watch them melt because I think it's cool.  I'm reading a book right now where a friend of the main character is named Jessie Smith and my oldest friend (I've known her since I was a whole five years old!) is named Jessi Smith so I couldn't help but giggle. Sometimes it's the little things in life that make us smile, or laugh, or just plain fascinate us.  Sometimes it can be a simple gesture that can ...

Ok, so Jenn James did a giveaway post and part of entering was to take a few items and a theme and write what you would do with them.  Pickup truck, cowboy, duct tape, cooler of ice, and an adult beverage - hehe yeah that was fun...anyhoo, getting brain back out of gutter (yeah, right), it gave me an idea.  I'm slacking on writing.  I don't know if I'm just not inspired, or if I've lost touch a little with the concept I was working on, or if I'm just too adult romance focused to write YA.  I did however, feel all warm and fuzzy inside writing that post, even if it was just a short little abbreviated blurb. So I propose this.  Every Monday I will put a post up asking for ideas.  From the comments left Monday-Thursday, I will pick a couple items (i.e. pickup truck, duct tape, ice) and a theme (i.e. naughty cowboy), and write up a little flash fiction, maybe 1000 wordsish, to be posted that Sunday.  It'll give my imagination and writing ability (beyond ...

So I read a book by Tara Lain and thoroughly enjoyed it, and started seeing her around FB and blogs and stuff a lot, and decided I wanted to read more and get more involved.  I know I haven't posted much (if any) M/M romance on here before now, but I greatly enjoy the genre, and Tara is one of the best authors I've seen within it.  She writes about Beautiful Boys, and she does it exquisitely. I'm part of her "Dream Team" which is her street team that helps out with promo etc. and I've decided that instead of trying to rearrange my schedule, I'd simply make time to post reviews of her books.  So, every Monday, until I run out of her books, I'm going to post a review of one of her works.  I'll start with the Genetic Attraction (which is actually mostly menage -- yum!) series, then focus on her Balls to the Wall series, and end on her stand alone stories.   Spell Cat will wait until just before her guest spot on the blog, but may get done sooner ...

Ok, so I promise I am doing some writing that's not reviews!  However, the point I'm at right now is not very conducive to doing Six Sentence Sundays on a regular basis. First, I am having trouble focusing on Earthbound Angel, mostly because there's death, sadness, and emotional struggles and I don't have the heart to throw myself into it just now.  Second, as I work on book 1 in the Power Surge series (still not sure how comfy I am with that title, what do you think?), I have some work to do before getting too far into the first draft. I need to get inside all the central characters' heads and under their skin so I can make sure I portray them accurately, and I need to refine the world they live in (powers and limitations etc).  So all the background and profile writing isn't really SSS material, you know?  However, I promise to throw up tidbits when I get going on the actual manuscript again and/or when a fun or juicy scene pops into my head :D

So, with the release of Diablo tres this week, it sort of took over my days as I struggled to keep up with my reading in the evenings. That being said, I'm being a slacker and not posting an SSS this week, BUT as I put in the effort to find a little balance between my writing, reading, and gaming, you should hopefully get one next week!

I recently received my very first out of the blue, unprompted book review and blog tour spotlight request!  I was so excited my husband thought I was a nut.  So anyway, it did make me look at my schedule and next month is going to be freaking crazy, but after that things even out a bit.  I will start a Misc SWAG giveaway on Fridays either in July or September.  I might be moving in August, or at least preparing to, so August is sort of up in the air at the moment.  I am going to try to keep that month fairly light, though still active. That being said, as of about mid September, I have plenty of openings to do more scheduling of interviews/guest posts etc.  With any author spotlight I do, I like to review a book by that author to post the week prior.  So!  That means I'm looking for authors and their books to schedule from September forward.  As long as the book is romance in some form (contemporary, urban fantasy, paranormal, fantasy, YA...