Stumbling Through…Works?

This could also be titled “The Day I Discovered One of My Reviews Was Quoted in a Book Published by One of the Big 5 Publishers,” but that just seemed too long. Hm, are there limits on how long a blog post title can be?

Now that the new year is in full swing, I’ve lost count of how many posts I’ve read that are all about goals and plans for the year. I’m really, truly rooting for all of you to meet and exceed everything you set out to do! But I also can’t help feeling a little twinge. Once upon a time, I was a huge planner with big goals. Now, well, I wrote goals for this year, but, after writing them, I feel the drive to accomplish most of them sucked straight out of me. The fact is: I’m no longer a goal-oriented person. I stumble through everything with a vague idea of where I want everything to end up.

The beginning of January this year marked 4 years since I returned to blogging. I did it because I was a stay-at-home mom who wanted something just for me. I had no idea what I was doing, so it was really an everything blog. Over time, it shifted and changed (I think some of my long-time friends and followers will recall plenty of changes happening here over the years!), but I still had no idea where I was going or what I was doing. I’m now at the start of my 5th year and still have no clue. I still don’t know what I want to do with this space, still don’t have any real goals. I’ve been, more or less, just stumbling through, taking what I can and going where the wind blows me.

Every post I’ve written hasn’t really had a goal, a purpose. I’ve mostly been rambling my way through, even in my reviews. Since I’ve seemingly transitioned into having a book blog, I’ve been having a lot of fun writing about books and have been so honored by the authors who’ve chosen to quote from my reviews on the Amazon page for their books or who have mentioned my review on their blog. It’s just meant so much to me that they enjoyed what I had to say about their books that they want to use a bit of it to help get more readers interested in them. I’ve never once written a review with the hope any of them would do that, much less that something might catch the eye of anyone else.

So, yes, it’s true, I found one of my reviews quoted in an actual book that can be found in bookstores. Someone at Ace, an imprint of Penguin Group, noticed my review, and my mind is still boggled. When I was a kid, I dreamed of seeing a book I’d written and magically gotten traditionally published on the shelves of my local bookstore. It’s impossible now because that bookstore no longer exists, but that’s a bit off topic. I never dreamed I’d see a review I’d written quoted in the pages of a book on the shelves of someone’s local bookstore. I have no clue how that happened, and definitely had no goal in that direction!

Once in a while, maybe two or three times a year, I Google the name of my blog. I haven’t since last summer, but the thought of looking up my blog had been crossing my mind more often lately, so I sat down one day and wasted some time Googling The Lily Cafe. I wasn’t expecting too much considering a cafe called The Lily Cafe opened somewhere in Florida last summer and I do know there are other cafes and restaurants with some variation of Lily Cafe all over the country. I found those and I found my blog and I found a lot of the usual things I expected. Usually I give up around page 3 of results, but I decided to waste a little more time and go until the end.

It was at the end that I discovered something very odd, very interesting, very…confusing?

There was a listing for Google Books. Why would the name of my blog be tied to a Google Books page? It wasn’t even for some make believe cafe in a fiction book, either. No, it was for a book I received an eARC for through NetGalley late last year. To say I was highly confused would be an understatement. I clicked on it. It took me to the Praise section for The God of Lost Words by A.J. Hackwith, the third book in the Hell’s Library trilogy that I love so much and am still so devastated that it’s over and can she please write more books with these characters because I really need more?

Of course, I didn’t believe it. I was a little curious, though. I mentioned I have an eARC through NetGalley. Some ARCS leave pages blank to be filled in later. I wasn’t sure about this one, but it turned out Ace provided that part. I did, indeed, find my review for the second book, The Archive of the Forgotten, quoted, with the name of my blog attached to it (which I didn’t notice when I read the book in October because I always skip the front material).

And of course I still didn’t believe it. So I hopped over to Amazon to take a look at the excerpt they usually have available. Since the Praise section is usually at the beginning, I was certain I’d find it if it was real. It was real. I saw the quote from my review.

And, yet, I still refused to believe it. Seriously, my blog is just a small-time one. I’m used to seeing praise from places like Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist and (author name), author of (book title). Definitely not small blogs like my own. I was convinced there was another The Lily Cafe I just hadn’t come across before. But, no, I checked the quoted material against the review posted to my blog, and it matched.

And then of course my husband had to order the book for me.

I’m not sure when I’ll ever get over being so stunned, but I suppose stumbling around kind of works? I always envy all the bloggers who seem to have everything together, who make goals and go after them, who know what they’re doing and what they want and are so successful. Me? I have no clue. I’m just sitting here, in front of a screen with a cat sleeping behind me, typing away into what I can’t help but see as a void. And yet people are seeing my words, and taking something away from them. My brain can’t quite cope with it yet, but I’m incredibly honored.

On another related, but also unrelated, note ,I had, at about the same time, considered changing the name of my blog because there are so many lily cafes and I get a lot of emails calling me Lily. Now? I think I still could, but now I have a physical attachment to the name. I guess this post could also be titled “Why It Might Be a Little More Difficult to Change the Name of My Blog.” Or maybe “Why I’m Changing My Name to Lily.” (Don’t worry; I have no intention of renaming myself, but my husband pointed out it might make for a good pen name.)

And, I suppose, sometimes, stumbling through works.

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Have you ever seen your review quoted in a book? What was it like for you?

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