I’ve been a very bad reviewer as of late.

There are reasons for this, some acceptable and some not so much. On the legitimate front, I had a difficult semester with two intense lecture/lab combinations that left my daytime schedule rather full. In the evenings, I had work until bedtime. I still do, most nights.

Now that summer is nearly upon us, I have the final draft of my novel to finish sobbing over before I hand it off to my editor, the back half of a first draft of another novel to finish before I start polishing and shopping it around and a short story collection to edit once the author passes it on to me. I’m also participating in a collaborative novel with a group of horror writers that promises to be quite a bit of fun and I’m still plodding away with that Facebook novel idea.

That’s where most of my time should be going, but I’ve got some serious mismanagement issues. For example, two days ago I was supposed to devote my whole day off to working on the novel and getting book reviews written. I was allowing myself a short hour or so to meet a friend for lunch, but things shifted somewhere along the way.

I came home eight hours later with two tattoos. In my defense, they’re awesome. I can’t stop staring at them (at least the one that’s always in my field of vision), which is leading to further review copy reading slowdown. It’s a feedback loop of coolness in my house right now.

In all seriousness, I’m grateful for every review copy that comes my way, and every author who has patiently waited until the end of the semester for me to finish their book has been great. I would really like to be way less wasteful with my time, but until I can rein myself in (I’m already daydreaming about new tattoos and it’s only been two days) I’ll settle for just accountability.

Do I have a review copy of yours that I haven’t done a write up on yet? Friend me over at Goodreads and follow my progresss. Plugging in my email address (jessica dot r dot brown at gmail) should lead you right to me. That way, you can see where you are on my queue and how many pages in I am.

Thanks to everyone that’s been so patient over the last few months. Mea culpa, and be on the lookout for several reviews (and a few interviews, as well) that should be popping up over the next several days.

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