Upcoming at The Lily Cafe #2

So far it looks like Upcoming at The Lily Cafe is starting to become a fixture, but this is only the second, so I suppose it’s still up in the air. I’m a little nervous about putting things into stone, so to speak. It’s a nice way to return from a break, though!

First of all, after the crazy adventure that was 2020, I’ve decided to, once again, change things up around here. I anticipate distance learning will continue through to the end of the school year, and am half afraid it’ll be the same in the fall. So, I’ll be working with a much looser posting schedule (by “looser” I mean haphazard) and will be shifting my focus to two main things.

One, my passion is stories. Stories of all kinds. Anything without a story feels like it fell out of a black hole, like it exists in a white space. I like color (mostly pastels), so I need to fill in that white space. With stories. I expect most, if not all, of my posts will come with some kind of story. Everything has a story, so expect everything, or just about everything here, to come with a story.

Two, I absolutely love supporting authors. I try to do that through book review, blog tours, excerpts, and guest posts. There will be more of that, and I’m ensuring there’s plenty of space in my schedule for authors to use The Lily Cafe as their platform. Since they’re virtually all indie authors, come wander in from time to time to check out indie and self-published books and find something new.

Secondly, from Monday to Friday, I noticed Fridays have the least amount of traffic. Because I enjoy highlighting others through guest posts and book-related posts and would like them to get more of the traffic, I’ll be moving Queen of the Garden of Girls (my current WIP that’s taking way too much time to write) to Fridays. There might be some scattered book-related posts, but no guest posts, no book blog tours, nothing from anyone not me. Mostly just Queen of the Garden of Girls (I swear I’ll finish it one day – I’m so close!).

Thirdly, I have something cooking alongside a lovely blogging friend. It’s a very fluid event at the moment, but I’m really excited and nervous about it. If we’re lucky, it’ll debut towards the end of the month. If we’re really lucky, I’ll have a countdown thing to it.

Fourthly, I’m a bit nervous, but also really excited to start to participate in some of the bookish memes I always see every week. I don’t anticipate it’ll be with any regularity, but I always have so much fun reading them and want to participate, only to realize I’m way too busy. So I’m loosening and opening up my schedule so I have more time for them. But I worry it’ll end up being too much work for me. So, we’ll see.

Fifthly, this year I plan on cutting down a bit on book reviews. Doing 2-3 every week for the past several months has been exhausting, especially since I can’t seem to keep my reviews under 1200 words. I still plan on reading a ton, but the ones I’m not obligated to write a review for probably won’t get a review, or nothing of the same length and quality.

Lastly, I absolutely do not plan to keep up with posting 5 days a week. Too tired. Too stressed. This distance learning thing with a 6 year old is really getting to me. Well, that and an overactive 3 year old. My brain can’t keep up anymore and I’m finding I really value sleep and staring at walls. Some weeks might see posts 5 days a week, but other weeks might have more or less, depending on how many guests I have.

See you soon! Come back tomorrow to read about what my bookish wish for 2021 is.

Sincerely, kat

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