This release dovetails nicely with this week’s topic. We’re asking, Traditional publishing, self-publishing or a fusion of the two. What works best for you?
This particular book is the second book in the Covenant of Thorns trilogy, which were originally traditionally published ten years ago! Those were my first fantasy romances and I was elated that Carina Press took a chance on my cross-genre novels. I went on to publish ten books in total with them. I’ve also done three traditionally published series with Kensington and one with St. Martin’s Press.
I like trad publishing. Having a team working on my books is a great feeling, as is not having to front the money.
However…
As soon as I could get the rights back on these books, I did, and now I’m self-publishing them. The major reason? I’ll make a lot more money selling them myself.
A secondary reason: by controlling the series, I have more options to discount book one, a potent marketing technique trad-pubbing doesn’t allow.
A third, but super validating reason? At last I can give these books the covers they deserve!! I love these covers, designed by the incredibly talented Ravven, so much!
So, as you may have concluded, I’m falling in the “fusion of the two” category. Being a hybrid author gives me the best of both worlds. I aim to continue doing it that way.
ROGUE’S POSSESSION is out today!! Otherwise I’m talking about worldbuilding from a character-driven perspective and being aware as an author of what readers want for your characters.
Transcript
00:01.87
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance here with my first cup of coffee.
00:14.67
jeffekennedy
But delicious today is Tuesday July Twenty Sixth um last working day week of July for me, not day week. Um, yeah. Kind of short week for me as I mentioned yesterday tomorrow I fly to a polyon word. The transcript cannot handle and. See if I do some podcasts from there or not. We got some rain last night. So everything is looking sprightly this morning sprightly and happy. And yeah. Ah, so I got a lot done yesterday. I was happy with what I got done yesterday I got a full hour of words in before I even met up with Darynda and so I was done by um I could tell you what time I was done by. Love being done early in the day I was done by 1130 had my 2000 words in by 1130 and that’s just the best. Um I really love having my words done by noon and I think iquito think I might have to go back to that. Kind of schedule. Um, it means getting up earlier. Sorry for the squirming around if you’re on video thesquitoes are getting me. Ah yeah, just really helps me to. Have words done before noon so that the afternoon is then for business I hear some writers talk about that they do like writing in the morning and then editing in the afternoon. But for me editing takes very much the same muscle as drafting. So. I think um, it it draws from the same world. So it doesn’t work that way for me sounds like a nice way to do it. But sorry for the scrape there decided to scoot you a little closer so I could sit back sit back and relax so um one thing that I did make some notes while I was gone of things I wanted to talk about I was reading a book. Ah I’ve I’ve discovered that.
02:58.45
jeffekennedy
It’s growing harder and harder for me to talk about the books that I’m reading because and it may be partly the podcast because I want to be able to dissect them and talk about what doesn’t work for me in them. And I feel I’m torn because I want to support the authors of the books by talking up their books. But then if I’m talking about their books. Critically I don’t feel like I should say. So I read this book that is by ah, it’s a fantasy romance. The romance was very thin um slow burn and picks up in the next book. But I didn’t. Didn’t care enough to keep going. Um, you know so that’s like not something I would ever what to say publicly about a book tell you guys which book it was tell you all which book it was ongoing effort to flense “guys” from my. Vocabulary. So so one I wanted to talk about I don’t need to go down this rabbit hole of this specific book and what worked and what didn’t for me but one thing I want to talk about is being aware and it’s a delicate line to walk of what your readers want for your characters and and this is. It’s dicey right? because you don’t know what you don’t know what your readers want necessarily but you do have to know for guess sense. There’s a certain amount of fan service in satisfying the readers with what they want a character to be able to have and do and. There’s a lot of joking that goes around all the time about um, authors torturing their characters I shared a meme a little while back that was pretty funny. Ah it was from a movie that I have to he’s.
05:39.14
jeffekennedy
So and there’s our hummingbird. Ah so a lot of activity out here this morning. Sorry the birds distracted me so thinking in terms of oh the beam. The meme. Ah it was from a movie that I recognized but couldn’t identify. You know what? I mean but it showed. Ah. Driver of the car ah with a manic expression on their face. Um the car clearly hurtling out of control and two people in the back seat screaming and it said ah when oh I’m not going to do a good job of explaining it. Ah, it said basically ah when ah when my when a favorite character dies and it’s shows you know the person driving the car is the author me my best friend screaming in the backseat I thought it was funny. So so but there are a lot of jokes about. Authors torturing their characters and I see authors talking from time to time about you know someone once called me out on that saying see someone talking but you see somebody talking and writing right? I. You I’m distracted this morning and I I saw an ah I see authors talking often about how they love to torture their characters and it never feels that way to me. I’m always on the side of my characters. Um the the world does terrible things to them sometimes but I’m always on the side of my characters figuring out how to deal with it. So I feel like I’m riding in the car too. I think that would be more accurate. So.
07:54.86
jeffekennedy
Ah I probably should have formulated this idea better before I start talking about it. But I figure out things as I talk about them just as I figure out things as I write about them. There’s a theme there right? So So this book. Let me go back to my concrete example that eventually the author did deliver on what I wanted but there was an extended period of the character being thrust into a role. That they did not want and being unhappy about that and longing for their old life which is I mean that’s heroo’s journey so you know it’s It’s certainly a a standard trope you know resisting. Call to action. But as a reader I really wanted this for this character I wanted this um responsibility this position and I didn’t like that. So many of the other characters. This is another thing about characters being mean to each other but I’ll come back to that. Hopefully if I remember I didn’t like that So many of the other characters were so against this person. Having this position. Um, and I felt like the world building was a little weak and I just taught this class for ah the clarion White Riaththon and I’m gonna be teaching it at Worldcon I just got noticed I’m gonna be giving this workshop at Worldcon. Which is world buildinging from a Character-d Driven perspective. So. It’s really cool that people want to to see this workshop and find it valuable. Basically it’s my approach that setting up the world in order to. Ah. Best put your characters through the crucible right? So which I suppose is is me driving the car to be fair. No, it’s me picking out the worst possible car I don’t know we won’t go. We won’t spend a lot of time on that analogy. But in this particular book. The there was this sense that the protagonist.
10:36.13
jeffekennedy
Could not have this position because of their gender and but the rest of the there were elements of that. But then the rest of the world didn’t necessarily support this and this is something I talk about in that workshop a lot.. It’s like. Okay, if you decide that you want females to be second class citizens and because of gender. Then first of all, be aware that you are Kneejerk Mimiic mimicking our patriarchal society. Which has been. You know our history has been extensively massaged to support that idea so be aware of those things and and if you’ve listened to me for a long Time. You’ve heard me talk about this before. But also know why you’re choosing that I mean are you choosing that just to sort of keep your your female characters down. Um, if there is a. It. It just has to be supported and and I realize I’m getting myself into a muddle because I’m trying not to give Details. So This isnt like an alternate fantasy world where the the lord of of the of the Land. Um. Yeah, which is basically it’s sort of like a a feudal. It’s It’s kind of like a Victorian England type society. Ah so it’s sort of as if the the duke were chosen by a magical means and the. Female protagonist is unexpectedly chosen and there’s a sense of that. No the world can’t that there’s There’s a dueling sense of that. No. She can’t. Be this because she’s female but she has to be this because she’s magically chosen and it was sort of halfway done. It was like well be can can a woman hold this position or not ah and I felt like the author just and it was a first book So you know. There’s something to that. The son is coming after me here I have just good over. Um, in fact I think I’ll just commit and do that That’s better. So You know it’s like either females have rights so they don’t.
13:17.57
jeffekennedy
Either females can be in positions of power or they can’t and obviously we’re talking a binary here. But so that’s that’s one piece is like when you’re creating a world even if you’re creating a world that is a close fac simile of our world or what we believe our historical world to have been. And you all have if you’ve listened for a long time. You’ve heard me talk about ah the de faux medieval fantasy setting which has very little to do with what the medieval era was actually like I had one um, really interesting reader contact me and talk about. Ah, gave me some interesting feedback where she um I believe she was a she her said that she was an historian and that she could talk about all of this stuff. You know like of how our ideas of what medieval. Society and culture and daily life were like are so incredibly wrong and have been so extensively massaged and really um oh what’s the word I want denigrated um, made to see much much worse than it was anyway, that’s another topic. Ah, but I will touch on this that when you do have a society where rights are based on gender which does reflect our society but you have to look at why and. How this is a very very long complicated history and how it affects people’s interactions you know is it exactly against the law or is it custom in this book. It wasn’t clear is it is there a higher law There wasn’t a sense of there being any higher law to the land. Um, it’s just it’s not devastating but it’s just slightly weak world-building you know it’s different whether or not things are actually illegal or whether they’re custom. Ah, but also how do. The other if things are very gender based how do other people react and this kind of comes around to my thing about characters being mean to each other I have a problem in books where where every character.
15:54.81
jeffekennedy
In the book is aligned against the protagonist and that was not the case in this book but there were a lot who who either were or were just sort of tangentially oblivious and it’s. In cases like that people do form alliances. You know like for instance, if females generally don’t hold positions of power and a female is thrust into a position of power ah by magical decision. The other females are going to have opinions about this. The males are too. But the other females are going to have feelings and many of those will be feelings of solidarity and again if you’ve listened to me for a long time. You know that I have that it’s one of the things that I complain about a lot is when female characters in a story. Are not supportive of each other that they don’t have real friendships. Ah I feel like this comes from fiction tropes rather than from real life because at least I hope because in real life. Especially where when rights are threatened people who are being deprived of those rights band together to protest right? That’s what we’re seeing. You know we see it with black lives matter. We see it with ah the protests against the overturn of Roe versus wade in the us. The other people who are being similarly oppressed are going to have feelings about this you and I realize that in a fantasy story. You may not want to get into all of that but it it has to be part of that world building iceberg right? There’s that great diagram with. The tip of the iceberg being like the things that show in the story. But then there’s all that stuff underneath. So so yeah I think um, but then the other piece is and I talked about this in that workshop as well is being. Aware of what your reader wants for that person and what your reader is bringing to the page because one person asked me if there were tropes I felt like were outdated world building tropes and I said well like one that I personally have a lot of trouble with is the. Fantasy story where the female characters are not allowed to have the education where they’re not allowed to go to the academy where they’re you know not allowed to get x y z and yes I know I have written this with ah.
18:39.68
jeffekennedy
Chronicles of test area that women are universally not taught anything even how to count and I did that for very specific reasons but I and and I made it extreme on purpose for that reason because when a reader. Picks up a book where the female characters are not allowed to go to university where they’re otherwise educated but not allowed to go to university it begins to feel a little unsupported it begins. It’s hard for us to identify because. Well I know there are parts of the world where females are denied education. It’s pretty rare now and so it’s a leap you want to keep in mind what your character what your reader wants for the character and in my case I really wanted my character. To be to seize this opportunity and not be all oh woe is me I wish I had my old life back I’ll ah allow a little bit of it. But then I wanted and eventually that change did happen. Um, but I want to. Ah, wanted more and maybe more would come in the subsequent books. So ah, that may have been a slightly muddled explanation I’ll keep thinking about it. Ah, but maybe I’ll weave it into the worldt building from a character driven perspective wforkshop at WorldCon if you’re going to world con or which you should be able to attend virtually as well and I’m realizing that I should have led with this today’s release day for Rogue’s Possession! Woohoo so it’s out in the world now. Um. So now you can buy the first two books and the third book comes out in a few weeks which means I need to get my act together and make my tweaks on it. So um, it’s weird having these releases of books I’ve already written because it feels like ah I don’t know. It’s it’s slightly anti-climatictic um, but I’m really pleased at how well these books are selling. It’s great to see a book that’s been out for ten years by any new readers. So on that note I am going to go do a few release day things. And I am going to get more words and get ready to fly to world con tomorrow if if you’re going to be there and you see me, please please say hi would love that every once a while I um.
21:26.94
jeffekennedy
Like I talked to this gal online and she said you know I wrote in an elevator with you at a conference and I was I wanted to say hi but I was too ah too shy like ah like oh please don’t be shy I am I try to be nice I think I’m nice. I love talking to people so do say hi and I will um, maybe talk to you all on Thursday maybe on Friday probably not on Monday because I have jury duty right. So certainly a week from today if nothing else you all take care bye bye.
I’m back from vacation, which gave me time with my head out of the book to think about some business stuff, so I’m sharing my New Plan for Social Media and promoting my backlist. Also: an RWA mystery!
Transcript
00:02.12
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee. And my Hummingbird friend. Ah delicious. Today is Monday July twenty fifth I am back in the saddle at least temporarily. I am um refreshed from my vacation for the most part you all the joke about how you need a vacation to recover from your vacation but we had fun. It was lovely time. Enjoy it very much and um, it was good. Just to take a break from things but busy catching up as always and and I don’t know what all I have to say I didn’t make notes today. I’ve started using Tiktok a little bit I’ve been playing with it putting up little reels and a friend asked me if I was going to post a podcast to Tiktok and she said you know there’s mosquito buzzing around here. She said you know you can put up um up to 10 minutes now on Tiktok. She said are you thinking about doing that I’m like oh I’d have to confine the podcast at 10 minutes which I feel like I’d have to be succinct which let’s face it that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. It might be good for me to be more succinct but I don’t know. It comes back to my whole um measurement of like when the podcast becomes more of a pain to do than than a pleasure. so um so yeah I paused you so you wouldn’t have to watch me kill the mosquito. In case, any of you are tenderhearted enough to worry about the mosquitoes mosquitoes are the one thing that I don’t mind whacking. So let’s see um this week will be kind of funny because I am.
02:28.79
jeffekennedy
Hear podcasting today and tomorrow. Um Wednesday I fly to DC for Apollycon very interested to see how Apollycon goes I’m excited to see my friends that it’s starting to hit me that I’m going to see these people I haven’t seen. Since um, three years or before a lot of them. It was ah RWA convention in July 2019 I saw a funny thing David found this kind of bizarre movie from 1990 on Paramount plus called. The um, the boyfriend, the boyfriend something I think if you look for the boyfriend. You’ll find it um boyfriend test boyfriend experiment something like that. Um with Shelley long and Steve Gutenberg and ah oh Erin um she was in a lot of those late eighty s movies hang on – The Boyfriend School and it’s Jamie Gerrtz who was in Sixteen candles and the lost boys. Ah, so ah, what was funny is so the movie was originally released back then back in 1990 as Don’t Tell Her It’s Me and I’m sure I don’t think I ever saw it. Ah. It’s from the book called The Boyfriend School which apparently that title tested badly. But then when they re-released on Dvd they went ahead and went with that because apparently don’t tell her. It’s me was an even worse title which I think the boyfriend school is good title. Anyway, this movie got so panned so panned and um, we’re finding it funny ah I don’t know why people hated this movie so much but the interesting part I promise there is an interesting part see this is why I couldn’t do this in 10 minutes right admittedly might be a good idea. Just not going to happen. Ah Shelly long plays a romance author and while there are a few cringe worthy lines here and there for the most part. It’s ah, a solid defense of being a romance author. Ah, Jamie Gertz comes in as a journalist making disparaging comments ah about at this conference that says romance writers of America and it’s all of this There’s the banner that says romance writers of America.
05:11.24
jeffekennedy
And on one of the author table there tables there. There’s the Harlequin brand so I feel like the movie makers must have gotten permission to use this stuff but there’s nothing in the trivia I’m I’m going to have to do some research and find out was this an actual Rw a conference that this movie. Ah, filmed this scene at there are things that seem not Rw a that seem more like RT, but it could be that rwwe was like this in the late 80 s you know if the film came out in 1990 it could have been one of those conventions in the late eighty s. And maybe they were like that because they had like a male model walking around basically wearing a thong. Um, that was our tea but not Rw so I’m going to hit up some of my um older Rw a ladies and see what they say. Yeah I want to know what they think and then if if I find out that it was this may be what finally catapults me into logging into I am db and creating an identity just so I can upload that trivia and then I might have to go in and like. Counter some of these horrible reviews I think people trashed it largely because of the romance. Um I mean there’s I mean it’s not a brilliant movie but it’s certainly far better than than many and it has a promising romance. We didn’t finish watching but um. I mean just did to see how it goes but it’s funny seeing the ah r wa stuff in there. Oh and and Jamie Gertz comes in talking to Shelley long and doesn’t realize that Shelley long is interviewing her as a potential ah love interest for her brother Steve Gutenberg who is recovering from. Treatments for Hodgkin’s disease was always bald and puffy I think apparently this is this is sort of like how time moves. Ah I did read in the trivia that at the time Steve Gutenberg had played entirely suavet roles up until then. I like in 3 men and a baby and um I don’t remember what all, but and that this was the first time that he you know here, he’s being bold and puffy and kind of um, a recluse and unhappy and it’s funny because. I do not think of Steve Gutenberg as a suave guy. Um and I think that’s because later he leaned more into being pitiful loser guy.
07:52.66
jeffekennedy
So perhaps I’m more willing to accept that than audiences were at the time there was I also saw when I was trying to look up who that little girl is who plays Shelley Long’s daughter who’s like 3 ah. And actually does kind of a brilliant job of it. She’s this very solemn little girl who were apparently a pair of twins but um, ah, let’s see what led me down that path I was trying to remember when I was looking it up. Oh. I found like this l a times review of the movie that mentioned this little girl’s name Susan Lund I think she must have been. Someone’s daughter you know well of course she’s someone’s daughter. But. Not a professional actress I think this was the only thing she ever did and it was like you know like the costume designer’s daughter that kind of thing so the um but this scathing scathing review written by a woman which I’ve always feel like is telling um. Really slammed the romance aspects but then she also said um that they failed to take advantage of the beautiful Charleston location and I thought really that’s a criticism of the movie that they didn’t choose to show the. Pretty Charleston south carolina stuff but instead chose some of the more rural landscape anyway, I didn’t mean see this is why we can’t do 10 minutes of this because I just spent almost 10 minutes talking about this movie. Anyway, we’ll see if we if I can upload this to Instagram I’m I haven’t tried obviously in a week so I was giving you my schedule going to Apollycon Wednesday. Um, Thursday Friday maybe I’ll do some podcast interviews. Maybe not. It. It’ll be potluck. Maybe you’ll get lucky maybe having a podcast interview with somebody will be unlucky. You never know. Ah, um, and then I come back on Sunday and next Monday I have um, and dum dum dum jury duty magistrate court. They think it’ll only take one day but they summoned me at the beginning of summer and I’d said well I have travel and they came back which I thought was interesting and asked for.
10:31.46
jeffekennedy
Um, documentation of my travel dates like hotel stays and plane tickets and they had a nice um interface on the website where I could upload. Those documents so I sent them. You know here’s my travel schedule here’s my plane tickets and hotel stays and so then I got a notice that I have to appear on August first and I was like you all are correct I will be in town. So it’ll be interesting I’ve been called for jury duty before never in New Mexico but I’ve never served I always get dismissed. Ah I’m apparently not an ideal jury member probably because I think it would be interesting to do so um. You know, like no cell phones nothing like that. So I won’t be out of contact next monday try not to set the world on fire without me people. Um, and after that it should be a fairly normal ish schedule for a little while. Hoping to get back into making progress on shadow wizard I’ve been looking at the covers going through the cover iterations with my fabulous cover artist Robin and Suku I’ll just love this cover. Um, just love. Discover the the model she found for Jadren is um, it’s perfect. So so it was interesting I wrote on Monday and then I just decided I was kind of pondering it I think on. The podcast last week but um I just decide to take the rest of the week off writing I decided it would be more stressful than anything trying to get my word count in and it would have been so I did do some. Um, pondering on the drive thinking about just some business e things and so while I was there I did work on some business-y things I researched a couple of things. And one thing I’m going to do and this this feels like a big transition for me a milestone for me I realized that it is not for other people. But for me, it’s kind of a big deal.
13:15.22
jeffekennedy
Not many people know this. But I’m kind of a big deal. Love that line. Thank you Jim Sorenson for pointing it out to me from cheers. So I’m going to I think use SmarterQueue ah. SmarterQueue as in making a line ah to schedule social media posts and this is a transition for me because I have never used a scheduler I have um, always believed that social media should be. Authentic and in the moment and that I should engage directly hence this podcast.
14:06.34
jeffekennedy
Um, and I did like the I give scheduling. Um I’ve always thought that social media should not be like a billboard but I’m feeling like things have changed that there are. Aspects of all of the social media platforms that are like billboards that there’s room for both and I really need to get into promoting my backlist more Um, and so smarter queue will apparently allow me to. Ah, schedule on all the social media platforms and I can just put up evergreen posts to promote the backlist. Um and and that’s what I’m going to do so that that step’s just always out there because what I’m finding is. That my whole thing about posting in the moment and so forth that it creates this. Um sorry I just had an idea of something I want to do on Instagram but because i. I do the podcast in the morning I exercise do the podcast get this uploaded try not to look at social media as I upload it. Ah, don’t look at email write get my words in while my brain is still fresh. Then I come out and. Deal with email social media sif web business business of life. Ah that that is when I would like do other kinds of social media posting problems with this are it’s not necessarily the ideal time to post um and. I’m not necessarily full of bouncy social media energy at the end of the day and I was talking with I consulted a few other people that was part of what I was doing when I was you know like downtime at the resort when everybody else was sleeping off being in the casino all night um I got on some of my. Author groups and stuff and just ask people what they use and and and it’s a thing because people were like yeah you know end of the day I’m just not social media friendly and you know the world has changed It’s amazing to think about how how long it’s been. Um, we were talking about someone who I’m trying to think of how to phrase this we were talking about this gal and I said you know that person’s um, someone to keep an eye on because.
16:56.80
jeffekennedy
They had a big social media meltdown and I went to look up the links on it and it was 2009 2009 so thirteen years ago and so so so I added to it I said here’s what’s happened here’s what the person. You know, got into and I said um and it’s entirely possible that my memory is way too long. Um, because wow, but you know that is one of those things is that people don’t forget and I said I don’t believe that. People should be held accountable forever for a mistake like that. Ah, but this person did not handle the social media meltdown. Well um, threatening to call the Fbi on readers who had given their books bad reviews. You know it was like a little on the emotionally wonky side and I said you know it could be It was a bad time. A one time thing but just keep an eye on this person and you know it’s It’s been my hope my point and I do have one is that it has been a long time. Ah, you know when we first started using social media a lot I think I got on Twitter in 2009 um, Facebook might have been like 2007 and it was mostly promote my blog. So I think you know that is the thing is that we have to continue to roll with the times and um, so that’s going to be a big thing that I’m going to do. It’s smarter q you have to pay for but I’ve been thinking out paying for a publicist and instead I’m going to pay for this and I’m also going to set up. A blog tour for shadow wizard. Um, so that’ll be interesting. Oh and other news is rogue’s possession releases tomorrow. So how how could I forget. So so yeah, um, release day tomorrow and exciting changes for some of these business things I’m I’m excited to to implement these particular tools and see how this works for me. Um, one thing that’s going to have to happen with that smarter cue is it’s gonna there’s gonna be some ramp up right? I’m going to have to spend some time getting all of that stuff queed up as it were ah but otherwise I’m hoping to get.
19:47.00
jeffekennedy
I hope to get a full writing week this week I hope that’s not unreasonable. Um I’m glad I didn’t write last week now I need to get my head back in the book. Um I don’t leave to Wednesday afternoon so fingers crossed I should have three good writing days and then. Um, a polykon stuff doesn’t start till Thursday night. So I should have good writing time Thursday morning and then also um Friday morning I don’t have anything until that afternoon. So thinking good thoughts that I’m not distracted by other stuff should. Should work out so um, regardless I will be here in the garden tomorrow morning and it’s ah it’s nice to talk to you all again? Um I would say I missed you but it’s kind of weird because I don’t hear I mean I guess I get your comments and stuff. So. But yeah, it’s nice to be back on the podcast nice to be back in my garden if only for a few days and I will talk to you all tomorrow you all take care bye-bye.
This week at the SFF Seven, we’re talking Naming Resources: Your top 3 sources for choosing names of characters, places, etc. Here are mine:
1. Jeffe’s Big List of Names
I keep a list. A spreadsheet (of course! for those who know me) that I add to any time I encounter a name I really like. I save them for important characters. One #protip: there are few disappointments greater than discovering you squandered a really good name on a throwaway secondary character. Save those names for someday!
2. Behind the Name
BehindtheName.com is a great resource that lets you search for names in all sorts of ways. There’s also a surname version, for those tricksy family names.
3. Relevant Dictionaries
I also use archaic language dictionaries for whatever language family I’m using for a given world or realm within a world. These are easy to search for online, then look up word meanings and cobble together names from there.
Names are always important in my books – it’s one of my themes – so I’m almost always choosing them for their underlying meaning. Something to look for!
About my new fountain! Also weekend busyness which included much running around, loading of heavy bags of rocks, fighting with software and printers (oh joy), and moving things a couple steps forward.
Transcript
00:02.38
jeffekennedy
Good morning, Everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee. Ah, that’s good. Delicious! Oh hold on I’ve got my phone on buzz just in case because the man is taking ah my car in to have it serviced for me. And know I don’t have to tell you to hold on but I can’t get over. Maybe it’s part of the verisimilitude of us having a chat over coffee. Please forgive me while I check my phone. It was just my mother only my mother who is fine now she says she’s back to normal. Ah, feeling good. She has to wear her mask for one more day and then she’s free of that so that’s great isn’t it and I haven’t said today is Monday July eighteenth so yeah um David is very kindly taking my car in to have the oil changed and have it checked because tomorrow we are driving it down to rio doso to in of the mountain gods for his birthday week. His birthday is Thursday I think his siblings fly in tonight. So this is one of those things where he and I differ but he’s like Mr maintain the car I’m like put gas on the car and make it go. Ah. When we go on a trip. He always wants the mechanic to check over the car to make sure it’s all right for a road trip it’s like yeah it’s 3 hours but ah here he’s been right many times so I cancede the point. Um, and I do agree that um, checking for problems is far better than having it like break down on the road. So um, been busy, busy busy. So I think I’ve ever told you all. Um, about having the fountain installed my brand new fountain I will post a photo of it. Um, they installed it a week ago friday and it was we took lots and lots of pictures. It was fascinating to watch I didn’t post any of them. Um.
02:41.79
jeffekennedy
Partly, mostly because I got busy and then it’s like ah I don’t know if I want to post all those pictures some people who are better at social media than I am share more that which I find ironic because I’ll like tell you anything but it’s like do I want to post all these pictures. I don’t necessarily want my am. Yeah, all that stuff out, but it was amazing to watch them. Do it of 4 guys dug the hole and then they maybe I did talk about some of this oh hummingbirds over my head. I am like a frank howl painting it gave her fresh you or her gave it fresh ah with them. Let’s call hummybirds them I gave them a fresh juice yesterday last night. Yes, very happy. So yeah, got that installed and the way it works I don’t know if I’ve ever explained I I don’t know if I told you guys all right? I’m just going to you all I’m going to tell it again. They dug the hole. And then they lined it with like a felt blanket and then a big rubber flexible tarp and then they put and they’ve framed it in with 4 by 4 and then used um steel eye beams that go across. Because the rock I chose is like £1800 and then they brought in this thing that they called the stinger and they brought it in and it carried the rock out and it went it set down and they were really wonderful if if you’re a longtime listener. You know that I was angsting about this. Um, that they you know I they were so nice. They were so accommodating. They were amazing and so all my angst was for naught as it so often is ah you know and so they were very patient and wonderful about. You know, positioning the rock making sure it was exactly the angle that I wanted it at I was like a little more this way and they were. They were so nice about it and I mean I could see why because you know £1800 rock once it’s down you want to leave it down and um. And then they you know, put water in the pit and they put well before they put the rock down. They put 2 layers of grate a larger grate and then a finer grate on top and then set the rock on that.
05:23.78
jeffekennedy
Pumps down underneath and it pumps water up through the top of the rock and it fountains down it goes back into the bottom. So what I didn’t realize um I guess we just never discussed. It is. They’re supposed to be rocks on top. So it looks like the water’s just falling into rocks. And really, it’s falling to the great right? I think it’s such a cool idea. We’re having a little bit of a hummingbird war. Oh and the wren is chiming in. So they didn’t put the rocks down. It was just a great and so um and I just didn’t have time to deal with it all last week. It was such a busy week so on Saturday morning. I woke up fairly early and ah got my phone and went back to bed and was lying there reading and playing with my phone and I started looking up where I could get rocks and David woke up and I said you know I think. I want to just get up and go and get these rocks early I forgot I’ve been planning to go to yoga oops I really need to get back in that habit and I know I’ve been saying that for months and months possibly a year which reminds me I need to sit up straight. Ah. So we went and bought rocks and it’s it’s an it’s an uninteresting saga so I will not give you the blow by blow. But we ended up going to a couple different places and finding someone to ah lug the 30 pound bags of rocks. Um, to load them until the cart forest proved to be impossible. So I just did it. Um, because I’m strong like bull and.
07:18.75
jeffekennedy
It was a workout actually I’m good I feel pretty good but we got 10 bags of 30 pound bags of rocks and I on saturday saturday I did a few things I was I felt very productive but it was um I don’t know. It. It was productive I got the laundry done I did 2 loads of dishes because it had been such a busy week that like every dish in the house was dirty as I think my mother would say so I ran the dishwasher twice and i. Arranged the rocks around the fountain and I got all of that landscaping done and I think it looks awesome and I’m so happy with it. It’s um, it’s a real delight so and then I cleaned up my office. Which ended up being a little ironic because I dealt with the entire chaos of my office and got it all cleared out very happily I think I mentioned to you all before that drives me. That’s if my office is in chaos. So I got it all organized. This is all saturday. And then um, finished up like around 5 and drinks wine. It’s been hot here. Um not as hot as it is other places but we’ve been up into the low 90 s which is hot for us. So we’ve been running there conditioning. I don’t much like air conditioning. That’s why I make a face if you’re on video so then on sunday one of these things that I had to deal with was getting stuff out for the sfw. A. Finalists? Um, yes, belatedly in fact, one set of things that I’m sending out is from a year ago and so I had 2 air tables full of finalists and their addresses which. We’re not in an easy mode to put into labels but I had my mailing labels I used to do this all the time for work and so this is part of my theme of like how technology moves without you they change stuff. Um I used to be so good at mail merge I could just but boom get all this done. And I spent all this time on word sunday morning because I thought I need to make sure I have enough labels I want to make you know because I was going to go run errands. So I thought okay I need to get labels done first I spent like.
10:01.28
jeffekennedy
Oh I gotta check my phone again. I think this is probably not my mother hold on it was just my reminder on the jack oil change which David remembered better than I did he remembers all things car. So. Um I I spent way longer than I should have on those fucking labels and I ended up I like couldn’t even figure out how to make it go into a new page. Ah I’m sure there’s a way. And there used to be a way but um, and then I couldn’t get them to print because I finally figured out it just took me longer than it should have because we have new internet I had to actually go to the printer itself and change the wi-fi connection on the printer to connect it to our network for wireless printing. I tried all like all from the other direction, but it’s all done now. It’s all set then I went out to run errands and got the remaining supplies for the nebula finalist treat boxes and Vitamins David asked me to get. And then I went to bed bath and beyond and got some birthday presents for David and then I went to target to get one of the birthday presents that they were so no longer carried at bed bath and beyond. It was very interesting bed bath and beyond had greatly reduced stock. And when I went to target they also had greatly reduced stock. So I think this is what a lot of these um fly big box stores are going towards is um. Not have it because they had so much backlog there for a while when all the container ships finally arrived right? So I know that bed bath and beyond has a much area feel more space. Maybe they have less stock and so they’re rearranging to make it look better. So anyway. They were like oh yeah, we used to carry that we don’t anymore. So then I went to target and found some helper people I mean at least I found people to help me. Um and they they said oh but we’re all sold out. We do carry it but we’re all sold out at this location. So then I went to lows and. It was kind of um well David does watch this podcast anyway, it’s one of those extender grabber things which I didn’t even know what to call it but you know like you have the handle and it has a little grippy thing at the end and he wanted one of those we used to have one in it broke and so.
12:45.59
jeffekennedy
Asking at 3 different stores for you know these people and I said I don’t know what to call it and they’re all like ah you know and of course they can all search on their phones because they all have that inventory app on their phones now and they said well I just put in grabber. So I found it at lows if you need one. It’s in the cleaning supplies. Go figure I couldn’t forget what category they’d put these things in so I did find one um it was really hot. I had the topped out on the convertible which was perhaps unwise because I think I got a little hot and then I was meeting Emily Ma who is our editorial director for sfwa I’m doing the letters now so that I have to go through and correct where it says Sifwa. On the transcript but it is more correctly. Sifwa not sfwa.
13:48.17
jeffekennedy
I’m religious to to see how that transcript handles him so she was supposed to come over to to help me assemble the treat boxes and I texted her and said can we make can we push to 2:30 and she said fine because I stopped at Starbucks I really wanted my trin to. Unsweetened passion tea. Love those things. So refreshing. So cool. So I went and got that if you eat all of the unripe grapes. There won’t be any ripe grapes I’m talking to the curvebuilt thrasher and they are working very very hard to. Feed their nestlings on the front porch but I noticed the other day that they were taking the unripe grapes to the babies which you know fine, but this is we’re going to get denuded of grapes feeding these thrasher babies. I know it doesn’t matter. So yeah, and then I got home and I bear I didn’t even have time to eat which may have also been a. Because Emily and I plunged right into I made myself an apple and some hummus but then like it sat there and languished because I kept making my hands dirty and we were trying to put these treat boxes together and then there was like confusion I don’t it was ridiculously difficult to do. Like how many did we need and who were they going to and oh my fucking god I just can’t even tell you so we got it mostly done I didn’t get everything done on it that I wanted to it turned out I had the wrong kind of mailing um envelopes. The certificate blah blah bless so I didn’t even need all of those labels that I made and we are leaving tomorrow morning for end of the mountain god so it’s just gonna have to wait till I get back at the end of the week but I’m a couple steps a number of steps closer to. That done. The good news is is that last week I did have a 10000 word week on shadow wizard that’s good news for me anyway, um, a little over 10000 I think – I’m 10, 057 None words so good momentum on that book I’ve been listening to I finished listening to the bright familiar audio book and now I am almost done with the Gey Magic audiobook so
16:28.61
jeffekennedy
Feel like I’ve got a good grip on the story. So I’m kind of waffling at this point with going down to end of the mountain gods with David and his siblings should I try to write I’ve been planning to write next week I go to Apollycon. Um. Ah, pretty excited because my agent ah Sarah Younger of Nancy Yost literary agency is going to be there. She figured out that like 5 of her clients are going to be at this conference and she decided to come so that’s going to be kind of cool. Be nice to see her I’ve not seen her since July of 2019? Um, so yeah, that’ll be really great. So I am hoping to be able to continue to write through a polygon which I should be able to because. Of the the timing of events ah should allow me to get my words in in the morning. So right now I’m waffling on should I try to keep writing this week I had been planning to they tend to stay up all night in the casino which I’m an early bird so and ah I don’t. I can I can only like play the slots for like an hour and then I get bored. Um, ah so but then I feel kind of antisocial too. But I you know like go to bed and I wake up early and they all sleep until like ten or eleven so I could do it. Um, but I’m also toying with should I take a vacation but then I’ll lose my momentum on the book. So I’m really waffling on all of this. We’ll see how today goes I’m hoping to write tomorrow morning before I leave. Um. I’m trying to decide whether or not to do the podcast I know that my mother votes yes, do the podcast. Um I don’t know but I think I’m going to play it by ear. Maybe I will do some podcast interviews at a polyon. You could get Sarah to do podcasts with me that could be fun and I’m rubing with Jennifer Eaststep would you all like to hear an interview with Jennifer Estep ah other authors I will be hanging out with there are Leslie Penelope Amanda Boucher Lexie Ryan Chelsea Mueller um probably forgetting people.
19:12.29
jeffekennedy
Not that I don’t love them It’s just that my brain is ah I’ll tell you what trying to figure out these labels but it’s because I had 2 different years right? and some finalists overlapped like they were finalists in both years. So I knew I have 2 sets of certificates to send out. But I could send 2 certificates in one ah envelope for people who overlap the 2 years and then I had another set of this year’s finalists were getting wilter certificate and a treat box but those can’t go the same thing so I don’t know that the logistics fried my brain for no good reason at all. Um I I would approach it differently this time I probably ah this is a theme lightly right? I was probably overthinking it and I’m still going to have to make more labels because I know I messed up the amusing thing about social media though was that when I was putting these labels together. There were at least 2 people or well there were 2 people and there could be more but that I knew had moved just because they talked about on social media and so I was able to tag them and say hey I noticed I think I saw that you moved do you have a new address. So anyway, um, such are the trevials a daily life right? Um, we should all be like the hummingbirds ah fighting over the peters. Ah, it’s not a romantic. Analogy. Is it all right? So I’m just going to see how I feel tomorrow find out what the timing is going to be on us meeting up I’ve got to prioritize getting words mom so maybe podcast tomorrow maybe not and regardless I will talk to you all again. Someday you all take care bye bye.
A bit more on the internet/cell data saga (fair warning), and then further ruminations on RPGs, Wizardry, my own experiences along with other female/enby/etc. folks in the community, and Frosé.
Transcript
00:00.81
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee. Very good. Um, today is say it with me Friday woohoo. Ah July fifteenth the ides of july.
00:34.35
jeffekennedy
Ah, beautiful here in Santa Fe this morning we went for a walk. It was very pleasant even more pleasant and exciting is the xfinities tech is supposed to come um between nine and eleven this morning. And it’s now none I’m running a little bit later today partly because we went for the walk and we went up to the store and then I had to like move shit around in my office so that they had all these instructions you know, make sure that. Technician we can get to the outlets of that. There’s nothing in the way. Um, so that has been It’s interesting to me how much of a contributor to my feelings of chaos to have my office disrupted. Oh. There’s my mother. I asked her how she was and she never replied up. She’s thinking more clearly she’s feeling better all right I will reply to mom when I am done doing the podcast I’d left my phone on in case, the Xfinity tech calls. Um, it’s funny cause they send these some text messages saying. You know reschedule and you know as all these you know press one to confirm and None to cancel and None to reschedule it. It’s like I was just terrified of hitting the wrong wrong button and so please come please please please come and fix our internet. Yes, ah. Ah, ongoing saga if you have been following. Um, my phone was not working right yesterday I tried to tried calling Megan because um, so so I’ve answered my question that I posed yesterday of why can’t I just run internet through my hotspot. Maybe if I hadn’t gotten the basic plan I could but you know I got like the most basic unlimited plan I could and uploading my podcast video to Youtube took a fucking hour hou hour hou hour you guys I couldn’t believe it and it was. I could barely do anything else on my laptop at the same time because it was like hijacking the signal from my mouse and my keyboard and everything was running very slowly and it was it was miserable I mean champagne problems right? but still it was miserable I didn’t even try to upload to instagram. Apparently instagram is changing like if you’re going from if you’ve had a business page and now they’re going to teams or something so that’s probably why I can’t upload the podcast video to internet or to instagram sorry um, so then.
03:18.53
jeffekennedy
After I finally got everything uploaded and I thought this just is not a tenable substitute and I need to do the s simple board meeting yesterday afternoon. So I called my friend Megan she had texted me and said did I want to go for frose – #perfectlyfine – Um, in the evening fros or Harry’s and our whole tradeoff balance there is is it raining or not because it’s monsoon season monsoon rains come in in the afternoon. Um, if it’s a sunny hot afternoon frose is the thing to do if the rain has come in. Because we’re high altitude desert. It gets cold right? So yeah, then it’s then it was Harry’s roadhouse and margaritas. So I was thinking about it that we were getting together anyway and so I tried to color because I didn’t feel like typing it all out. Um. Another minor inconvenience is that I’ve been using the the text app on my laptop to do a lot of my texting but I can only do that if we actually have internet because you have to have the phone and the laptop on the same internet but apparently having the laptop get internet from the phone is not the same thing. Don’t ask me so I tried to call her and my call would not go through would not go through would not go through then she tried to call me back and leaves me a voicemail saying hey I saw you tried to call me but it didn’t ring on my phone. Ah. So then I had to get on with chat with the verizon tech and it was one of those deals where the Verizon tech was taking like 5 minutes between replies and you know because they’re clearly helping I don’t know None different people at the same time. And eventually after 45 minutes I got to a place where they had me reset reset the network on my phone and now my phone is working fine and they’re like well I’m so glad that and maybe they are doing this because they said you are awesome. You made this work. And I was like yeah too bad it took 45 minutes to get to the solution. There was a point at which the person had said to me. Um, you know Well so I understand that you’re having trouble with your hotspot is that correct and I said no, that’s not correct. And they said well can you tell me what the problem is exactly and I said how about you reread the conversation. We’ve been having for the last half an hour during which I’ve explained what the problem is exactly multiple times and which I think they did because then they came back and said oh you’re having trouble making and receiving calls I was like.
06:06.24
jeffekennedy
Um, my gosh this week I tell you I’m just hoping that the xfinity appointment goes well that I’ve internet. So anyway, I finally got to have a voice conversation with Megan and I said can I come up to your office to radius and use your internet for this board meeting and then we can go for Drake’s you know. Me a quiet corner and I could do that and she said well even better. Why don’t you go to my house because ah, her husband is out of town I guess I could say husband now right? Husband is out of town doing San Diego comic con working and. They have the big dogs that prefer to have company and she’s like it would be a great favor to me if you would go over and sit at my house and do your board meeting there and use our internet I was like perfect and she said and then I could come home from work and we can go have drinks well then ah a wrench in the works as her daughter is having a medical crisis. And mean ended up being home. She said I’m just she so I’m gonna come home I’ve got to arrange everything and now she’s um, leaving this afternoon flying to to Arizona to be with her daughter and she’s gonna be there for the whole week because her daughter has to have surgery and all this kind of thing. So ah, she would so she spent her afternoon like finding house sitters and dog sitters and all of this and she had to run out and then she came back and so it was like none and I’d already started drinking her champagne as. She had told me to do my board meeting was done my other work was done and so she was like she still has cases of champagne leftover from the wedding she was like please drink some champagne so I was sitting out on her porch drinking champagne when she got back and she said okay so the house Sitter’s coming over at None and. I said well do we have time to go for Burgarita still and she’s like oh it’s gonna be a little tight and I said you know why don’t we just sit here and drink champagne and have food delivered and she was perfect so we had italian food delivered. We sat out there. We drank champagne we chatted and now she’s taking off again. So I may yet be going over to our house to use internet. We’ll see ah yeah, ah, such as life right? It’s amusing to me. Can’t recall if I reflected on this yesterday, but it’s amusing to me that ah it has wreaked so much havoc in our lives this week not having internet and having so difficult cell service for these 2 things that.
08:52.90
jeffekennedy
And I know I sound like an old lady at this point you know shit came like can you kids don’t know but you know that I before you know that there was a time in my life would those were things that we did not have we simply did not. Have it all and it’s like and now the loss of them makes it almost impossible for me to work. Um and yet I remember a time when I worked without those things was trying to find a way to embrace it. But it’s just um, it’s disruptive. So hopefully after this all will be back to normal. Um, follow up on um, excuse me the game stuff I talked at the beginning of the week about I guess on tuesday. Tuesday’s podcast I talked about um, doing the roleplaying games and I told you the story about a pith Jennifer Dieys and my high school boyfriend who was involved in that story did listen to the podcast I did not point it to it so I don’t know if you listen every day kev or if you saw the descriptor on that None but he replied to me on Twitter and he said actually let me tell you exactly what he said because he told okay I found his clarifying tweets. He said wizardry was the game. We sent your poor low- level character into a dungeon with a higher level crew. Even if Jennifer had survived the pit. She definitely would have been slain in the none encounter with enemies. She was set up to fail. Ah, and I kind of. Loved that he told me all of that and I don’t recall if we if he told me before that my character was set up to fail but it was very interesting having this conversation with Gregory Wilson and some other people another um. Female friend of mine who is an amazing fantasy author ah told me a story saying that she stopped playing games rpg games I guess that’s redundant isn’t it role-playing games when she was 19 when the boys that she was playing with decided to cast a sleep spell on her character and rape her and yes, it’s the fantasy of the game but it’s also a representation of yourself and we know that people take this.
11:32.16
jeffekennedy
Kind of things seriously right? You know it’s that it’s the avatar of yourself and I felt so bad for her and it was interesting sharing with them. Kev’s information about it being wizardry and ah Gregory Wilson said oh that he had this epic rant about wizardry and playing it in the eighty s. And how much he hated that game and I will link to his rant because it was an entertaining rant and it’s just like 9 minutes long so um those of you interested might enjoy hearing this rant Kev if you are listening ah you may enjoy hearing this rant. And um, but it was it was It’s been interesting to revisit that because I had never really connected that maybe a lot of my current aversion to. Role-playing games or lifelong aversion to role-playing games may have stemmed from that incident in which I was set up to fail ah in which my boyfriend and his friends mainly wanted to get rid of me and successfully did so um, you know and it’s like hardly a big thing. In the scheme of things but it is interesting. How we do learn aversion to stuff and and I mainly am still thinking about it because I know that this has been such a pervasive experience for women and. Non-binary non um, heteronormative people in the science fiction and fantasy community that that gaming particularly roleplaying gaming is such a big part of the um, kind of the group. Interaction right? The the fantasy of playing together and that there you know has been so much terrible, cruelty and abusiveness that’s flourished in that aspect of the community and a lot of people are doing much better work to to combat it. But. Um, yeah, it’s ah it’s just it’s too bad. That’s gone on for so long and I’m glad that people are battling it and I’m glad to have conversations with people like Gregory who are very welcoming and saying you’ll come back and play this game and and I think I’m gonna try I’m gonna. See about playing some of these games because maybe I would like it. ah good kev also clarified that ah the town I mentioned was gold hillll and it was till desk do party was the name of the production company doing the murder mysteries. He says None stars would recommend.
14:22.26
jeffekennedy
And he also said it’s possible. He had an unfair advantage in the game as well since he had attended many times before as I recall he was also the only person who wasn’t drinking so another unfair advantage. So um. Let’s see so there’s those things I’ve got rogues possession upload it ah ready to release soon. What did I say July Twenty Sixth something like that I should know I know that and it’s all upload. It. So. It’s nice to have these things where I’m not ah uploading under the wire rogueeson continues to sell very well I did see on um, good reads. My assistant was saying that it wasn’t on Goodreads and I found it for her. But now we have multiple versions so I have asked. The librarians on goodreits to consolidate the additions. But I couldn’t help noticing that there was like ah not great reviews on the new edition. Some of them could be trolls. Ah but there was one on there like the the top review. Um I didn’t read all of it I just started to. Read it but she was complaining that there should have been a trigger warning for exactly that section that I was thinking about deleting people I was like yeah but it was funny because she said um that that was an abusive relationship and that she dnfed at that point because. Should have been a trigger warning for abusive relationships and that she just couldn’t read that and it was like well that particular section is an abuse. It’s not supposed to be ah, a relationship. It’s it’s basically torture. It’s it’s It’s like it. No no, no, it’s not an abusive relationship. It’s being kept captive by hostels who torture you? Um, so maybe not a close reader. Ah maybe a troll I don’t know so anyway, if you have never reviewed. Ah, rogues pawn on good reads and you feel like saying something nice about it on either edit I assume they’ll blend together and so that will that will help I do think it’s funny because it’s like ah now I’m back to thinking maybe I should have deleted that scene. But It’s really important for her character. It’s important for shaping what happens later and so when I did look at deleting it and having it be like just flashback and all that it would have been really hard to disentangle at this point.
17:07.38
jeffekennedy
And I know that a lot of readers feel the same way and I don’t blame them a bit but for prisoner of the crown that prisoner of the crown starts out with um, her early life and how you know how she was basically set up to be a victim. And then how she’s victimized in her marriage and all of this is about how this changed ah changed her family and ultimately brings about the downfall of an empire because she was they picked the wrong girl to victimize um and. I understand people hesitating to read that first book. But yeah, it, It’s what shapes our character so funny and what else.
18:05.78
jeffekennedy
I’m I’m making good progress on shadow wizard I’m having a lot of fun writing jadron um I’m I’m liking Cellie too but Jadron in particular is in really interesting character isn’t he. Here’s one of those characters by the way if you have read the bonds of magic books when he appeared on the page in bright familiar. Basically when he stepped out of the carriage I did not know what was going to happen in that scene and when he stepped out of the carriage. It was like this character who had decided he wanted to be part of these books and. Total surprise to me and so I’m so I’m enjoying delving into exactly what his deal is and I’ve been listening to the audio book of bright familiar and then I’ll finish that then I’ll read that listen read the audio book of great magic. So. Getting those things done and hoping to get a lot of stuff cleared out of my office because oh as I started out and probably didn’t finish saying my office is utter chaos in part because like the modem and internet connection was all behind bookshelves so there’s like. Books everywhere and I also have to mail out a whole bunch of stuff for Sifwa and I have a whole bunch of stuff for a polycon. So I’m hoping this weekend to like put my office back into order and then I will feel like um, it makes a big difference for me. I I um I wouldn’t say I’m a scrupulously neat person but I am like a clean desk person and I am a non-cluttered organized office person and um, yeah, deep cleansing breaths right? on that note. I hope that you all have wonderful relaxing fabulous weekend and I will um, talk to you all on Monday possibly with internet how you all take care bye bye.
A long, involved saga of internet and cellular data woes, including multiple interactions with service providers, three trips to the store, two lightning storms, and one coincidence so incredible that I blame Thor.
Transcript
00:00.85
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee. Um, delicious today is Thursday July fourteenth halfway through July race and ride along I don’t know is this like summer syndrome. Ah delicious. So. Um I have had just how do I describe it. It’s it’s just been an epic few days and in some ways it began a couple of weeks ago with ah a storm it is monsoon season here. And New Mexico I’ve mentioned a number of times which is fabulous because it means rain we are most grateful everything is green. Um, it’s incredibly incredibly important to get these monsoon rains. It’s when we get most of our moisture. However, with rain. Often comes lightning and a couple of weeks ago. We had a storm where we were getting this gorgeous rain and a lightning bolt hit nearby and it was one of those ones where you know like when the lightning cracks right? overhead and makes you kind of. Just jump out of your skin and this one was particularly shocking because we hadn’t had the normal lead up. You know, like normally you can like hear the storm getting closer and closer and the thunder is ah coming faster after the lightning cracks and so you can count and. You know the the childhood game of counting. Ah you know, basically knowing the difference between speed of light and speed of sound and how close that lightning is getting well. We didn’t get any of that. Um, even though there had been like some lightning and thunder in the distance. All of a sudden we had this. Crack right? overhead. Um that you know like everything went really bright I was like whoa and we’d already had things unplugged but it knocked out our internet and we got texts from. Xfinity saying ah internet is out. We’re working on repairing it. Um, they didn’t get it fixed until this was already like um I don’t know seven-thirty Eight o’clock at night and they didn’t get it fixed till like 4 in the morning but it came back up and you know.
02:44.50
jeffekennedy
Hoay. But then our internet just wasn’t the same again. It was um, slow our you know we kept it kept dropping. We had to keep rebooting the router. Um, it would be unstable. You know like in Zoome. Your internet is unstable. Um, so I’d gotten on with an xfinity ah helper person on chat who was great and we were we were on for like an hour and a half and she ended up like upgrading our internet we got faster internet. Um. She like cleared clean things up I don’t know what they do when they clean things up but she cleaned things up and she um when I complained I said ah she said that she could actually get us a better plan where we’d be paying like $10 less a month I said that would be great because we’d already spent like. $30 on cell phone overage charges because we hadn’t had that internet I think we finished watching a movie that night which we were feeling profiglet. Um because you know was like well use our cell data so a bit of background to this. Is we have had this plan that is a very old plan capital V Capital O Capital P Very old plan with ah Verizon which did not have unlimited data but it was it was inexpensive. And Verizon kept trying to get me to switch to unlimited data and I’d looked at it a couple of times but every plan change would have us paying like one ah hundred dollars more a month and we were paying like every time we went. A gigabyte over or four gigabytes over um on our allow allotted data allowance. It was costing us $15 so even on some months when we like. It was mostly if we were traveling if we were on a road trip and we wanted to play music or something like that we would use data and it would you know everyone’s why we would have like $60 in over its charges but it was still you know made more sense financially than $100 more every month. So we were using this cellular data overage I mentioned to the xfinity gal. Oh well, you know with like $30 in overage charges. So be nice to have less on our plan and she said oh well let me credit you $30 so that was lovely.
05:30.16
jeffekennedy
She even said by the time we finished and everything was really working great that she said that I was one of the nicest customers that she had dealt with all day and she really appreciated that I got that twice in a couple of days and I thought are they saying that to make me feel good or am I really nicer. Most David thinks it’s because I’m nicer than most people. Um, maybe it’s I’m I’m not generally and a nice person. Maybe I am I don’t know. But um I can be very forceful about getting what I want but what I’m dealing with. Customer service people like that on chats are on the phone. You know it’s it’s never their fault. It’s it’s never their problem that things are not okay I thought it was showing weird connection speaking of um. You know? So. There’s no reason not to be kind to them. You know, working in those call centers sucks. They’re always just doing the best that they can every once while if they’re not listening and they’re just going through their script then I will get pointed about it. So anyway. We’d come away thinking aha success on the internet’s working well well reader it was not working well it continued to the grade we were rebooting the router many times a day. The router was getting really hot. It was um. Just not. It wasn’t up to speed. You know all of these things lagging dropping signal so I was doing a little bit of research on this I thought I’d have to get on with Xfinity but we decided that probably what we needed was a new rubber. So. On um, we’ll see today’s Thursday so on Tuesday David went and because our router was you know they they start getting old and I was concerned that it was so hot. It’s always a bad sign so he went and got a new router which. Cost like $200 I was a little shocked it was that expensive. Ah, but he came home with the new router and he ah installed it and got it working in time for um, oh just a couple things that we were doing whatever. Um, and so we had it was like installed by like two or three o’clock and it was great internet was perfect it was solid this was clearly the great solution everything was going fabulous and um, we were all pleased. It’s like problem solved then we can move on with our lives.
08:19.40
jeffekennedy
Ah, it’s amazing to me how integral having internet is now but wait. There’s more so storm rolls in that evening and it’s starting to rain and I’m very happy because we’d had a couple of storms come through that hadn’t produced any rain so I was like hooray rain and then. Can you believe it all is sudden crack this massive lightning bolt and I saw it from the kitchen window like it went down and I don’t know where it hit but it hit close and you know instantaneous crack of sound and David was in the kitchen cooking dinner. Like a good man and he just about jumped out of his skin and we were like whoa and ah and it fried our new router it fried the new router it stopped working. What are the odds what are the odds I mean that’s like like Thor coming after me personally. So we um. Best buy didn’t open until Eleven Wednesday morning till the next morning so we used cellular data to do work stuff. Um have both both writing and SFWA stuff. And so we start burning the cellular data and I told David because this happened again at like 7 or 8 at night I was going to go to bed and read and but you know he has parkinson’s disease. He doesn’t always sleep well and he’s very restless at night and I said you know. If you want to watch movies or whatever tonight. Um, go ahead and use the cell data. So I wake up in the morning to like another $30 worth of over its charges but you know what can you do and I do. Stuff that morning pretty much without internet. Fortunately, it’s Wednesday which is my blog day I ended up not blogging at all I thought I could do it later in the day but I didn’t get to it. Um, so apologies there if you were looking for a blog post. Ah fortunately no podcast. Tuesday morning I used cell data to do the podcast to ah, record it and to upload it which that burned a lot of data. It’s funny because it it reminds me of that quote. Um.
11:00.78
jeffekennedy
Which there’s some question of like whether or not it’s apocryphal. Ah, apparently bill gates denied ever saying this but then they found evidence that he did that in a 1985 article. April 20, 1985 issue of info world that bill gates said when we set the upper limits of pc dos at six hundred and Forty k we thought nobody would ever need that much memory. It just amuses me when I’m like burning. Ah, gigabytes of data at a time I could tell you like how much we went through I’m not sure it matters. But oh yeah, like our overage got up to $120 for eight gigabytes um so we had considered lying about the router right? when David was going to take it back. We were like well we could just say you know I mean we didn’t didn’t even have it 24 hours that we could just say oh well, it didn’t work so we need to exchange it. And we decide that that would be wrong that that would be unfair. Ah and so he took the router back and he explained to the best buy person what had happened and and they just said oh sounds like you need to exchange it. So fortunately, we were not out. An additional $200 for this router. So David comes home with the router. Um I’ve pretty much got my words done I had to give a class for the clarion folks. The clarion writathon folks at two o’clock my time. Ah, hello to any of you who may have tuned in today normally I talk about writing more but today’s the epic story of our internet and loss thereof. It’s it’s a variable feast here at first cup of coffee. You just never know what you’re going to get. So I by now it’s like David got home at like noon and so we’re trying to set up the router and I figure it’s going to go fast right? because we’ve done it once already we’d know how to you know we’ve done the drill the day before even though David handled most of it and so. We get it all set up and it won’t connect. There’s no internet. It does connect it says connected. No internet. So I finally get on with an Xfinity person and because I can’t do chat.
13:52.41
jeffekennedy
Because we don’t have internet right? and I don’t want to try typing on my phone and I’m trying not to use the cell data to power my laptop so it and it really was a lot of effort to talk to a person on the phone like even while I’m on the waiting. For to get somebody to come on. They’re like sending me text saying click this text to have a chat I’m like no I talk to a person finally get on with a person. He tries bunch of times tries to help me um, resets it and. It will not connect. There is nothing there and he says we have to send somebody out to your house because there’s there’s something wrong. Um that like the internet data is not making it to the Router. So and of course they can’t send somebody until Friday. So two more days so I’m just like fuck my life. Whatever I can live so I’d hope to have internet back in time to do this clarion class I did not so I ran it on cell data. Did my laptop on connected to the hotspot did the class. It was fun if any of you were listening. It was really fun chatting with you all? Um, we can talk more about the heroine’s journey versus the hero’s journey. Ah, but um. I I don’t know maybe I should read Gail’s book anyway that’s a side conversation. So um, finish that I have like half an hour before I have a meeting for SFWA and so I do that via Discord and. You know I’m watching like getting the messages from Verizon telling me about my overages and so right before I get on this meeting with SFWA I decide. Okay I I cannot be stubborn on this any longer I go to Verizon I pick the cheapest plan I can with unlimited data. It’s still going to cost us like $100 more a month I’m griping about it. But um, at this point it’s just got to be done right? And also I’m noticing for the first time that apparently like we could go to nine gigabytes of overage. But. And we’ve already used like 8.4 and I’m thinking oh it’s not unlimited overage I mean I can’t just keep shelling out otherwise I might have done. It. Also I had gotten a message from Verizon recently. Ah, where they’d said that they were.
16:39.68
jeffekennedy
Absolutely making my Very Old Plan go away and I was gonna have to change anyway. So I was like all right capitulate have to change so I go in and I change it on the website and I figure. Okay, it’s fine. So I’m in the middle of this meeting and it’s like started at for It’s like 4:45 and all of a sudden internet just drops I have nothing I’m kicked out of the meeting. Ah and my phone has not only no cell data but I can’t even use it to make calls. Says oh you can make emergency calls only um and but actually I’m sorry I left out a little piece of this story I changed it before the meeting but then during the meeting I got another notice for an overage charge and I was like what the heck. So as we’re talking I go back into the Verizon website. And sure enough the changes had not taken effect. So I do it again and it’s weird because it’s like different prices now actually lower. So yay me so I go ahead and set it and I don’t know if it’s like when I confirmed the plan change but that was like when it kicked me out and it um. My phone becomes a brick I can’t use it I have no internet can’t use that to contact Verizon so it was like oh well this is just really charming. So I go and get David’s phone which is like down to 10% charge I can’t even with this so I have to find his charging cord too. Culverizon I get on with somebody. Ah this person can’t help me. They say they have to like connect me to someone else and and it takes a while to get to the point where they can’t help me and so then he’s like well let me ah, get you to someone who can help you change your plan and he puts me on hold and. Comes back once to check with me and we’re still on hold and then I get this message saying please enter your pin I’m like what again. So I entered my pen and then it says I’m sorry your the call center is closed like no no the call center cannot be closed so that was when I go. And um I am oh I’m sorry I already was on David’s phone so I call again and I get through and this guy is um, sounds very nice and helpful and but he says you’re you’re so static I can barely hear you and I’m like I am desperate I really am afraid that if I hang up I will not be able to get. Ah, person again. Ah so I’m like yelling into the phone so he can hear me and he says he’s he’s like that looks like you have unlimited data now. You should be fine. He said if you tried restarting your phone and I was like ah fuck me no I had not tried restarting my phone.
19:30.76
jeffekennedy
So while he’s there I restart my phone it clicks in my phone is no longer a brick I’m able to use it and then David’s phone at the same time like even though I didn’t restart it now. All of a sudden it has connects to the 5 g and everything. So. This is this has been a 20 minute story so I apologize to those of you who are here for talk about writing and industry but you know this is like part of it. So I’m um, accessing internet through my cell phone for the next couple of days till they come fix our internet. It is occurring to me now that I have unlimited data. Why don’t I do this all the time. Also when I was on with the the lovely first xfinity gal who gave me all these deals she had asked me who we did our cell phone service with. And I said oh I don’t want to change our cell phone service and she said oh I I completely understand that well dear reader I am now considering changing our cell phone service. We have been with Verizon since the beginning. Um and now I’m wondering um should I consolidate. My internet and cell phone service. It makes me think maybe it would be bad. You know like in this case, it was good to have 2 different services so I could go back and forth and it really sucked when both were down I couldn’t even I had no way to contact the people I’d been in the meeting with. To tell them what had happened I tried to text them and my texts wouldn’t go through. Um, so it’s disconcerting when there’s like 0 ability to contact the outside world I thought that I was going to have to my my final plan and I had another meeting at six and now it’s like after five but my next plan was was like get in my car and drive to the Verizon store I wasn’t even sure what time they closed and I had no way to check since I had no internet or sell data. But I thought well I’ll just go. Drive to the Verizon store and if I can get them to restore our service um desperate measures I was also thinking that I could actually go to a place today. We have a board meeting and I’m probably gonna be online for a couple of hours for that board meeting. Um, we are so reliant on internet now right hummingbird up above. So um, and I could go to a friend’s house too and use their internet.
22:07.83
jeffekennedy
But I think there’s no reason now why I can’t just burn cell data right? I have unlimited data I’m so we’re going to be paying out the wazoo ye old wazoo for it. So I might as well. Just do that right? So on that note I’m going to go upload this podcast. Um, this has been. The latest installment of all the things going on my mom said you certainly don’t lead a boarding life. Um my 80 year old mother who has covid thinks her life is boring and comparison to mine. Thank you for all of the kind thoughts on that she um. Has probably had it since Saturday she was diagnosed on Monday she’s been taking the medication which she said makes her feel like she’s sleepwalking but it is helping she is doing better. Um, stepdad has not gotten it. So. I think which kind of bitches are out because she’s annoyed that she got it and he hasn’t but um, you know it’s just weird. It’s funny how the viruses work some people get some people don’t ah but at least we have the medications and the vaxs now right? Ah all right. This has been a long podcast consisting of very little but ranting I will be back tomorrow I hope you all the wonderful Thursday and I will talk to you in the morning you all take care bye bye.
My crazy afternoon and evening yesterday, including a vehicle near-mishap, along with thoughts on role-playing games, doing the Bag of Giving, and about my early game-playing trauma when I was a teen.
Transcript
00:01.80
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee.
00:14.42
jeffekennedy
Ah, that’s good. Delicious. Today is Tuesday July Twelfth Two Thousand and twenty two and well big news in our household is my mother has COVID. Um, it’s the first time that it’s hit my immediate family I guess guess everybody’s getting it now. Um, um so they caught it pretty early. She hasn’t felt too terrible tired headache little bit of a fever. She is um you know twice boosted four shots. So and they’ve got her on Paxlovid so hopefully she’ll kick it pretty quickly and it won’t be a big incident. Um, it reminded me though of an incident from fairly early on in the pandemic it was after. Walk down had let up. So I think it may have been summer of 2020 and a lot of the restaurants around Santa Fe had opened again. But they’d also created all of these socially distanced outdoor spaces and I went to dinner with. My friends Megan and Charlie and they yeah we went to the Compound and the Compound had set up these tents those you know like the kinds you get for parties. They’d set up tents with tables and them so we’ve been hoping to like. Sit on the patio. You know just have drinks on the patio and or d’euvs and stuff and it turned into this whole. Um we couldn’t because the patio had been taken up by the tents because in case it rained I guess but we were having a good time. And we were talking about New Mexico had a mask mandate very early on so we were talking about people wearing masks and not wearing masks and the young man came up to fill our water glasses and. There was something about where we like we’re explaining our conversation to him. We’re like oh ah, you know we were just discussing masks and we appreciate you wearing yours and because all the servers were really, but we were sort of.
02:54.37
jeffekennedy
You know, like sometimes you randomly include the survey in your conversation and he said oh yeah, he said we’re all wearing masks because we have to and he says but I figure. Um, you know there’s not a lot of point in it because sooner or later. We’ll we’ll all just have it and there may have been more to it but it was really kind of funny because we went from being jovially optimistic and compliant to this like complete downer and the young man left again and ah and Megan said well that went downhill fast. Like yeah bit unexpected and now I feel like soon or later we’re all gonna have it right? He was um, oddly prescient which I don’t attribute to any foresight of his. But. Seems to be the the case at Megan and Charlie’s wedding somebody asked the morning after when we were all kind of like sitting around in a big circle nursing our hangovers and somebody said so has everyone here had covid already. Which I thought was a funny question and I think several other people did too because we were like no and and I said not to my knowledge and couple of girls said yeah not to my knowledge. You know if we’ve had it. We’ve had it asymptomatically there are mosquitoes buzzing around me this morning. Getting on the laptop screen. So um, hopefully everything will be fine. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. So um, otherwise things are going pretty well, we’re struggling with our internet we had this outage from xfinity a couple of weeks ago with big storm I may have mentioned that and ever since they restored it. It’s been um. Different and weird and this morning I can’t connect to it at all. So I’m doing this through my hotspot I’ll have to discuss with David Hugh when I got home last night. It was a very frenzied evening for me. Um. Because I knew it’s go to be a busy day anyway, it’s kind of a busy week. A lot going on and I think I get so used to not having anything going on that having a lot going on always feels like much so I got to um, got my words in which is great and.
05:37.45
jeffekennedy
Writing went fairly well finished um talked to Grace on the phone for the first time in a long time and that was really nice. We talked on the phone for about for over an hour and I had to leave for my very important mani/pedi. Had an appointment at 3 so I just kept talking to her in the car and um, got there did the mani/pedi got back home at four thirty left the jag running outside the garage because I didn’t know if the airlock was on. Because Jackson will escape if he’s in the house and the airlock isn’t on and it’s if you’ve been listening to to this for a long time. You know that? um my jag battery ah is drains fast. It’s like something to do with the old car. And my mechanic has told me that it’s much better to leave it running if I’m driving it for less than 20 minutes at a time. So if I’m going to like go in the house and make sure that I can open the garage door I just leave the car running. So I go in. And David starts talking to me about the internet and how we need to change the administrator on the router and he wants to know what email address I’ve been using on to you see the hummingbird humming hovering over my head. That’s very nice. Youre on video getting very nice hummingbird shot. They’re coming in for the feeder. It’s buddy. Ah so you know he’s like changed the password. But. He doesn’t know what email address I’m using for it and you know it’s like one those communication things where I sit down and look at it and he’s like is it a capital j or a lowercase j for the email address and you know so I try that one and he said no I think it’s supposed to be capital j and I’m like. I don’t know that’s it and he said well that’s email you’re using for the router and I’m like I don’t fucking know the email address I use for the router and I’ve got this thing at 5 that bag of giving deal and time is ticking. It’s like 20 minutes till and I said I need. Internet I have to do this thing at 5 so he’s undoes, whatever it is. He’s done and fortunately I could get on the internet in time. So ah, you know? so then I like go pee and put on lipstick and I sit down and I get there like right at 5
08:27.34
jeffekennedy
And we’re doing setup and we’re doing things and we’re getting everything figured out and it’s ah you know like five-twenty I I did manage to pour myself a glass of wine because I have high priorities and ah. And it’s we’re going to start at like 5:25 and it’s like 5:20 and I said um, can I have a couple minutes because I haven’t explained to David any of this and they’ve told me it’s going to take 3 hours which I did not know it was going to take that long and so. I I said can I take a couple minutes and they’re like well only one or 2 and I said okay you know let’s play I just need to go talk to David so I go in and explain to him. This could be long but um I can eat dinner after or if he wants to bring dinner into me whatever and he’s going to go to the store and we talk about that and ah. And then I realize do you realize? oh alert listeners. Yes I’d left the jag running. It’s been almost an hour ah fuck my life. So I quickly ran out brought the car in. Turned it off then did this thing to like 8:30 and and during all of this my mom had texted me while I was driving back and my phone had fallen on the floor and I’m trying not to look at my phone when I’m driving anyway and so. She texts me around eight fifteen while we’re still going in this game and says you know where are you and I realize I never looked at that text from when I was driving back from the mani/pedi and that was when she told me that she had covid so sorry that I didn’t reply um so I was just it was just kind of crazy. Um, it was interesting playing the game. Ah Kelly Robson wrote me into it. Derek Kunsken was part of it and Derek is a great guy. Um Michael Underwood and ah the game master was ah Gregory Wilson I think that’s right hadn’t met him before and so you know it’d been this thing where they’d asked us to do this and people would be watching and I never saw. The interface where people were watching have no idea what’s wrong with this eye. Well right? So um, playing the game I had told them all that I am not a game player that I have.
11:13.42
jeffekennedy
Played very very rarely my whole life and they all said that that’s not necessary that I don’t have to I didn’t have to do any research to prepare that I could just come and play and that people would donate money was I’m like real. Okay. And I knew that it was like I wasn’t going to be any good because I I think with games like that I overthink and we can um we can get to that. But ah I as we’re waiting this is before I’ve remembered that my car is still running. Ah um. I said well can I tell you all my ah, my gameplaying trauma and I said oh yes, please and it’s funny because I hadn’t thought of this story for a long time and, Kev, I might tell you to listen to this podcast because I think you will be amused. Ah, no I’m gonna sneeze all right sneezing accomplished. So I said well my game playing trauma when I was in high school with my very first boyfriend. My first. Love not my actual first boyfriend but um, Kev he and his friends were playing this game that they that they stole that they shoplifted um and these were not poor people. But. They may have been out of money and I was already in great disapproval that they had shoplifted this game and they were all agog to play it and it was this is so long ago that it was one of these computer games. That you would play with like dos commands I mean there’s no graphics nothing um and you would just type in commands and it would do things and so. They they convinced me to play this game despite my high dudgeon and gave me a character because I think they wanted me to you know they wanted me to not take kev away. You know there was already some tension there with. Ah, at least one of his good friends who felt very competitive about the time that Kev spent with me and so my name is actually Jennifer many of you know that.
13:55.52
jeffekennedy
And so they’d named my character Jennifer and she was a mage and and I was just starting to get kind of intrigued because I had like these mage powers and could do things and then all of a sudden we’re like going down some tunnel or something and the dos readout says: A pit. Jennifer dies. And I was like wait. What does that mean and they’re like oh well, you know you didn’t have enough power or whatever we all fell in the pit but you died and I’m like well do I get another life or whatever and I said no no, you’re you’re dead now and. You know and that’s funny because ah I remember this so vividly and I was so annoyed and I so I was telling them all this story kind of at first in jest you know, just saying ah you know here’s my gameplaying trauma and I’ve really never gotten into roleplaying games. And Gregory said. Ah I mean he was incredibly sweet I I’m hope by getting his name right? Um, he was incredibly sweet and said ah I’m feeling like I should look up his name hold on. Let me make sure I’m getting it right. Was right? Gregory Wilson I um remembered better than I thought so anyway Gregory took this incredibly seriously and he said um, he said you know game playing came at a time in my life also in high school. When I needed it very very much and in many ways it saved me and so I’m really sorry to hear stories like this because of a bad experience and he says and there are other stories of people who had bad experiences like this from inexperienced game players who didn’t take things seriously. And didn’t take care of the other players and I’m really sorry that happened to makes me all over clumped and I wanted to say I mean I nearly came back and said well it wasn’t that big of a deal I’ve always thought of as kind of a funny story but but looking back you know I wonder. How much of that bad experience did affect the fact that I really never wanted to play any role playing games again. Um, and it’s not if you do listen to this gift. Maybe I won’t tell you to listen. Um, it’s not your fault that your friends were mean to me. Um, no brad was such a fucking ass right? You know? Um so competitive. Ah so anyway, it was an interesting experience playing this game. Um.
16:43.88
jeffekennedy
And it did remind me of one of the few other occasions that I’ve played a game similar to that which was also with Kevin his wife Linda David and I went with them in a group of other friends ah up to um, can’t remember what was called a. This old ghost town in the mountains where they did like the murder mystery dinner and you’re supposed to solve the mystery and both playing that game and playing this one last night I find myself. Interrogating the people much too closely and it’s an interesting phenomenon because I know that the roles that they’re playing that they have certain kinds of information that they can give and and Kev won that game. At the murder mystery thing and I think he knows how to abide by the game architecture in a way that I don’t because I keep trying to interrogate people more closely and I think it’s because I can tell they’re lying to me and so I’m always trying to extract. What what are they not telling me and I suspect what it is is that it’s that they’re lying to me because they’re playing a role and so they’re saying stuff that they know is it true? Ah, ah. So this is what I mean that I think I totally overthink this stuff. Um, it’s ah it’s a funny thing isn’t it. So yes: A pit. Jennifer dies. Ah I did um, kick ass with my bow and arrow and my quarter staff in the game last night so cheers um yeah I know that’s probably shocking to all of you that I may overthink these things. Um. I was also um I understand now more why so many fantasy writers generate books from their fantasy role-playing games. Um. Which I do think has a certain stamp to it and there were a couple of people who were like doing more to like be descriptive and talk about the storytelling type things that they were doing and I I feel like I I did not quite get into that because.
19:27.30
jeffekennedy
Um, Gregory was doing a great job of leading me through it and I think he was being especially tender with me knowing that I had this like terrible trauma from the pit in my teenage years and at the end everybody congratulated him on being a great game master which. I I probably should have just echoed. But I don’t know from good or bad but I enjoyed it and and he um was walking me through stuff but at one point he’s like all right, you know because I decided to rescue this deer and he said so what what are you going to do and I was like I don’t know what to say um and there was 1 other ah person who was um, being much more descriptive and so I don’t know it was interesting to play. So. That was my yesterday hopefully today will will be a little bit smoother. Hopefully my mom will be feeling better. Hopefully my stepdad won’t catch it from her and yeah and then I have to save this sticky note again for like Thursday. So. Um, yeah, well go get to work get away from these mosquitoes and I will talk to you all on Thursday you all take care bye bye.
Why I don’t think of storytelling as lying, conversations with writer friends about process, achieving Inbox Zero, fitting things in, efficiencies with To Do Lists, the story muscle as a visceral thing, and why I love Romance.
Transcript
00:00.76
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee. Um, delicious today is Monday July Eleventh we’re full of perkitude here at Chez Kennedy Hope you are too. Um, yeah I ah. Good weekend I had a restful weekend had some good conversations with people not with all the people I meant to I reached out to a couple of friends that I owed food and conversations to say we could talk on Sunday I’m getting my life back and one said okay that should get back to me with the time. And then she never did and the other one I’m going to talk to this afternoon. Um, so I’ll keep pursuing the former and hopefully talk to the latter and then I did get to talk to another friend yesterday. Um, we had a. Virtual well I was trying to explain how it was because I told my mom that I’d had a glass of wine with my friend and she said um I assume you mean a virtual glass of wine and I was like well the wine was real but the the interface was virtual. But it was funny because my friend is also a writer and a very busy person and she was showing me a new kind of scheduling system that she’s using ah sort of an online calendar. Um, because that was partly how I had scheduled to. Have like social time with her and I I want to set up my mind the same way. Um I was using callendly before and I should do that again. So that people can like schedule social time to chat as me because I did like doing that and she was glad that I did and so were like okay. Keep this going I think she was intent on reciprocating which is very nice. So but so she’s showing me this other scheduling system that she’s using which would probably be a little much for me. It’s really cool, but one thing I’ve discovered about myself is that if I am. Too heavily scheduled I I start to feel pressed and I don’t like it but you can pick the things that you put in there. It’s kind of a cool system and so one of the things she was showing me on the sidebar she was sharing her screen on the sidebar.
02:43.81
jeffekennedy
You know have like lunch exercise you know email you know, along with scheduled meetings and an attempt to like handle daily things like we all do and um and it showed for that day for Sunday and on exercise it said couldn’t fit in and I started laughing. I don’t think she thought it was as funny as I did because I was like isn’t that just the way it’s like exercise couldn’t fit in even our Ai driven scheduling systems can’t figure out a way to fit in some of those things I was very amused by. She not so much it could have been that she was more focused on like trying to explain to me why the calendar couldn’t fit in exercise on that given day but I was I was going for the um, the the universal irony of the thing could not fit in it’s like writing right it’s the thing that although I hear it much less now I don’t know if it’s because where I’m at or where aspiring authors are at but you know for so long. It seemed like I would hear from people you know oh I want a book. But I can’t find the time you know what? I wonder if pandemic changed that people were like well I definitely have the time but maybe so that’s an interesting thought isn’t it anyway. Yeah writing could not fit in um because. And and that’s how this calendar is is you could set things as being um, immovable appointments and then it would shift other things which it is a cool system. You know so like if you end up having if you usually schedule lunch for noon and you end up having a meeting that goes till twelve thirty it’ll shift lunch down. Um, so I mean I could see that I could see that I I kind of do that on my own scheduling. Some things are more flexible than others. So on the one hand I’m I’m tempted and interested and on the other I think ah. Is it really doing anything I can’t do for myself I was in a meeting the other day and somebody was referencing their to-do list and they said that they had read that you should never change the order of your to do list. That you shouldn’t spend any time rejiggering your to do list because then that you’re just using time that you could have been using to do the thing which I can see but all of us on the call kind of groaned.
05:34.49
jeffekennedy
And we’re all like I spend a lot of time rejiggering my to-do list and and the person said well that’s the point and it’s like yeah but it’s important to rejiggering. Um I’m not sure I want to I don’t know. You know it’s sort of like the other efficiency advice you know like you only pick up a piece of mail once which now translates to email that you only look at an email once and you respond to it then I’m happiest when I’m in that place I am not always in that place. It would be interesting to try to do that with the to do list. It would take quite a bit of rejiggering for me to get it to a place I could do that because I do always have more on my list on any given day than I can get to which I do know is a problem. Um, and so I I do think in terms of if I move things to particular days and really commit to on this day I’ll get this thing done and I can’t move it will that help I don’t know. But I did get um I got to inbox 0 over the weekend whoo which is great because ah, especially my SFWA inbox had gotten up to like 42 emails which I know is not a lot compared to other people run their lives. But mine was at that because they were all things I had to deal with and and it had slid back to um the beginning of June that there were things lurking in there in my defense we had had a little bit of an. Email server hook hiccup and a whole slew of emails that sort of came through like to the general president email had gotten stuck and so they were all liberated at once and they were all things that I had to consider in some way or another. So now that I’m back at inbox 0 hopefully I can keep keep going. Um, but my friend and I were just talking about one of the difficulties with inbox 0 is that there are days when you simply can’t face. Opening your email I was glad to hear her say the same thing. It’s like you know that after you get traumatized a few times. It’s like oh I don’t want to open my email but but yeah, so I actually have notes today I was thinking about.
08:20.80
jeffekennedy
Things this morning. My brain was clicking along which is a good thing. Ah I was talking to David because so we have this puzzle box for the cats that we got it off of Amazon you know and you put it together. It’s cardboard. It’s got like two levels. And got little boxes inside and you put their toys inside and you put treats in there and then the cats absorb their energies by digging the treats out of the box and at first only Jackson liked it. Um Isabel completely ignored it. But Jackson got tired of it. He I think it’s too much work for lazy boycat. Um, and then Isabel discovered it a few weeks ago I don’t know why it suddenly caught her attention. But. She loves this box she loves this box she like sleeps beside it she loves it so much. Sometimes she sits on it sometimes she lies next to it and gazes at it lovingly and she wants us to put treats in it all the time. And she is senior cat and she has started to decline and wait. So I’m not concerned about um, her eating too much sometimes I worry about her eating too many treats and not enough of her cat food. But I don’t know how much of a concern that is so. She yells at us to put more treats in the puzzle box and this morning I was making my coffee prepping to come out here and David walked through the living room and Isabel stared meowing at him rather strenuously and I said don’t listen to her stories I already gave her. I already refilled her box with treats and I thought it was funny that I say that and I recall that coming from my grandmother that she would say stories now don’t be telling stories as a way of saying telling lies. And it made me think about there are always some some writers out there who say things like I lie for a living I tell lies for a living. Um and I don’t like that and. And I could see probably where they come from culturally because it’s the same place. My grandmother came from right with that. Don’t tell stories. Don’t listen to her stories where stories are equivalent to untruths and I don’t really believe that.
11:03.37
jeffekennedy
Um I don’t believe that storytelling and lying are the same thing.
11:16.68
jeffekennedy
Incidentally and completely off topic Thursday and Friday I was not able to get Instagram to load this podcast I don’t know why I might have to go back to doing a clip. But if you missed the podcast at the end of last week this is why. If you watch on Instagram and I know a lot of you do so it just keeps saying can’t load or or can’t share I think can’t share probably Instagram changed their settings again. Alas so. Ah, just wanted to mention that if um, if it won’t load today I’ll try to do the snippet again and see if that works hello hummer.
12:06.70
jeffekennedy
Hammers coming in to feed off of the hanging lobilia very picturesque. So oh the other thing that my friend and I were talking about. I’ve got something fuzzy on my face. Sorry I don’t know what something floated down. Um, oh we were just talking about the storytelling muscle and what that feels like. And how for both of us. It feels like more of a visceral thing than ah, a floaty thing and I was saying that’s partly why I don’t really grok with people saying things like the muse or the spirit or the inspiration. Ah, you know the word inspiration comes from inspire to draw breath in it never feels like an airy breathy thing to me. It feels like a gut thing. It feels like a muscle and she was asking me about something I’d been sort of debating been waffling on in writing shadow wizard. And I said oh you know what? I I got to the point in the book I meant like um, a little more than 25K words now I’m closing in on act one climax and so I meant I mean we could see I lied to her probably and said I was at like 25K words and i. I don’t think it’s that many 21.4 give or take a few 3,500 words but it was good enough for the conversation and I said that I had gotten to that point where I started to do the thing I wanted to do. And it felt so good I was so happy that I could do that and she had kind of given me quasi permission waved the permission wand to try this new thing I wanted to do oh who am I kidding I’ve already told all of you ah that I want to write more than 2 povs in Shadow Wizard. So I’ve been alternating with Jadren and Seliah for the first part of the book and now I have switched to Gabriel’s pov and. And she asked what did I think about it I was like ah felt so good and she’s like that’s that visceral feeling is it like yeah yeah, and and we’re both talking about how it feels like a she said sometimes it almost feels like sculpting like you’ve got this big thing and you’re kind of wrestling it. So I find it interesting that we both.
14:45.74
jeffekennedy
See it the same way. Always fascinating to me how people see their process. Um, you know that I also wrote these notes on this and I’m tried to decide if this is like a whole nother topic and I’m probably not going to get to in the. Next 5 minutes but I can talk a little bit about about that first act. Um I’ve been reading several different books over the next last few days or the next few days um trying to. Trying to satisfy various obligations and settle in um, for something that’s going to feed me through writing shadow wizard and I haven’t quite found it yet. I was reading a book that ah. Kelly Robson recommended to me and she really really wanted me to read and it’s a fantasy, a new fantasy. It’s not romance though and and I do feel occasionally a little bit of chagrin about. When people will say well does a book have to be romance and it’s it doesn’t I read a lot of books that are not romance. But if I read a book that is I’m trying to explain what it is about this book without getting too specific um romance. Adds a level of of happiness and reassurance to a dark story for me so I can read a story that is nonfiction or that is um, even something that is like. I don’t know. Um, ah I’m not sure I can even say what it is but if there is a story like this one that was fantasy but where the protagonists are all really unhappy people and it’s. Macabre ah, in a way that is similar to and I’m going to mention this one um Gideon the Ninth I know a lot of people loved Gideon the Ninth I did not get through it and it’s I read it for quite. I don’t know I think I read like the none 25% and it’s nothing against Tamsyn Muir because I I do think that um Tamsyn is a wonderfully skilled writer and created a fascinating world and I loved that opening scene the opening scene was
17:35.33
jeffekennedy
Amazingly well done which kept me going but then it goes into this world where there is so much darkness and the people are miserable and they are all unkind to each other and I know that. Least people say that there is eventually a romance but I didn’t I didn’t believe that it was going to be a romance with a capital r because the people were already so unkind to each other and I thought it might end up being more of a um I don’t know. Kind of a gray romance if you know what I mean because it was really more of a fantasy or science fiction story and of course there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s perfectly fine perfectly. Fine I should tell you all the story about perfectly fine but I won’t write now. Have to get permission. Ah no, but it’s it’s been become our new favorite hashtag so I’m totally distracted by perfectly fine perfectly fine as a way of seeing saying. I understand why people enjoy this thing and it’s perfectly fine for them to enjoy this thing but but I don’t get it and I seriously but I don’t get it because I see it so differently. Um, the. The hate hate relationship thing is just not something that’s fun for me and in this book that Kelly wanted me to read. It was um, there was a lot of that and it was. A very interesting magic system and an interesting world and setup. But I knew that I was not going to get happy emotions from reading this book and I think that’s what it comes down to is. And maybe that’s something that romance readers and writers have a difficult time conveying. It’s it’s not just that we want the romance or the love affair. It’s that I want that emotional satisfaction and that was RWA’s definition for a long time. Probably still is. Um, I’m really not sure what’s going on with RWA these days but you know it’s that emotionally satisfying conclusion and and that’s what you want? Yeah I mean they probably didn’t want to say happy. But there’s something to that you know that we want to come out of it feeling.
20:15.99
jeffekennedy
Joyful and optimistic and believing in um, in a satisfying relationship. Whatever kind of relationship that may be and if I am in doubt about getting that and I’m not going to. Get happiness from the story in any other way than I’m unlikely to want to keep going with it and so I think Kelly was pretty disappointed in me that I wouldn’t keep reading this book and then she was talking about another book. She said well did I ever tell you to read this book and I said yes and I tried to read it and I didn’t like it. She’s so we’re we’re just um, doing perfectly fine to each other so ah on that note I think I will go on I know I didn’t finish talking about first 25% but I’m gonna talk about that more tomorrow because I’ve. Other things to say about that and yeah, but now I need to go get some work done. So I hope you all have a wonderful Monday and I will talk to you tomorrow I’ll take care bye bye.
I’m getting my new fountain installed today! Photo shows where it will be. Otherwise I’m discussing tail-sniffing, being made to feel inferior and other forms of intimidation, along with curation of what is “real” in a genre.
Transcript
00:01.83
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance here with my first cup of coffee. Ah, so good today is say it with me Friday woo woo woo July eighth exciting day here. In the Kennedy household because I am getting my new fountain installed d d um, it is ah they are coming at 9am I don’t know why say it this way I I do know why I I am um it feels fraught. To me and in a ridiculous way considering that this is something that I have wanted for 10 years and saved up my money for and is um, an expensive addition. But also value add to the landscape. So when I when I start feeling like this is a ah ah silly thing to spend money on David reassures me, he says that I always have ah, it’s very sweet to me. He says that I have really good taste and that I’m always very good about adding stuff that improves the value plus it will make us happy it um feels a little fraught in that I don’t know Dave I was talking to. My friend Kelly about this. She’s in town for one more day and I talked to David about it. Um, you know there’s just like all of this stuff about Can we get the equipment into the spot and you know like I put down the deposit on this. Six weeks ago and it’s been kind of a pain to get them to come and actually install the thing and um I don’t know they’re just kind of cantankerous about can they get to the spot you know and I did the call before you dig stuff. We did the measuring. You know it it all should be fine, but um I think I’m doing the thing where and I I hate that this bothers me but I don’t want to deal with the it’s kind of like the construction guys thing.
02:41.77
jeffekennedy
You know that I don’t want to deal with the look here little lady attitude and I’ve like been pre-stressing about it. Why do I care if they try to pull this shit on me I don’t know and Kelly pointed out that’s really not good customer service. And I’m feeling this way and she’s absolutely right? and David says he’ll handle it for me because he does speak construction guy. Um, so hopefully cross your fingers for me that it’s um I want this I wish it could be just fun and not. Stressful it maybe it will be it. It could be that I’m totally overthinking this which it would not be the first time right. So um to to do? Yeah I’ll be happy wouldn’t it say I just want it there for it to be done. Um, maybe if I were more of more naturally inclined to be a diva. It would be better. You know where I could just be like fucking put it where I want it be the princess. They imagined me to be um again I’m overthinking. So. Um, it’s interesting because I’ve been thinking more about you know how much tail sniffing there is in the industry and that’s what I call it and it was kind of amusing. I I used that phrase recently with somebody and they thought that I was like they’re like that’s such a great way to put it. That’s I’ve been calling it that since the very very beginning and my friend and I came up with it when we were. Um, newbie newbie writers and we would go to these writing events in our small town of Laramie Wyoming and and everybody there I mean a lot of people already knew each other but the people who didn’t know each other would all of the conversations would be like what do you write. And ah, where have you been published and and and you have to do that you have to like draw your mouth down and talk like yeah um and we started calling it tail sniffing because it was like when the writers would first meet each other. They all did.
05:20.52
jeffekennedy
Go round sniffing each other’s butts to figure out who’s the most alpha. And and it persists to this day and and I see it happen. It’s changed right since then because that was the early 90s and self publishing. Was not a thing I think when we first started I remember when I was in a crit group that came after this and I remember 1 of the gals telling us about the fabulous new website called Amazon where you could buy any book you want it? ah. So not only was self- publishing not really a thing unless somebody like I don’t know went to Kinko’s and ran off a hundred copies of their book and tried to get people to buy it? Um, but. You know it was um for there wasn’t even really much in the way of digital reading yet. It was um, you know bookstores was where it was at and it was all print and newsstance and now. A lot of the tale sniffing involves. You know like are you traditionally published. Are you self-published and and there are people in I think romance doesn’t do this as much. There are people in the science fiction and fantasy community that are heavily invested in being the curators of what is real science fiction and fantasy. What is good science fiction and fantasy. What is not good. What is vetted who’s important who is not you know I maybe this is a people are going to people thing. Ah and there’s a whole lot of the like the awards community is really invested in deciding who gets the awards. Who should be lauded and in some ways. It’s a response to the fact that some books are very popular with readers and others are not but there’s um, there’s this dichotomy between.
07:59.23
jeffekennedy
The books that are popularly read and the books that are considered award worthy and and there is a Venn diagram overlap of books that are award worthy and that are read by many people. But. It’s um. The and will let me sorry I’m I’m thinking as I speak which is never a good thing. Um there’s also you know like the that there’s still the idea that if you’re traditionally published that your books are inherently better. And it’s very difficult to get people to read and nominate self-published books for awards unless those ah awards are specifically for indie books and so like with Nebula awards we have discussed creating an award care category for self-published books. But there’s also a a feeling of like of ghettoizing self-p publishishing that way right? that separated you separated out. Um, and I’ve considered pushing for it and then I can’t decide if I really care. That much because in some ways I could get in trouble for saying that? Yeah I’m not going to say it well I’ll say this that um, that. Do awards contribute to sales is the eternal question and I have been interviewed on this topic before because when the pages of the mind won the Rita award people asked me if I thought that made a difference to the book sales and the thing is is I think it made a difference. Yes. Um, there was a lot of promo that that book got because of that and a lot of people are aware of that book I see it brought up frequently. Maybe not more than other books. But. Definitely a lot of people read it for that reason. Um, it’s not my highest earning book and there are many people who will say that that is the that is the only marker that matters right.
10:34.38
jeffekennedy
That’s the only part that matters is whether or not you spend spend the money whether or not the book earns the money and if you’re making a living as a writer. Um that is the bottom line I mean you do care most in a way about which ones are going to you know. Keep the lights on and pay the mortgage and one of the things that happens a whole lot in the indie circles and with the self- publishing writers is that they will become to some extent extremely focused on money. Ah, some of them being so intent on marketing and earning money that they say that they don’t care about anything else some of them even don’t care about like craft and that sort of thing you know with the whole idea of the minimum viable product and that’s a. Ah, subset for sure you know So It’s like um, but sometimes I think we comfort ourselves with that because I was ah in a conversation with someone who. I Think regards me as an upstart as not a real fantasy writer and I’ve talked about this before that. Um,, there’s ah, a section of the science fiction and fantasy writing community who believes that I do not write fantasy because there’s romance in it which. In which the romances the antimatter that cancels out all of the fantasy and even some of my friends sometimes who are more on the literary fantasy side of things um will suggest that I Write. You know, oh well, you could write a book more like this. It’s like yes, but I don’t want to. And I think that and I and I feel it in myself like when I am with this person who kind of considers me an upside upstart and not a real fantasy writer I think to myself. Well yes, but I’m making more money than he is um. Which I happen to know that I make more money for my writing than he does despite his storied career and it is a comfort to me because it’s like yes, but I have a I don’t know a marketable product right? So we tell ourselves these things.
13:10.18
jeffekennedy
You know to? Ah I I don’t know balance out the various aspects of success I have a friend who talked about you know like that we have different goal posts so short fiction writers tend to get very caught up in. Being published in particular publications because it confers a certain honor. Um, but it’s also very very difficult to make a living as a writer of short fiction because you just can’t you can’t make the money at it right. not enough not consistently um so then people those people will comfort themselves with well I may not be making as much money as x but I get these awards and I have this reputation my contribution to the canon. And if you’re very good. You can get your short fiction put together into a collection and sell the collection. So I’m not sure how I got on this or exactly where I’m going with it. It’s I think this is tied in with the in my head with the dealing with the construction guys and dealing with the um self-appointed curators. Of the genre in that they they both want and maybe it’s not fair to say that they want this but they both operate by keeping me off balance um or attempting to keep me off balance right? to. So that I will think that their opinion what they want is more important than what I want ah you know and I come back to that line from by Eleanor Roosevelt which I think is really important where she says no one can make you feel inferior without your permission. And and I do think that that is critical and it can be very difficult in the moment because people who throw their weight around in this way and and I should qualify that like the construction guy who’s coming. I think is the owner of the business I don’t really know because it was a woman who sold me the fountain and she just refers to John and it’s just kind of funny how they run the business and she says well John says and well John will and it’s like so who who is John.
15:54.55
jeffekennedy
John has gained this sort of semi mythical status in my head right? and she’s very concerned from the very beginning. She’s been very concerned about John being upset and so maybe that’s like transferred to me. It’s like oh well, we don’t want to upset John um. The other thing I know I’m circling between these two topics. It’s part of the brand here at first cup of coffee I did ask them to come out and look at the site I said when and you I work from home I’m here all the time you know, somebody’s out in our neighborhood stop by and look and see what you think and she said oh no, no, that won’t be necessary. John doesn’t need to do that. Well we’ll see what John thinks when John gets here. Um, which is better for me to have that strike attitude. Um, so yeah, there’s this Ah i. Can’t be made to feel like my books are less important than someone else’s books unless I agree to that? Um, but you know it can be difficult sometimes where you know it’s um. The self-appointed curators rely very heavily on getting us to believe that their opinion is correct and valid and important and do we think then I don’t know this particular person. I’ve read some of their work and it’s not the kind of fantasy I like and I could um I could go into why I don’t like it but I feel like that’s unfair. It’s not my not my cup of tea. But and I could even go so far as to say that I think it’s not good. But that’s me right? That’s my opinion. It’s um, oops hang on got something in my other. It’s um, it’s all the various kinds of gatekeeping and 1 way that people reassure themselves that what they’re writing. Is good and valid and worthy of respect is to find other stuff that they say is not as good and I think it’s hard when you’ve been a writer for a long time too and you see the industry changing you see other stuff becoming important. Ah, to people for whatever reason and you’re throwing out there well but this is why the old school thing is better. This is why this is the gold standard and these whippersnapppers today. Don’t know.
18:44.10
jeffekennedy
What they’re doing so I know this is something I circle a lot. Maybe it’s something that um I don’t know is it me? Maybe it’s just me. Ah. Or maybe it’s a maybe it’s a human thing you know where you’re always kind of looking at I don’t know maybe we’re always tail sniffing right? Who’s who’s got the um who’s got the sexiest anal glands this week but ah. To ah extend the analogy rather uncomfortably. So I’m almost out of time so I won’t go into I should make a note though because I do want to talk about um about some recent cages cases of plagiarism by. Very highfalutin authors and I think that this is related because I think that um sometimes authors who have a certain reputation to maintain end up like borrowing generously from other work in order to sustain that. I don’t know prestige… prestige is a thing right? You can’t put dollars on it but having prestige does help sell books. Um, it’s an interesting thing right? So all right? Well I’m going to go. And work on writing and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you all on Monday you all take care bye bye.
