Explaining My Vanishing Act

Some of you may recall a few posts back when I mentioned moving to a new city and starting a new career. Well, that new career is the reason my online presence has been virtually nonexistent the last few weeks. To make a long story short: I'm in the police academy.

For those of you who don't know, police academies in California are 22 weeks of intensive academic and physical training in a para-military structure. I can best describe it as a combination of boot camp and college, which, in practical terms, means most of my free time is spent either studying for exams or spit-shining my boots. Seriously.

When I started this blog a couple of months ago, I had no idea how much longer the hiring process was going to take, or if I would even be successful. It wasn't until Thanksgiving week that I found out my year-and-a-half wait was over and that I'd been hired. I had 6 weeks to relocate and prepare for the start of the academy. Needless to say, December was a stressful month.

Going into the academy I knew I'd be busy, but I wasn't exactly sure how much free time I'd have. After a couple of weeks, I now realize that it will be a struggle for me to meet my monthly AAR reviewer commitment of 3 books, let alone find time to blog on a regular basis.

Which means that for the next several months I'm putting this blog on hiatus, with the fervent hope that once all of my training is complete, I'll be able to re-devote myself to the endeavor, which I truly enjoyed for the short time I did it.

In the mean time I'll still be reviewing for AAR, so I won't be completely absent from Romanceland. In fact, since my last blog post I've had two reviews go up at AAR -- If Looks Could Chill by Nina Bruhns and Strangers in the Night by Saskia Walker -- and my reviews of Slow Heat by Jill Shalvis and Waking the Dead by Kylie Brant should be posted within the next week or so. But the likelihood of my having time to blog-hop is close to nil.

As an aside, I can now call myself a true Bay Area resident. I experienced my first earthquake within days after moving to the area, which was a very Twilight Zone experience. I was sitting with my fellow recruits in the classroom, listening to the T.O. speak, when I felt this shaking. I started looking all around trying to figure out what the hell was happening, but everyone else was listening to the T.O. like there was nothing out of the ordinary. Which, apparently, there wasn't. The T.O. didn't even pause in her speech. I remember thinking, "What the hell? Don't any of you people feel that?" It wasn't until after class ended that someone got on their iPhone and said, "Nice. A 4.1." Yeah, nice. That's exactly what I was thinking.