I'm Back!

Shame.

Alright, Internet. I've been gone a while. So long, in fact, that I think it would have been perfectly reasonable to assume that I wasn't coming back. But here I am! I'm not dead, I'm not missing, and I'm finally ready to get back into this.

So, where the hell have I been? What could have prompted me to take an almost year-long, unannounced hiatus? Well, I'd like to say I've simply been too busy, that I've been doing fun and exciting things that left me absolutely no time to blog--not a single second within all the drama to even drop a line here pointing out that, yeah, someday I'd wander back into these parts again.

But, in all honesty, that's not really the case. I have been doing stuff, devoting my free time to other pursuits and hobbies besides reading and blogging... but the reason Amara's Eden dropped off my 2015 schedule almost entirely--without me posting a single thing between the months of February and December!--isn't that I didn't have the time. I could have made the time, I'm sure, to occasionally read a book and write up a review. It was the energy that I didn't have, not the time. Or, perhaps more accurately, it was the enthusiasm. I was totally and utterly burned out with blogging; it wasn't fun, and I really wasn't getting anything from it but stress--am I posting enough? am I reading enough? fuck, when did I last post? can I put something together really quick to make up for it?--and eventually, what began as a bit of procrastination turned into a long period of irresponsible abandonment, and by the time that said period had grown into a span of months that's honestly fairly worth of some shame--who lets a blog just sit unattended for almost a year!?--the idea of trying to get back into this with that added stressor in mind was increasingly less likely.

Now, though, it's December. NaNoWriMo is over (and was great for me this year!) and 2016 is looming on the horizon. I have reading challenges sitting around unfinished, plenty of ancient eARCs still waiting to be read and reviewed, and heaping hordes of both library and owned books that are calling my attention.

Anyway, I'm back, at least for the foreseeable future. I can't say how frequently I'm going to post because I can't say how frequently I'm going to read; reading isn't my primary hobby anymore, I have to admit, and 2015 was a year almost entirely devoid of it. But I have so many great-looking books waiting in the wings that it's entirely unfair for me to neglect reading as a hobby--and, by extension, this blog--any longer.

At the very least, if I ever need to take another break like that in the future, I hope to leave with a hiatus post at least; the only excuse I have for not doing so this year was that by the time I realized I'd accidentally gone on hiatus, it seemed like too much time had passed to make a hiatus announcement reasonable. I definitely don't want to do that again, and while I'd like to at least something every week, I'm definitely going to try to post at least once or twice a month. (But hopefully much more?)

All that said, I'm going to be wrapping up my reading challenges from now until 2016 arrives, and then I'll think about declaring some new challenges to try to keep me motivated throughout the next year. So, without further ado, enjoy my first review in about ten months.