Upcoming at The Lily Cafe #5

That was…a fast two weeks.

At the start of my break, I thought I’d do a Google search for my blog. It’s not something I do often, but, sometimes, I like to see what shows up. Good news, my blog was the first one that popped up for me. Interesting news, an actual place called The Lily Cafe opened up just last month in Sarasota, Florida. They serve breakfast and lunch, so, I guess if you’re in Sarasota, stop by and check it out? I’m more interested to see if anyone looking for the actual cafe will stumble upon my blog instead.

Sometimes, I think of changing the name of my blog, but it’s been called The Lily Cafe since I accidentally started it April 2010, so it has a big place in my heart. I think it might actually be named for a cafe that appeared in the story I was writing at the time (story still exists, everything else…not so much, including the fictional The Lily Cafe). But don’t quote me on that. I still have no solid idea.

Let’s Catch Up a Bit

• Dental appointments for my kids actually went really well! Their teeth are a lot better than expected considering my oldest hasn’t been since before the pandemic and my youngest had never been. My oldest also lost his first tooth a week ago and was so excited about it.
• California fully reopened June 15th and things were going okay for about a week before our numbers started going up. 200 cases went to 300 hundred cases jumped to 500 cases to over 1100 a few days ago. Yay fun.
• I wrote almost 15,000 words in This Story, nowhere near as much as I had hoped, but, considering I’m not working with an outline or even a set idea on what’s supposed to happen, it’s been flowing surprisingly well.
• But writing This Story meant I didn’t actually write in Sisters of String and Glass at all. Whoops.
• Outside of the pandemic, California is doing great. We’re short on power and water. Wonderful, right? It’s not even the hottest months of the year and we’ve already had some heat waves and flex alerts and now we have to conserve water due to the severe drought. All on top of having to wash hands because of the pandemic.
• On the bright side, we found a new road to take when we go to Malibu and it’s gorgeous! My kids love the tunnels, but it’s also just a really beautiful drive.

And with that we’ll jump in and check out what’s coming up next!

Author Readings

I haven’t taken a good look at my stats in a really long time, so I don’t actually know how well these posts are doing, but I absolutely love doing the author readings. I don’t know about you, but there’s something magical about getting to hear the words from a book straight from the author’s mouth.

This month, I have two incredibly lovely and wonderful authors.

Grendolyn Peach Soleil is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing The Mermaids Melt at Dawn (a story told in 10 yarns that spins Cajun folklore with Greek mythology and creates it’s own unique fairy tale that is not to be missed) and Snow Dust and Boneshine (a gorgeously written Western paranormal romance). Grendolyn blends genres so effortlessly and she always make me feel like I’m reading a dream or a fairy tale instead of a book. They’re absolutely gorgeous to read. She’s also just an incredibly lovely person and, well, if you love mermaids, you must stop by and say hi on social media!

Jana Williams is a dear blogging friend from Degrees of Maternity. I feel like I’ve been following her and her creation journey forever. Her non-fiction books is Playground Instruction for the Growing Adult, which is all about reminding adults of all the important lessons we learned as children and how to use them in our adult lives. She’s such a sweet, absolutely incredible lady and, honestly, following her journey often makes me feel so exhausted. How she does everything from raising her children to creating so much (she writes, creates educational products for children, does a podcast, lives life, devotes herself to God, and so much more every single day) is incredible!

So do look out for these incredible women and their readings!

Book Reviews

Of course there are book reviews coming up! I usually avoid requesting books from NetGalley that are due to be published end of June-beginning of July since I’m usually on a blogging break, but there were some I just couldn’t resist. So July will be packed with a bunch of catch up reviews as well as an indie read that comes out at the end of the month. Keep an eye out for a time travel book!

I usually only enjoy reading fantasy books back to back, but somehow ended up reading two thrillers back to back, Such a Quiet Place and The Sinful Lives of Trophy Wives. I enjoyed one more than the other, but, when I sat down a few days after reading the second one to write both reviews, I had a hard time keeping them straight. Fingers crossed my reviews actually end up being accurate.

August once looked a lot lighter on the review front, but then I ended up accepting about 12 books for review, all of which requested a June-September time frame for a review, which means August is now full of indie books!

Sisters of String and Glass and This Story

As I mentioned, I didn’t actually write Sisters at all. I’m getting to an interesting point where I know exactly how the next few scenes play out, but then two characters wreck intentional havoc and…I’m just not quite sure how it’ll play out. Even my outline about it is vague. Overall, I’m starting to have a hard time with it since some of my characters have decided they don’t like my plans for them.

This Story, though, is going well. I’m not yet far enough along to share anything about it, but I do plan on starting a new periodic series of posts called Writing Files in which I’ll share a little about what writing This Story has been teaching me and the things I think about while writing. I hope it’ll be fun.

First, Middle, and Last Impressions

Right before my break, I decided to stop doing the WWW Wednesday posts. I kind of got a little bored writing them and had a different, kind of similar idea that caught my interest. I plan on doing these every other week on Wednesdays to replace WWW starting next week since this Wednesday will see Grendolyn’s reading of The Mermaids Melt at Dawn.

In short, I write my first impression of a book before I start reading it, then I jot down my thoughts on it halfway through, and then I note my final impression of the book once I finish it. I’ve found it helps me write my reviews, and I love seeing how my thoughts on a book changes.

 

And that’s it! I don’t have too much coming up since I’ve accidentally accepted a few too many review requests and I’m trying to write two stories at the same time. We’ll not mention that I might end up homeschooling both of my kids in 5 weeks. I mean, I love keeping busy, but maybe this might be a little too much.

Anyone have anything exciting coming up the next couple of months? Any upcoming posts you’re excited to share?

Sincerely, kat

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