First Cup of Coffee – January 26, 2024

Defining success, tips on how not to go crazy as a creator, why I think competition is bad for us, navigating toxic positivity, why being told “no,” AKA rejection, is so very good for us, and thinking about career paths long term.



 

First Cup of Coffee – January 19, 2023

Financial emergencies and other downsides of earning one’s living as a creative. How the demands of monetization affect creativity – and how being a fulltime writer isn’t the idyllic, dreamy, artsy life we envision.



First Cup of Coffee – December 6, 2022

Celebrating the release today of WINGS UNFURLED by Rebecca Gomez Farrell and A HARD DAY FOR A HANGOVER by Miss Darynda Jones! Otherwise I’m talking about being gentle with ourselves and what that means.



Jeffe’s Collaborations – Real and Imagined

I’m just loving these autumn/Halloween collages of the Czech translation of the Chronicles of Dasnaria books!

This week at the SFF Seven, we’re discussing collaborations – if we’ve done them and what our dream collabs would be.

I’ve never (quite) collaborated with another writer on actually composing a story. I added in that “quite” because my friend, Jim Sorenson, and I did start writing a book together. However, even though we wrote several chapters, our mutual agent (Sarah Younger at Nancy Yost Literary Agency) didn’t ever love what we came up with. Getting our voices to gel together was a challenge. We’ve talked about going back to the project, which I’d love to do someday. It’s definitely a different way of working though!

The collaborations I do regularly are anthologies! My bestie Grace Draven and I love to put together anthologies, either of stories from just the two of us, or with more writers. Our next project is THE WATERS AND THE WILD, an anthology that will include fae novellas from Grace, Dana Marton, Maria Vale, and myself. It will be out in late April, with a special print edition available for Apollycon attendees, and then available in ebook and regular print form after that. I’m very much looking forward to what everyone comes up with!

If I could collaborate with any writer, living or dead, it would’ve been Anne McCaffrey. I was too late to meet her and too slow in coming to writing fantasy to be one of the several writers privileged to write in her worlds. I would’ve LOVED to do that and, in one of the sliding doors versions of my life, I believe it totally happened.

 

First Cup of Coffee – October 6, 2022

Some exciting news on an upcoming anthology project, musing on why people always want us to pick a favorite among equally wonderful things, champagne problems, and the value of hanging with successful people in your field.