Winter Review Policy 2019 Activation!

Time for a news bulletin!

Please note this is virtually exactly the same as my 2018 Winter Review Policy post - it is saving me time! 

September is here which means Autumn and cold weather are on the way. While it provides more reasons to have hot chocolate, unfortunately it means the amount of books I review has to change.

For those of you who like me forget things and/or are new readers, my winter review policy means that I don't accept books for review from the date of this post until 1st March 2020. There are exceptions which I will explain later on.

I have permanent health issues including fatigue and chronic pain. Unfortunately my body adversely reacts to colder weather (anything below 10C), rain, snow, ice and hail. Oh and thunderstorms. I wish I was joking, but I like to hibernate as much as I can in winter to let my body be relaxed as it battles against the elements. Reviewing is fun but it does use energy, so I'm simply conserving what I have.

Wish I was impervious to temperature like Miku is (this is her 2019 winter outfit - possibly the best yet!)

There will be posts throughout the next few months, they will just be more gaming reviews and reviews of my own books rather than ones I get sent for review. It's easier to do a near-blanket ban on book reviews for a few months than having to apologise for being ill, which has happened over the last few weeks with unexpected illness over the summer

I can be found on Twitter most days, usually tweeting game related info on whatever I'm playing with at the time. Come find me @Nayuleska !

I use this fanart of Miku as my main profile header!

This doesn't affect reviews I've already committed myself to between October 2019 and March 2020. 

 I am upholding those, this is more for anyone requesting a review from today will probably get a negative response from me. I will answer emails explaining that as I know not everyone checks back on my review policy (or on the type of genres I do review...). I will try and repost a reminder of this post once a month in the absence of being unable to sticky a post here.

No idea who this cutie is, but she looks like I feel in winter.

I hope I can start accepting books for review sooner than March, but it does depend entirely on the weather. If we have a good winter, I'll accept books sooner. However, if we have a bad winter that I may have to extend the Winter Policy into April which I did earlier this year. I simply won't know until I get to February, which isn't for a few months yet! I appreciate your understanding in this policy change.

The exceptions are if you are one of my favourite authors! 

 I will always accept your books, they may still get a delay in review.

Once again thank you for your understanding, I hope you stay well this winter and enjoy the posts I do get up!  I hope this is all clear - please let me know if you have any questions. I promise this blog isn't going dark until March 2019! If you are able to wait until March for a review then please do still ask me to do them. I really appreciate your continued support and understanding for changes related to my blogging schedule. 

Sadly not drawn by me

Nayu's News #228 Review update time!

I'm as excited as Fluttershy was the gala in My Little Pony possibly season 1

It's time for me to catch up with the reviews which, thanks to the wonderful Hootsuite, are going live on my Twitter and Facebook accounts without me doing a thing! It means I've been able to focus on resting, and dealing with the cold weather, not stress over letting you know that my latest post is out. I can't believe I've been doing this for a month, it's definitely a good step which I'm continuing to make. I do miss making the tweets more personal, and I will try to do so in the future, but I can't backdate those personal tweets for reviews before today. There's a lot, and I'm hurrying to finish what I need to do so tomorrow (Friday, which will be today when you read this post) I can have a full rest day as I've a lot of driving to do Saturday. Plus I'd be spamming you all with so many tweets at once, which isn't beneficial to anyone.

No idea what anime this is from so if you know please do let me know! Get enough spam that I wouldn't want to add more to your inboxes

The update is that I'm now (finally) emailing the links to the relevant publicists and putting the reviews on Goodreads. As a reminder check out this post as to why I'm no longer reviewing on Amazon UK or US. I'm sorry it's taken me this long to do this, I genuinely haven't had the energy to do it. Winter hit me harder than expected, and I'm adjusting to the lower temperatures in so far as I'm reducing must-do's on days I feel rough (which is every day now til Spring...) 

I love snow! If we ever get it again where I live. Like snow there are 2 sides of winter to me, 1 = body gets stroppier every single day, 2nd is I'm excited about the prospect of snow, even if it never happens (which it hasn't for a few years)

Anyway, I am heading off to Devon from Saturday to Tuesday, so today (Thurs) I'm pre-scheduling a few posts to keep you ticking over. There will be 2 reviews (maybe 3, as I don't think I finished one from the other day) and quite possibly an anime and/or gaming post too!) There will be more of those once I'm back, because I really am almost caught up with review reading/listening (got to love those audiobook reviews), so yay! It's nice to almost be on top of things at last. I hope you get on top of something this weekend!

Nayu's News #223 Review Schedule & Policy update!

Time for an update!

Hi everyone! Sorry I haven't posted a review this weekend, been a bit more flakey than I anticipated (I'm blaming Thursday's migraine, although my body just likes throwing a tantrum). It's probably no bad thing it's happened this way, as it's cemented something I've been thinking a lot about lately. That thing is called reviews. 

I love reviewing. I love discovering new authors, getting reacquainted with familiar ones through the books I'm given to review from publishers. I love getting to know publicists - I'm becoming fairly good friends with a few of them who support me through everything. Most importantly of all I get to share my thoughts and feelings with all of you, something which I will never stop doing. 

Books are awesome!

Can you tell there's a 'but' coming? I am shortly changing my review policy. I wasn't going to make it public, but recently I've set a permanent out of office reply on my emails, the account I use mostly for reviews. Some of you may have seen it already, the gist of it is while I try to reply within 48 hours, it may be a longer wait since my health is so unpredictable. It seems to be super unpredictable this year. I frequently can't read when I'm super flakey - for those of you who watch/know of PriPara I'm definitely Sophie in fancy mode with her pushuuus! 

Sophie crashing hard after a performance.

Not reading means that my review books back up a little, which adds pressure on me to be well enough to read and review them, especially if I'm doing tour dates. So after a lot of thinking and chatting with other bloggers and writers, I've made a decision. 

From October 1st 2016 I will be reviewing 1 book a week, more or less. That's one shiny new book which I get from a publisher. Just one. 

I'm going to be a 1 book a week blogger!

It may be that I review 2 in a week, if I really love the look of a book, but primarily just one. I've been book blogging since 2009, a total of 7 years. I'm in a position I dreamed of when I started blogging, being able to request books I love and getting them from a lot of publishers often if I ask for them, and I'm frequently alerted by the publicists who know what I like to read of a fun book they're promoting soon, all because of the effort I put into this blog. I'm not being big headed by saying that either. I'm predominantly a regular book reviewer so am reliable for publishers and authors alike. I may not get many comments, or have a huge following, but I do my best to offer quality reviews. 

When I'm flakey I mostly watch anime and play video games when I've got the brain power. Lately I really want to review some of those games and anime because I love them so much, and reviewing less newly published books will mean I can do that. 

Often I want to read but don't have the energy.

Also, I have a lot of books in my personal collection that I want to read. I love reading reviewing books, but equally lately I want to reread those in my own library. I currently can't easily do that because when I am up for reading I've got review books to read. Reducing my review books to just 1 a week will take the imaginary pressure off me, leave more time to share what I'm doing (gaming & anime watching) with you, as they are just as interesting and fun as books are, especially since there seem to be so few people blogging about playing with Japanese games, at least the ones I play. 

Just because I'm looking to review 1 book a week doesn't mean there will only be 1 post a week here. There will be several! On not so good weeks it's probably just going to be links to my other blog, Nayu's Crochet Dreams, or cute pictures, but on good weeks it will be anime reviews and game reviews, with some 'human drama' shows thrown into the mix. 

I've said it!

I was feeling a bit nervous about this decision, which is why I wasn't going to say anything to you. The last few weeks I've honestly said yes to less review books (although September has turned out quite busy...), and knowing I've got less has made a huge difference. Tomorrow (I'm too flakey to do much blogging today), I'm going to put up a notice on the side menu saying I'm not accepting any reviews until late September (I will give a date) so I can catch up with the books I've got. Writing reviews isn't a quick scribble of my thoughts. That's the easy part. I have to look the book up, add the cover image, find it on the publisher's site, add it to Twitter and Facebook. It's more work than non-bloggers realise, but other bloggers will understand the effort that's needed, which lately I simply haven't had. 

I forgot I use Pinterest too, so that's 3 social media accounts to keep updated.

I am signing up to Hootsuite so I can get social media notices pre-scheduled/automatically sent out for me, which will also take some pressure off. Posts go up, but sometimes I'm not up for spending 10-20mins composing a tweet with the link to the review, and Hootsuite looks like it can help me with that. 

I flatly refuse to give up blogging, both book reviews and general blogging - I love it too much! The new 1 book a week policy will be on a first come first served basis: so if I get a request one day which I schedule for the 2nd week in November, and the next day an absolutely amazing book request gets sent through also for 2nd week in November (I really will be allocating slots to books), then I'll say it has to go in the 3rd week (unless it is super duper special (ie by a favourite author). 

I hope this all makes sense, and you understand why these changes have to take place. The email auto-reply saves me having to say sorry for replying late due to my health. Emails take energy too, and I have precious little of it as part of my health condition. Apologies if you email me frequently and keep getting the email, it's one of those things :)

I'm looking forward to sharing some of my favourite reads with you, and yabbering on about anime and games! I hope you'll all continue to read my blog. Please don't be put off sending your book requests to me, I will still say yes to a lot, it's more the timing of the reviews will be changed. 

Have a happy rest of the day! 

This is what I'm doing!

Nayu's News #215: Book Reviewing & Book Writing

Hot chocolate with a stack of books is my kind of heaven! Picture source

 

Hi everyone! Thank you for being patient while I've been absent. I was a bit peaky, and I've been working hard on writing the backlog of reviews which is my sort of secret book review project. It's not a secret now, and I'm sure I've mentioned it previously. Anyway, I'm 1/3 through the process! 

Holo from the anime Spice and Wolf does a good impression of me when I stay up late reading. I don't use a candle though!

 

1) Write the reviews on my tablet =COMPLETE

2) Post reviews on blog = pending

3) Read & review remaining books

I'm making good progress with this mammoth project which until now has felt neverending. It's great to see the end in sight, and to share so many brilliant novels with you. Gettin them written means I can spend more time creating lovely crochet items and on my own novels-yay! The one still with betas needs major work, but hopefully the current one I'm working on will be in better shape. ^o^ 

Seems appropriate to use Holo again! As much as I'd love to write with a quill and ink,

 

Nayu's News #208 Happy New Year! Blog Changes for 2016

Super cute greeting!

I hope everyone has a fantastic 2016! I'd honestly meant to post this last week, but I had a migraine and have been recovering from it, as well as working hard on my current novel. I'm on the read through before handing to betas stage, so not long to go til I'll have a week off then get editing another wip! 

2016 Blog Changes 

There are only 24 hours in a day...

I hinted last week on Twitter that changes are afoot here. They are changes which some of you won't be surprised about, since you've wondered how I've managed not to enforce them before now. As for the rest of you, well, hopefully you'll understand my reasoning. 

I am not stopping reviewing! 

Thought I'd squish thoughts like that. I love reviewing, I love sharing my thoughts about books with you so I'm not going to stop. 

Book addict for life!

However, book reviewing isn't all I do. At the moment I have the opportunity to focus on writing my own novels full time. Writing takes time. It requires research which involves lots of dvd watching, some chocolate testing a bit of Google use. The harder I work, the most rest I need to let my body recover from all the energy it uses up in playing with my Muse, who is more than a tad demanding.

It takes a long time to rally her into action.

But once she gets going there's no stopping her!

The other week when I had a mini-break I realised that having the time to read a whole book series not for reviewing would be useful for my novel research, but continuing reviewing as much as I have in 2016 isn't too compatible with that. 

So I am going to review less books in 2016. 

Remember, less books doesn't mean no books!

This doesn't involve that much change. I'm hoping to catch up on review posting (& reading) in the week's break once I give my current novel to my beta readers (by 7th Jan, in theory), I'll still review a wide range of genres, just being a bit more selective. Instead of accepting some, I'll add them to my wish list ^o^ 

It initially was a hard decision to make, but once I'd discussed it with a few close friends I knew it was the right one. I have so many different stories to bring to you myself, and I need to focus on them since I'm trying to make it a career, along with my crochet (which is going to have more products soon - will let you know both here on and on my crochet blog Nayu's Crochet Dreams).   

I hope you understand why I'll be reducing how much I review - it's for a very good cause! One day in the not too distant future my own books will be on your shelves ^o^ (& I'll be making headway in , world domination through my own novels!!!)

Here's to a book filled future!

Nayu's News #166 2015 = The Year of More Organised Blogging

Time to share what I've been up to today!

I'm not one for making New Year's resolutions, simply because I make life goals throughout the year, as and when I need to. Today I've been organising my book blogging schedule. I keep draft posts of all books I have set review dates for, predominantly due to blog tours, on Blogger. I have the major dates covered. Phew! 

Let's just say that my previous method of keeping an eye on all other books doesn't work too well over winter when my health heavily limits how much I can blog. And it turns out that health issues + grief = barely any reviews in December & this month (January). I want to make a dent and get underway with clearing the backlog of reviews. I'm not going to overwork, as that always ends up being counterproductive, but I'll be doing lots of short reviews over the next few weeks to get through the stack of awesome reads needing to be shouted about to the world. 

Couldn't resist adding this cute pic of a girl shouting her views to the world!

But in the spirit of a New Year (albeit a few weeks into it) = a new me (or you!) I've come up with this system. It's partly because later on this year my daily routine is hopefully going to change - I can't say any more than that until at least April, as nothing is definite yet. It's not a publishing deal, not yet, but it is writing related in a roundabout way. I've chosen to keep it in a super cute exercise book (I have several more so no fear of me running out of them). 

Winnie the Pooh & friends is way better than a plan notebook cover, don't you think?

It's funny that of all the notebooks I pick this one had info of the system I tried using in 2013. That didn't work out so great and, thanks to my lousy memory I can't remember why. 

2013: When I read a book & reviewed it I crossed it out.

 The one I've worked out today is way better!  

Instead of tearing out the 2013 pages, I simply made this title page....

...and began making my lovely table!

 Yes I know the pages are blank - they aren't any more! My handwriting isn't amazing & I've written various notes which are prompts for me about the book and not really for public view. There's nothing bad about them, the phrases used aren't all that polished and ditto spelling, since my memory issues can now have me muddling up words sometimes, as well as using creative spellings.

Anyway, I'm recording key details in the coloured chart (which I had great fun creating!!): book title, sometimes the book author (I say sometimes because when I search my emails for review data I predominantly use the title on its own), when I requested it, when I received it, when the review date is (if it has one), other details such as if it's just a review, if it's part of a blog tour, if I need to send questions for Q&As, which email account I can find it (I use 2...), whether I've read it (a y = yes I have. Blank space = no.), and a tick when I put the post up. Simple!

The simpler tasks are, the easier it is for me to keep them up. This is true for anyone. I hope to blog soon about creating simplicity in life.

Life is simple - all we need is books! Right?

For now, I'd love to hear about your organisation system for book reviewing, or anything else you need to keep track of in life! 

We're all different, but what matters is we all love books!