The Lily Cafe Weekly Highlights – April 10, 2026

At Home

Well, I clearly missed last week because my kids were on Spring Break and things were a little nuts. My kids were coming off of doing school projects so they were kind of obsessed with gluing craft sticks with the hot glue gun for the first few days. I’m very glad to say I’ve finally managed to stuff the hot glue gun away. For now. Until the next projects.

This past week has been a little more manageable. My son came home on Monday with yet another project, but I’ll write about that a little further down. Both kids are preparing for state testing, but there’s the possibility of a teachers’ strike next week so I’m completely unsure how the next few weeks are going to proceed. Otherwise it’s been quiet. My backyard is growing like crazy. The weather can’t decide if it’s summer or winter. And I’m just glad for some quiet with the kids back in school.

What I’ve Read

It took a bit for me to finish First Mage on The Moon by Cameron Johnston. It’s not that I didn’t like it. It’s just that it basically took the Space Race, added a bit of magic and magical stones, and that was kind of it. It was amusing and interesting and I did like the characters, but it felt like this could have used more polish. And I wish magic had been better utilized.

I also read A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan. I don’t know why it took me so long because I do love the Rook & Rose trilogy she co-wrote. My best friend mentioned this series about a year ago when I first told her about the manuscript I’ve been working on. She said mine reminded her of this series, so I decided it was time to get to it. I can kind of see why she recommended it, but I also just enjoyed this one on its own as well. Though I am not, and never will be, a fan of dragons that probably more closely resemble dinosaurs. Sadly, this is Eurocentric, so, being Asian, I found it a little disappointing. Still fun to read, though.

Since I’ve seen a lot of agents looking for books that can be comped to Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett and since it came up a couple of times while I was searching for comps, I decided it was time to read it. I wasn’t really interested when it came out, and I found I was completely right. I doubt I can use it as a comp, which is kind of a relief as I found the story insufferable at times. If Emily is described as a curmudgeon, then I’m certain a lot of the scientists I’ve meet over the past couple of decades must be, too (I’m married to a scientist, but he’s very social, kind of like Wendell, actually, but without the faerie blood). I just saw her as devoted to her studies and wanting to keep it as clean and empirical as possible. I did not think of her as a curmudgeon. But, if part of her field studies involves talking to the locals, I would have thought she would be better at it after a decade, or could at least fake it for the purposes of science and research. How she managed to get anything useful by keeping people at arm’s length is beyond me. I’m also a bit baffled about why Wendell loves her, because loving her because she’s the only one who can truly understand him feels a bit flimsy.

In progress: This Weekend Doesn’t End Well for Anyone by Catherine Mack

I am so eager to get into this one after the past few reads. I feel like I need a bit of a break from SFF and a cozy mystery with an exotic locale sounds just perfect. Besides, I love Eleanor’s voice and I love books with fun footnotes. And I’ve never been to the Bahamas, or gone to a writer’s conference. So I’m quite excited for this one.

Kids’ Reading Corner

The 6th Grader: He’s supposed to be reading the third Percy Jackson book for school. I got a Timmy Failure book from the library a week or so ago for him, but I’m not sure if he’s been reading it. He’s read them all already, so they’re kind of like the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books for him.

The 3rd Grader: She’s a little all over the place, but she found a Sophie Mouse series at the school library. She hasn’t mentioned anything about it yet, but it looks cute. I’m still reading the Humphrey books to her, but I think I’ll have to buy the set because our local library only has a few.

The Kitchen

Our oven broke a few weeks ago. We tried to get a replacement part, but that turned out to be a dud. So we bought a new range. Unfortunately, it’s so popular that we won’t be getting it until mid-May. Even more unfortunately, my son came home on Monday with a science project. This project had him baking bread. Now, it would have been very exciting because I make a lot of bread and have a very trusty ratio I use and he has some baking experience of his own, but we had to hunker down and problem solve a bit. Fortunately, our air fryer has a lovely bake setting, so we tested out making bread and were delighted it worked. So we made bread in the air fryer and we’re so relieved to be able to still be able to enjoy fresh bread. And my son was able to complete his science project on time. Thank goodness using an oven wasn’t required!

The Writing Lounge

I have finished rewritting the whole thing. My fingers ached for a couple of days after. It was quite an interesting process. There’s a lot that I changed, a few things I deleted, and some fun scenes I added. One of them is a little nod to my son that I really love. Now I’m on my, possibly, final read before I start putting my query package together. I’m a little scared to death, so if I vanish again, it’s probably because schools are closed due to the strike and I’m at my wit’s end or I’m too scared to turn on my computer because I’ll inevitably open my email.

Featured Posts From the Cafe

This past week I did not get a chance to take part in the Fantasy with Friends meme, but I hope to circle back to it later on in the year. I did manage to get my review for The Book Witch by Meg Shaffer up, though.

Blog Stats and Other Interesting Things

As much fun as this section has been, I’ve decided to retire it for the time being because 1) it’s kind of a pain to do and 2) I’m currently in my “I don’t really care about stats” phase (I cycle back and forth, so this section might return one day).

Featured Blog Post

Each week I aim to share my favorite post of the week. But, as my brain is increasingly cluttered with manuscript-related things and I’m getting increasingly sidetracked by my backyard as it’s gone from dead to wildflowery to I’m worried it’s overgrowing, I’ll be taking a break from this section.

If you would be so kind, one of my best friends is an artist and recently opened her online store. If you like LGBTQ art, take a look: Sunlight & Sky.

See you next week, and thanks for reading!

#Artist #baking #books #food #kids #life #motherhood #writing