New Year, New Blog! (Aka Welcome!)

Hi everyone! Firstly, welcome to my new blog! Whether you followed me on my old blog, followed me on Twitter, followed me on Goodreads, or are here for the first time, I hope that you'll like what you find here and maybe stick around for a bit.

I suppose I should introduce myself first. (If you couldn't tell, I'm really bad at introductions, and I have no idea what to say in this post in general. Don't mind me.)

A Little About Me

My name is Jessica. I'm currently 16, and I reside in the United States of America. I'm obviously a book lover, as well as a fan of various movies, TV shows, musical artists, etc. I'm a pretty big fangirl, but I'm not crazy. I'm a huge Potterhead, and I will fight you if you tell me that Harry Potter is horrible. (I can obviously understand criticism towards the books and/or movies, but some people are just so rude and mean about and just like to put me down about it so.) I will also likely argue with you if you say that The Hunger Games is better than Harry Potter. But I digress. I'm also a writer, but I don't think I'm a very good one. I also love to dance. It's something I'm really passionate about. If you're curious, I take Ballet, Pointe, and Modern, as well as competition Modern, Lyrical, and Jazz. I also sort of play the violin and guitar, and I'd love to re-learn piano some day. I have a strong dislike for math and science, and I've always been an English and History/Social Studies type of person.

P.S. If you ever want to fangirl about TV shows, movies, or books, you can always come to me. Just double check that I like it to or am in the fandom. ;)

Next, I will introduce the blog! (Again, sorry for this side commentary, but I just can't write this any other way.)

A Bit About the Blog

As I stated above, I've always loved reading. In recent years, I've stopped reading a lot, mostly because of school. It would be a miracle for me to read even ten non-school essential books a year. Yeah, that bad. And I started to miss all the books I had read. I missed how relaxing reading could be. I missed escaping to other worlds and universes and experiencing different lives. I was getting so caught up in school and homework and college prep and testing and extra curriculars that I forgot about reading. I got so caught up in TV shows and movies and new music, yet I stayed away from books. So I recently decided to get back into reading books. For fun. I logged back into my Goodreads account after years of neglecting and avoiding it (I joined in 2008. I'm pretty sure that was when I was in 5th grade). I started a blog, but because I love too many things and couldn't make it solely a book blog (well, hey, I want to rant and gush and review everything else I love too!), so I made it an everything blog. And while most of the people I've met are book bloggers, I'm happy to be an everything blogger because it's more...me. So I slowly started reading again, and I learned about all the books I've been missing out on! I won a few giveaways and was asked by a few authors to read and review their work. I started to fall back in love with reading, as well as all of the other things this blog covers.

But the first blog didn't really go the way I wanted it to. I was a mess and trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I made some mistakes. It wasn't what I had thought of. And so, I was like, I'm going to start over. New URL. Clean slate. Slowly gaining back all my followers. And I'm okay with that. I like starting over new. I can work with all the things I've learned. I can keep my blog simple and neat. I can keep it more review (and fun and ME) oriented. I can fix all those little mistakes I made.

Where did this new URL/name come from? I have no idea. Originally I wanted to do something like Flying to the Sun, but that didn't work out. And I needed a name that encompassed everything, not just books, not just movies, not just television. And I thought, well, fiction. And I guess that's where it's from. All in all, I like this name a lot better, and I hope you do too!

The design of this blog wasn't supposed to look this way, but Blogger's been giving me a hard time, and I haven't been able to get it to work right, so this is what it is for now. Maybe I'll try again. Maybe I won't. For now, I like the color scheme, and I like the simplicity. I'll try to come up with a button soon, but you know, school.

Going off of that, school is still my #1 priority. I certainly won't be able to read as much as other bloggers, even those that are in school, because every school is different, and I also have a lot of extra curriculars. I don't have as much time to watch TV shows all the time and review them (though I usually talk about them on Twitter). I don't have as much time to read books (though again, I do talk about them elsewhere). So if I have random or announced hiatuses for however long, I'm sorry, but it's probably necessary (ex. Around Midterms, around MUN conferences, around AP week, around Finals, around Dance competition time, etc). So please, bear with me. I thank you ALL for sticking with me and the blog despite the non consistent blogging and all that. It truly means a lot.

Coming Up On the Blog/Blog Features

I've been really busy lately with school and all of that, but I'll be moving all my old reviews, many of them posted on Goodreads (by the way, I forgot to mention this before: even if I'm not blogging or posting reviews, I'm usually reading something, and I do update Goodreads with ratings when I'm done, even if there's no review). They'll be tagged "old." I've scheduled it so that there will be one old review every other day. That takes me to the beginning of March. This doesn't mean there won't be any new stuff because there will (although not during the end of January for sure), but this works better for me.

Features/Memes are listed on one of the pages above. It looks like a lot, especially since I have something for almost every day of the week, but it actually works well for me because it stops me from being too book-centric. Also, if you look carefully, almost all of them only occur once or twice a month, so my blog won't be flooded with non-reviews. This might make my blog a little more empty, but it'll be a more balanced ratio. I'm also going to be participating in blog tours/blasts/blitzes a loss less. It's one of those mistakes I mentioned above, so as soon as I switch everything to this new email, that's what'll be happening.

Looking Forward (For the Month of January)

How lovely is it that as soon as I start, I'll be on hiatus again? Not very, but I wanted to start the new year with a new blog and a new blog name, so I like this.

I will be on hiatus from roughly the 12th to the 31st. Those old reviews I mentioned will still be posted though!

For the time period when all the old reviews are circulating out, I probably won't be reviewing/posting much besides those for various reasons, including that these coming months are going to be tough on me, school-wise. 

Thanks again for sticking around and/or for checking out the blog! I'm trying to figure out how celebrating blogoversaries will work from now on, but I'm going to consider it based on when I started blogging period, not when I started blogging here. That means that on January 7th, I will have been blogging for 6 months! I have one old-ish ARC to give away, but I'm still trying to figure out something else...I don't really have much to give away. We'll see!

I love you all! See you around sometime! And if you'd like, please follow me/this blog. Links are in the sidebar. If you can't find something, let me know. I'm really excited for this new start!

PS. Thanks to Nova @ Out of Time for the signature I use!

I don't give her enough credit, but it's all her! <3