Kenda is one of the first book people I met online. I discovered romance by picking up a copy of the fourth book in J. R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series, and went online to talk about it, at Amazon.com and the official BDB forums, and the rest, as they say, is history. Over the years, I’ve relied on her book savvy to find great reads, been amazed by her ability to navigate choppy blog waters, and occasionally benefited from her amazing graphic design skills.
Kenda started Lurv a la Mode in January 2008. Lurv is a book blog focused on romance, especially paranormal romance, with some young adult, fantasy, and sci fi as well. Apparently, work, motherhood, and running one blog were not challenging enough, so in June 2010, Kenda, with her sister, started a food blog, Full Fork Ahead. Full Fork Ahead is a beautiful blog that manages to make complicated, delicious recipes seem doable for the average cook.
I have two blogs, but I can never seem to get the other one going. I was curious about what managing two blogs was like for Kenda, so I emailed her a list of questions. It’s taken me several weeks to actually get this post up, so I have to thank her for her patience.
1. You have run a successful book blog focused on PNR/SFF for the last few years. How has your book blog, and/or your attitude towards that blog, changed over time?
First of all – thanks for thinking my blog is successful! That’s a pretty subjective topic these days (what with the inclusion of publishing/their PR/ARCs in the mix; status-mongering follower counts, etc.) and I tend to want to measure my success with it lately in terms of how happy it’s making me, since it’s my personal space online. And that ties directly with my recent attitude towards it lately, which has, honestly, been one of neglect. I’ve tried to step back since the beginning of 2012 to decide what’s most important to me when it comes to book blogging. I used to work a lot more advanced reading copies and author promo into my posts (usually instigated solely by me, not contact from a publisher rep; the ARCs I do occasionally get unsolicited), but I’ve eased off that – a lot – because of my awareness of the publishing industry in general, and more importantly maybe, what they expect of bloggers, has added way too much stress to blogging for me.
I’m trying to get back to what makes blogging fun for me. No more catering to publishing whims, or, rather, worrying about them. And no more paying attention to talk such as “book reviews don’t matter” and “bloggers don’t make a difference” or other such noise. I’m not online to make things easier for publishers anyway and I’m not here so that the negativity surrounding blogging can have a field day while it picks at bloggers. I let that negativity in, I let it get to me. No more.
2. In your opinion, how has the book blogging landscape changed within your niche over the past few years? Or has it?
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