Transcript
00:00.00
jeffekennedy
Good morning everyone this is Jeffe Kennedy author of fantasy romance and romantic fantasy I’m here with my first cup of coffee. Which is actually not all that satisfying. It’s green tea this morning and I didn’t get the water hot enough. Alas today’s Monday March Twenty first was my stepdaughter’s birthday today. Happy birthday Lauren ha. So um, how was your weekend. Mine was good. Mine was good. Um, rejuvenating I did stay unplugged almost entirely yesterday I did plug. Turn on the laptop in order to set up a Zoom call with my husband’s siblings and so we did a cocktail hour with them. What was fun. Oh I take to. And went ahead and made some coffee and I boiled hot water and tried rejuvenating my grain tea so going to let that steep. Ah all right? So let’s dry that first cup of coffee. Ah, that’s so much better. All right? So Monday Monday Monday I’m going at it with renewed vim and vigor. Hopefully um I didn’t quite get. Two k per day every day last week I actually did about the same as I did the previous week which is interesting. Um the previous week I got eighty nine sixty and last week I got 87 64 so not quite as good. And that was the previous week was going for three k per day which I still didn’t do. But I think I’m going to do another week of trying to do two k per day and see what happens. Um Thursday i.
02:27.81
jeffekennedy
Hit tired and didn’t get much and then Friday I did better but I still got just 1500 I was I don’t even remember Fridays feels like a long time ago. Um I was not getting many per hour on Friday. Well no, what my problem was. 4 ah 2 6 15 and 5 ah two were my 3 word count averages. Oh although I that’s right? So for that third hour I actually went back and revised the prologue in chapter one because I sent those off. To the romantic fantasy shelf is organizing a benefit anthology for ukraine and they had asked me if I would contribute something but they wanted like a 5000 word short story and reader I do not do 5000 words short stories and I didn’t really have anything that I could give them um and they so they said well um Miranda Honfleur and Jessica fry have been organizing this. They said what we’re asking some of our authors to do and they were very flattering to me so that that always works where they said something about me being like a leader in the field and I don’t know what? All. Ah, but it was like oh you know? and besides I wanted to help but they said you could give us the first chapter of your work in progress and then it’s a sneak peek for the readers and I was like oh because you guys know I just don’t normally show stuff until I’m done. Especially since sometimes my first chapter changes. So but they’re putting the caveat in there and I think that this first chapter won’t change that much of course now I’m totally paranoid that it sucks and everybody will hate it. But. When I went back to revise and I spent an hour we’re revising the prologue in chapter one which together are pretty close to 5000 words. Let us just see what they are. That’s why I love excel. And knows that excel is telling me now that I can ask it to analyze my data without all those troublesome complicated formulas which I think is kind of funny. It’s like I know how to use formulas. Um 4500 words between the 2 so so yeah that’s what I did I didn’t want to send it.
05:13.20
jeffekennedy
As is and so I went and revised and I didn’t end up changing a whole lot. So for what it’s worth.
05:27.80
jeffekennedy
I could have put a little dollop of cream in this and it would have been better zip terrible if I pop off and fix my coffee yet again, it’s a Monday I’m gonna do that. Okay. And guys will be relieved to know that I’m finally happy now so much better that even if I do just a tiny little spoonful of cream. It just helps take the edge off. So um, yeah. Was kind of a different weekend I ended up running a lot of errands. Um, for those of you who watched the podcast on Friday you will know that our car is probably totaled David got rear ended. Um, we haven’t gotten the. Final word yet, but that’s what that’s what everybody is predicting so we shall see I suppose there’s possibility that it will be repairable. But I I think we’ll probably find out today. Um. So on Saturday David was feeling I mean he was sad. You know he goes out and drives for uber a lot on the weekends and he was so he was kind of feeling at loose ends and kind of. I mean it is a loss right? I mean I I know that like a car’s an inanimate object but he um went out Friday morning and got all his stuff out of the car and he said it looked kind of sad being there in the tow lot left. Left alone. He said you know we’ve had that car for 5 years and he’s spent a lot of time in it. So um, so Saturday I had a board meeting for a SFWA at 11 so we kind of hung out in the morning. Took it easy bread and stuff and then I did the board meeting and gave them notes for the one o’clock nebula conference planning meeting and instead I skipped out with David and we went and looked at cars we went out for lunch that was very nice and we. Went to carmacs the inevitable stop and we went to Toyota to look at their came rays and we went out to the Tesla dealership because we were thinking maybe of going electric or hybrid. Um, but.
08:09.92
jeffekennedy
The cost for the car is probably yeah like even a used tibrid car is probably going to be a lot more expensive than what we want to spend so we did a lot of number crunching. We do have a jeep. And he’s going to see about maybe being able to drive the gp if we don’t have the car payment. The camera was almost paid off. We would have had it paid off by like November of this year so that’s it that just figure. Um, the good news is we don’t know much on it. But. We um, you know if we’re not paying insurance and not the car payment then that frees up some money each month and he figured out that it cost him something like ¢13 a mile to drive. Camera and it’ll cost ¢19 a mile to drive the gep so it’s not terrible difference. So we’re going to see how how that works we’re going to see if he can drive that for uber he has to get it inspected and everything. But. Probably have to put a new battery in it. But we’re going to see how that works for a while and then maybe see if we could save up cash for a hybrid. So so that’s the plan. Um, we could finance it maybe. 1 of the things about and I don’t know if other people talk about this so you know David and I are both basically on freelance income at this point in time with him driving for uber he does get a small retirement stipend because he took early retirement and he gets and he has his social security. Which is also not a lot and I’m the major wage earner now. But one of the I know the downsides one of this odd parts about being a writer, especially if you’re self publishing is people don’t want to give you loans It’s hard to get financing for stuff and Grace Draven and I were talking about this. Not long ago because she’s looking at getting another traditional publishing contract for a standalone. She said she’s not going to do a series again. But she does have an idea that she gave our agent because we have the same agent and possibly go on submission with that and the major reason for her to go and I was surprised because Grace was like I don’t want to go tread ever again because she hates the externally imposed deadline. She doesn’t.
10:51.66
jeffekennedy
Feel like she makes as much money. In fact, she’s calculated. She doesn’t make as much money on tried. But if you’re getting paid by somebody else if you have a contract like that. It’s easier to get credit to get financing for stuff isn’t that funny. Whereas if you have freelance income where you’re just making money you know like from Amazon selling stuff you know selling your books on Amazon They don’t even care how much you’re making each month they don’t want to give you a loan. So I guess it makes you go to? um. More of a pay by cash which is good. Um, but yeah, funny thing so we shall see on the cars. Um, we we did have 3 which is arguably one too many for 2 people. Ah the ah thing is is is our other car is my. 96 jag convertible which doesn’t do great on snow and ice. So it’s a bit of a limitation there but the car’s in great shape. So somebody the other day called it. My vintage jag. Were saying Jeffe drives a vintage jag and I thought you know this is one of the things about you know and I and I feel like I you know I’m middleaged but you know it’s like getting up there in years. It’s like when I bought the car. It was not vintage. So it’s just um, funny how things in your life become vintage over time and I was trying to think about how old my stepdaughter is today and I think she’s forty I think she’s turning 40 rty today so and and when we were having the cocktail hour with David’s siblings last night it was um, you know we were just talking about the ages of the various grandchildren and so forth and Kathy his older sister. Her granddaughter. Is they’re taking her to blackcock Colorado to to the casinos for her birthday and I said yeah but is she old enough to to go to a casino and I was joking but you know they’re like yeah she’s 25, but so anyway, ah so it was. It was fun going out and looking at the cars and seeing what was available and we do have a couple of salespeople looking for something good for us apparently hybrid cars are moving pretty fast with the gas prices. So no surprise there and let’s see what else um.
13:43.95
jeffekennedy
Oh and then Saturday night I did the live stream the Youtube live stream for the group that is doing the campaign to combat violence against women be a w and they have I will include the link in the show notes because. They have um, part of their fundraiser I’m giving away several things so you can get a tuckerization from me and I forgot to talk about this before the live stream because I suck but you get a tuckerization is something that you can purchase and that means that you get to have your name. In 1 of my future books as a secondary character. Although um, what’s funny is Karyn Hardie in The Arrows of the Heart. That’s her book. She started out as she was a tuckerization that guide. Bought for his wife from another fundraiser and so that was that was her name and so that’s where when I she was originally a very minor character I thought she was probably only going to be mentioned and then I thought she was only going to have a cameo and then she ended up having her own book. So you never know you also I’m also offering a um, a 30 minute Zoom chat coaching or just to shoot the breeze and also a critique of first five thousand words of a chapter or some such. So I will put that link in the show notes but really great group. They’re pretty awesome and well worth bidding on those things. So so yet we ended up staying up late Saturday night which is just kind of funny for me. Um. That’s like a big deal. But after the live stream I hadn’t wanted to eat before it because we’d been out like running around. We’d had lunch outright and I wasn’t hungry before I’d just be there for the live cast by like six thirty so David made this dinner afterwards. So we ate late which is also very unusual for us and we watched the truman show and I was enjoying watching that I hadn’t watched it for a long time so we ended up staying up and watching the whole thing. So I stayed up to like 11 I know right. And then slept in Sunday morning. So that was lovely and then as I mentioned I stayed offline all day yesterday. So that was restful I got a lot of things done I went and bought my sweet pea seeds which I am going to plant today the tradition in my family.
16:34.27
jeffekennedy
At least it comes from my grandmother I don’t know if my grandmother got it from anyone is that you soak the sweet pea seeds in buttermilk overnight and you’re supposed to plant them on St Patrick’s day I didn’t do obviously I missed planting on St Patrick’s day but I figure as long as I observe that. Particular timing the magic still works. It’s funny because um, some of you who have been watching the podcast for a long time may recall two springs ago in March of 2020 when I could not get sweet piece sees I looked. Everywhere for them and I was planting them late because we’d been in lockdown of course and and and oddly enough my little local neighborhood hardware store which has a whole lot of stuff that we need. Um. They had tons and tons of seeds and they had 1 pack of sweet pea seats only 1 kind and I even asked the guy who owns the store and he’s like I think there’s there’s you know it’s like they buy the collection but the collection did not contain sweety sees so I went out to the nursery. My favorite nursery here in Santa Fe Newman’s and they had tons so there is not a sweet piece shortage I want you all to be aware that we we’re okay so I’ll get those planted today on one of my writing breaks and. I got some of my pictures framed and’s see the the little witch that krene gave me and you probably there’s too much glare on the one above from the window. But that’s ah, a new piece I got a a unicorn had to pause to sneeze. There are tree pollin is now high officially high. So. So it begins and I also framed the piece that you gave me for a Christmas mom so that’s hanging up so you know like lots of little things I got a lot of that kind of stuff done. This was my to do list from yesterday because I wrote it on paper. So I wouldn’t have to go turn on my laptop to look so I got quite a few things done. You’ll notice quite a few are crossed off not everything. But so anyway, um, yeah I guess I don’t have a whole lot to say today. But the. 1 thing that about doing the Youtube live cast is one of the girls said that she really liked listening to the ah the first cup of coffee and she was like it’s just like having a little chat over coffee and I said that’s exactly what I’m going for so I hope that it was.
19:21.18
jeffekennedy
Ah, good little trap for you guys too and I will talk to you all tomorrow take care Bye bye.