RITA ® Award-Winning Author of Fantasy Romance
Author: Jeffe Kennedy
//My weekend at Bubonicon: great conversations with other writers and coming home ready to put a new project into motion. Also, how some members of the SFF community treat Romance like antimatter.
//Burnout: how to recognize it, how to define what stage you’re at, and what to do about it. I recommend aggressive refilling of the well for all. Also, vacation, Hurricane Hilary, and doing Beach.
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I’m a day late posting because yesterday was crazy. Lots going on here, all good. I hope to share with you all soon!
In the meanwhile, the news you’ve all been waiting for, I know: TWISTED MAGIC, Book #3 in Renegades of Magic, has a cover and a release date!!! It will be out October 30, 2023. The preorder links are still going live, but we’ll add them to the website as they do. As always, you can preorder directly from me via the website. That includes print (which isn’t available for preorder anywhere else). I’ll have the back-cover copy and tagline soon, as I’m well into writing the book. At last!! Hooray!!!
//Critique and other feedback! What makes crit useful and not, how to know what to take and what to discard (Spoiler: it doesn’t get easier), and what we can learn about giving useful critique.
//A story about how Romance continues to be treated like antimatter in some parts of the SFF community. Also, exciting news on ONEIRA, and a bit more about agents and being careful who you pitch to.
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I had Plans for today’s blog post here at the SFF Seven. But we know what the poet said about best-laid plans…
Yes, my day has gang agley.
All in a good way, though. I got a lot done. Important stuff, just not quite the several steps required to post what I hoped to post today. So the short and dirty update is:
//My bizarre story about mistaken identity and the revelation it gave me on how we talk to each other and – most importantly – how writers communicate with agents. Also, highly recommend the Willamette Writers Conference!
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This week at the SFF Seven, we’re asking: “Do you read in the genre you write?”
What’s funny is that my answer is absolutely yes – but that I didn’t always write in the genre I read. Does that make sense?
I have always read Fantasy and Science Fiction, since I was a little kid, and I’ve been reading Romance since I was old enough to walk to the used bookstore to buy my own books, as my mom wouldn’t let me read “that trash.” (Because she thought Romance was low-brow and anti-feminist, not because of the sex.) But when I started out as a writer, I wrote Creative Nonfiction.
Some of this was timing and coincidence. When I decided I wanted to be a writer instead of a scientist, one of the first classes I took was “Essays on Self and Place,” from a visiting writer at the university. I fell easily into writing essays and had success with them. My first book was an essay collection. And, sure, I read some essays. I read a lot of essay collections and memoir. But I was always reading them as research and reciprocity.
All that time, what I read for pure enjoyment? Anything with a paranormal/SFF element and plenty of Romance.
It was only after my first book came out that a friend – a bookseller who knew my tastes and sold me hardcover releases of JD Robb, Laurell K. Hamilton, Stephenie Meyer, and Jaqueline Carey – asked me why I wasn’t writing in the genres I so clearly loved to read.
Funny that. It simply hadn’t occurred to me. But then I started to, I wrote this Fantasy Romance* (not a genre then, but what did I know??) that was SO MUCH FREAKING FUN TO WRITE. I couldn’t believe how much more fun I had writing my crazy tale about a scientist who falls into Faerie, becomes a sorceress, and ends up in a bargain with a fae lord to bear his child. I even got a really nice rejection on the book from Stephenie Meyer’s agent! (Though it took a long time for me to sell it, which is another tale.)
The rest is history. ~ Waves at catalogue of Epic Fantasy Romances ~ I haven’t looked back. Writing what I love to read has absolutely been a great decision.
*The book that became ROGUE’S PAWN
//The importance of voice, refining it, learning how to get it on the page, how dismissing something like the 3-Act Structure as formulaic is missing the point of storytelling entirely, and why (again) I’m not worried about AI.
//A dive into genre today, along with a discussion of whether there’s an identifiable plot arc for Science Fiction or Fantasy (hint: there isn’t), and what I’ve recently discovered about writing a Romance.
