Book Blogging vs Real Life | A Personal & Important Update!

Hi! *waves shyly* So I've been doing a lot of thinking, and I feel like I owe my readers and all of the authors/publishers I've worked with or who email me an update. I understand my personal life may not be something some of you may want to read about so no hurt feelings if you click off this page. :) I just feel my readers need to know why things around here have been so off and on. 

So here we go... (I am a little nervous)

Many of you don't know this about me but I suffer from chronic pain. Day in, day out all my body feels is pain. About 6 years ago (age 29) I fell while in the shower. I ended up tearing a bone in my spine as well as throwing a few of my spine disks out of alignment. Due to this injury I suffer from chronic back pain while sitting, standing and even sometimes laying down. Here's the thing, I do all or most of my blogging, emailing, and such in bed. Laying down. I've tried all kinds of medications, physical therapy, shots in my back and more but nothing has worked, nothing has even take the edge off the pain. Until now....

You may have noticed I've haven't been blogging much for the past month or two. The reason why is my Doctor has found something that ACTUALLY works to take away a good 60% or more of my pain. A spinal cord stimulator. This implanted device works by changing the pain signals that go to my brain into another sensation altogether. So instead of pain, I may feel a slight buzzing or a "cat-like purring". When nothing else worked this did. Now I've yet to have the back surgery to have the device placed on my spinecord but that is coming up soon. I did in fact have a trial done on August 5th, hence why I've been MIA lately. I won't go into a ton of details about that but I will say it worked. Something finally worked! So here's what that means...

1. My surgery date is coming up on Sept 30th. I will be on a few weeks to a couple months blog hiatus. I'm really not sure how long until after the surgery and I can see how I'm feeling. I will put a note up on my blog closer to the date.

2. After I'm all healed up everything should be back to normal or even better. I am hoping to be posting more frequently, doing more reviews more often and more giveaways. Reviews are the hardest to do for me because I have to lay still for so long. 

3. I will be playing email catch-up. I am always behind on my emails. I feel bad for not responding quickly or sometimes not at all. This is due to my pain NOT because I plainly don't like the sender or don't care to reply. 

And lastly.....4. I will be going on a much needed mini-late-summer vacation to Maryland. SO EXCITED about it and this will take place mid-september. I also will post a note on my blog again when the date comes closer. 

So that's pretty much it. As I'm writing this I feel kind of stupid. I don't want anyone to think I'm making excuses or telling my "sad story". I just wanted to share with my readers a little about me and why things have been the way they've been. I love my blog, I really do! I love running it, reviewing books, meeting such amazing people and of course sharing my love for books with all of you. I hope you enjoy reading it as I do writing it. I am really excited about being able to do more on my blog and I hope you are too. I will definitely being have a huge giveaway for my blogiversary in November!

If you've read this, THANK YOU! That means so much to me. It was hard for me to write this update because I maybe I shouldn't be so personal but I felt it was needed. 

GROUP HUG!!!

All my love,