i would’ve never thought i would suck at blogging, yet here i am

well hello there, hi, long time no see. wow this feels so weird. i’m sitting in front of my screen with a blog post open and typing away. i miss those days, of losing myself in a blog post. i don’t even know where i’m going with this post but like i just need to write this out.

you know i’ve been asked by 2 important people in my life if i’ve given up blogging for good and the answer is no i haven’t. so now you’re probably wondering, well then why haven’t you been blogging if you didn’t give up? if someone would’ve said to me that my life was going to change this much when i published a book, then maybe i would’ve expected this. the less blogging, little to no reading, being busy with writing, and life period with many exclamation points of adulting. i would’ve warned all of you if i knew this.

i refuse to shut down my blog. i have been stressing a little too much over my blog, my presence here, stressing over coming back, being accepted, and keeping things with how they used to be. instead, i’ve been thinking of changing things up here on chicnerdreads and starting fresh for the new year. with all these changes in less than a year, i have changed too. i’m still playing with some ideas for the blog and trying to balance my very hectic time-limited schedule. cause if you don’t know, i’m currently working on other projects, i have family here from PR that came immediately after Hurricane Maria, and now the holidays are here.

all in all, i wanted to say hey hi, i miss you all and think about you often.

using createspace, pre-ordering, apology, and a chat?

Hello everyone!! I hope you are all having a lovely day today. This will be short! I promise lol. Let’s see…. Firstly, I wanted to apologize to everyone. I know I told you all that I would be providing you with pre-order links for the physical copies of my poetry book ‘love, and you’ releasing April 4th. However, come to find out that the indie publishing company I am using called Createspace doesn’t let me. I should’ve checked this sooner, rather than telling you all “yes I’ll provide you all links”.

Now there is a way for me to put out a pre-order link as if I’m the one sending you the book directly. What happens is, I open an account with Amazon Advantage and tell them that I’m selling my book directly from my house. Once it goes live with Createspace, I have to go back to Amazon Advantage and let them know that another distributor will be taking charge. Sounds easy right? Here’s the thing. This doesn’t work out that well for a lot of people. I might be putting out a big risk in doing that and I hate playing with people’s money and time. Because I have read that sometimes Amazon denies this access. Therefore, I prefer doing it the safe route where no problems will occur and that is just dealing with the distribution straight through Createspace. And thus far, I have loved working with Createspace, I would highly recommend it if you’re going the indie route.

All of this has to do with why I’m publishing the book sooner than the original date which was June 20th. It all worked out way better than I thought though. I’m getting tons of positive feedback because of the change in dates, ‘love, and you’ will have time to flourish while I work on People I Once Knew that is coming out late January 2018. Plus, one of my poet friends told me that April was National Poetry Month..like if that isn’t a sign from the universe lol.

Again, I’m really sorry for promising all of you something and not going through with it. The only pre-order link I do have is the Kindle e-book version. Doing the Kindle e-book is working through Amazon directly via Createspace. So when I log onto Createspace I see the kindle version of my book. Don’t why they can’t do the same for paperback copies but it is what it is.

The physical copies of ‘love, and you’ will go live for purchase April 4th via Amazon worldwide. 6-8 weeks after that day, you can order it on Barnes and Noble online and Book Depository. Thank you all for being a part of this journey with me.

If you want to pre-order the kindle version, go here:
Amazon USA | Amazon UK | Amazon FR | Amazon DE | Amazon JP

We can talk in the comments!! And yeah this definitely wasn’t short lol.

mini hiatus, life update, and a chat??

Hello everyone!! This post is a little all over the place but I wanted to update you on some stuff. Just let you know what’s been going on and why I’m going on a mini blog post hiatus. Yes that’s right, I will be around blog hopping but not posting.

A lot of you know that I am working on a poetry book titled “love, and you” that should be releasing in June. It doesn’t have a set date but that’s the month I’m aiming for. This book really came out of nowhere. I started writing it late November and then here I am about to publish it. I’ve finished my first draft and right now it’s on the editing stage. Also have someone working on a cover that I cannot wait to show you because it’s soooooo beautiful!!!

This upcoming week I took a week off of work to fully dedicate time on editing and organizing, pretty much getting things finalized. Which is why I’m taking some time off of posting mostly for the month of February. I still plan on blog hopping but just not posting, working on a blog post is time (which all of you already know how that goes). And in all honesty, doing so much at the same time is really getting to me. I have this new project at work (full time office manager at a dental office) and I work in front of a computer all day to then go home, work on the book I’m writing, blog hop as much as I can, read to write reviews for the blog, and fighting depression is exhausting. That’s not including the adulting I do and having a dog. I’ve been feeling more tired and exhausted then usual lately and I know it’s because I’m trying to do way too much and depression is trying to hug me. Fighting depression is so so hard. And my anxiety doesn’t help the case either.

So I decided to just take one thing away and that is writing up blog post. I rather be a part of the community and be there for you, then post things and not be there when you support me. I feel like utter shit every time I post something and then I can’t blog hop because life is so fucking busy. And I don’t want to be that person, I don’t want to keep posting and posting and posting and not being supportive back. If I am here today with this blog, it’s because of all of you. Because of your constant support and feedback. And I will cherish that forever.

Plus, I don’t want to be that person who falls off the face of the earth once I get a book published. I would rather be the “blogger with a book”…the years that I’ve been a part of this book community, I’ve seen this play out so many times. People who start up YouTube channels, blogs, etc. just to gain followers and once they gain, they just promo their book and never come back. Their channels and pages become this one big promo. People like that lose my respect because they falsely advertised their intentions of their channel/page. And I fucking refuse to be that person.

I also want to talk about People I Once Knew (poetry collection) and why I haven’t been posting much of that. When I started People I Once Knew on my blog, I never had the intentions of making it into a book…till I saw the feedback and thought that maybe I should share it with the world. Sharing my experiences with all of you was really freaking scary in the beginning but YOU ALL gave me the courage. And once I saw that many of you related to my experiences, it dawned on me that I’m not alone. I haven’t been posting because after Part 17 and 18 gets published on the blog, I will no longer be posting them anymore. People I Once Knew will be 25 parts. So I’ve been intentionally not posting part 17 and 18 because of this. I am drawing it out as much as I can lol. I plan on publishing People I Once Knew sometime in December or January of 2018. Not sure, who knows, a lot can change from here to then.

So that’s what’s been going on with me.And I just want to thank all of you for being there for me, for supporting me, for being beautiful humans. Blogging and meeting you has helped me with my anxiety and depression in so many ways. I will be eternally grateful for that. So until next time friends! xoxox