Author: Jeffe Kennedy

First Cup of Coffee – May 9, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast




Transcript
00:01.38
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of fantasy romance and romantic fantasy I’m here with my first cup of coffee.

00:15.63
jeffekennedy
Today’s Monday may ninth and death sorry for the incredibly awkward intro I’m so in a slightly different position and I realized I couldn’t quite crane back to reach the chimes. Alas. If you’re on video you might be able to see behind me this light might not be great. But I have my clematis is blooming beautiful pink blossoms. Yay.

00:45.73
jeffekennedy
Yeah, so everything’s bright and shiny here a little bit cool breeze blowing this morning but um, getting the cool in supposed to warm up later today wind again today. Alas, the wind. Um, hummingbird battle little Hummer um I don’t remember what I was going to say the hummingbird distracted me what’s something to say it. What was it. Who knows it’s gone thinks bird.

01:26.79
jeffekennedy
But so yeah, like all thoughts have fled my head I’m trying to think of what’s going on here wendy oh I know what it was I’ll share it on the show notes I posted it to social media before but I think social media hates me have you guys been noticing this. Like I post stuff to Facebook and Twitter like even pictures and original content with no links all the things I’m supposed to do and like I get likes but nobody’s commenting maybe nobody has bandwidth to comment. Maybe we’re all just so fricking fed up with everything that’s going on. Um. Like trying to relying on law from the seventeen hundreds to inact current law I haven’t ranted about that on here I feel like we’ve all heard enough elsewhere anyway. It was the um fire incident report from the fire that’s up near Las Vegas New Mexico about an hour north of here I was looking at it just to see because they they may have to add back to weight the city of Las Vegas New Mexico not Las Vegas Nevada but still the fires coming real close and they’re. Having to evacuate people from the surrounding towns. So in a way. It’s not funny. So it’s one of these funny, not funny things but I was looking at the report and it said that the drought exasperated by the high winds and warm temperatures I think that maybe not everybody who saw it got why I thought it was so funny because it should be exacerbated. Not exasperated. Um and I thought was really funny. Who knew a drought could become as exasperated as we feel so um, yeah I don’t know take humor where you can a lot of people have had to evacuate. It’s really not wonderful. Alas. Um I had a good weekend felt like a busy weekend I I had 3 SFWA meetings on Saturday publications team nebula planning board meeting. So ah. That sort of took up the middle of my day before that I just hung out though and read.

04:03.73
jeffekennedy
Um, I’ve been debating about whether or not to talk about what I’m reading because I am oh see even if I hint about it. You guys will guess. And I just don’t know if I want to say anything on here I know that’s coy if I shouldn’t bring it up at all I’m gonna set that aside and think about if you’re on video you might see my cool new barette this is exciting stuff right? Look it’s like a a phoenix or a heron. Got in at a local story here in Santa Fe so um I don’t often buy myself little treats like that and that was a nice nice little gifty for myself. It’s important to reward ourselves I don’t know if I’ve talked about that in a long time when you’re. Especially when you’re working your creative self very hard and wanting to um you know make the money to buy like groceries um paid mortgage and rent or all of those sorts of things I had a um, a. Ah, decent, wake up call yesterday I was um, insensitive to some newer writers in a way that I really tried not to be and it didn’t occur to me but 1 of the girls was saying that she hadn’t been able to find any good writer conferences in Florida and I said well what about NINC? Novelist incorporated which has their conference in St Petersburg and she was like what that’s 20 minutes away from me and she ran off to get it and then she set back a picture of her face when she read the membership qualifications for NINC because ah. Desert Ravens are busy this morning too. Ah because you have to be a member of NINC to register for the conference and and I’m a member and it was it was like a no big deal for me to become a member. But the membership qualifications are steep. She’s like I just published my first book I have nothing yet and it’s um, they they are they are steep There’re lots steepers than so than SFWA’s. But NINC was formed by kind of a spinoff group from rwa that felt like there were too many um wannabes in the organization and so they made it steep because they wanted it to be.

06:43.32
jeffekennedy
Like writers who were more advanced in their career and so I did say to these cows I said you know it took me a long time to to and I forget I do forget how much water is under the bridge for me. You know, maybe that’s part of the champagne problems. You know you get to a point where you you’re focused on what you’re you know eyes forward what you’re trying to achieve next what you’re trying to do and you don’t always or at least I don’t. Always take that moment to look back at how very far I’ve come and and I think it that’s ah it’s a good reminder for me, you know that those um those membership qualifications were easy for me to make they’re not easy for everybody. Especially when you’re first starting out but it it that reminds me of a conversation that we’ve been having at SFWA and and I feel like it’s okay for me to talk about this because I’ve been talking about it openly with a bunch of people but there is um in. I can’t maybe I’ve even talked about it on the podcast before forgive me forgive me if I’ve forgotten. Um I should say I did spend a couple of hours revising on the book yesterday I’m getting a little bit worried about finishing it on time. This is probably also right on schedule and. Yeah, so my brain is really focused on the book which is like really great that I’m like trying to finish this book at the same time that nebula conference is ah coming to a peak but everybody else is doing way more work than me at this point so that’s pretty awesome.

08:34.89
jeffekennedy
So yeah, there’s an interesting thing in the science fiction and fantasy community where they talk about um, being a professional writer which is very important. That’s part of our mission I’m totally behind that and then they talk about stuff being fan based. And it’s interesting to me that the science fiction and fantasy community. Really they talk about fan run conventions fan awards the romance community doesn’t talk about fans in the same way even though like the Rt convention was all about readers. And there are other conventions that are reader conventions but we don’t say fan in and the same way that science fiction and fantasy community does and there is occasionally someone will say things. In Sifwa like we want this to be a professional panel. Not something that seems more fan based and and 1 of the frequent. Um. Disparaging remarks made about Rw a that confused me for a long time was they would say well Rw a allows fans to be members. They don’t it’s not a professional organization like Siffa is because they allow fans in and I was like everybody in our w a is I mean you. You want to be a writer That’s why you join.

10:14.14
jeffekennedy
So this finally struck me the other day. It was like you know when you enter a community and you um, don’t always know the jargon and 1 thing about sifway is that it’s an old enough organization that there is arcane lingo. And there is a lot of stuff that are like unwritten rules and ever since I’ve been on the board I’ve I’ve been the force for no unwritten rules and there are other people who are fortunately on my same team with this but it’s like um if it frankly in in my world. If a rule is not written down It’s not a rule. You can’t expect people to abide by unwritten rules if it’s such a god damn fucking important rule write it down. You can see why everybody loves me. Um.

11:11.20
jeffekennedy
So we’ve we’ve run into this before where we’ve had like people violate unwritten rules and then everybody’s like oh censure them. They’re bad and wrong because they broke this this rule I’m like how were they supposed to know it was a rule and they’re like well everybody knows. I don’t know. It’s like this insular community thing part of the things we’re working to change and it has changed a whole lot just in in my type. Um, but so this like suddenly the lingo was illuminated for me an epiphany. Now I understand scrambled eggs! If you don’t get that joke you haven’t been listening to this podcast long enough. Ah, um, if you want me to you can ping me and I’ll explain it. But. It yeah I will explain in here. Um, but I was testing my theory out with someone else. I said you know this has occurred to me that when people say in SFWA say that something is fan-based as opposed to professional they’re referring to aspiring writers. As opposed to established writers and and she looked at me and she’s like well yes why god so that’s why when they were like hurling this accusation at RWA a allowing fans in what they mean is that they rwa has no bar for membership. And if you’re an aspiring writer with no cred whatsoever. You can join so somehow I don’t know it would be wouldn’t you sociologists out there I would love for you to retrace this history of how this became a thing of calling. People who want to become writers fans I mean in some ways I could see the trajectory right? because all writers start out as enthusiastic readers right. So okay, I’m gonna touch on this thing that I’m reading. Ah I don’t I don’t want to annoy certain people is my hesitation here. Um, somebody yesterday when I we were talking about something else entirely. But when I was chatting with some of these girls.

13:41.81
jeffekennedy
To answer entertain me that they always make me happy and they um, we’re talking about something I’m not even gonna I’m gonna dance around it as much as possible tippay tap. And I said um yeah, and I said I try to keep my mouth shut about that and this other girl said um well that she had she had gotten in trouble with with somebody for saying something and you know and she said that she was you know afraid for her career that they could really hurt her career. And I said well I’m not afraid but I do try to keep my mouth shut on some things because I am aware you know and they said well if we you know unless people like you tell us, then? how are we supposed to know and I’m like yeah I know I try to walk this line but sometimes I just. Give my opinion and say yeah I don’t think that you need to be involved with that. Ah, and then I do my little zipper face. Um I am aware that my babblings here are anywhere that in so that I am. Even though I say opinions my own that I do also representative what to some extent and I don’t want anybody to think that. My opinions are Sifwa’s opinions and so I I try to be careful. Also I’m careful about what I say on record and I said that to these scos and it’s hard because it’s been pandemic but you know I said you know it’s a standing thing. Buy me a drink you even wouldn’t have to buy me a drink because odds are I’d already have one at the bar. Um, and I will tell you in person anything you want to know it’s just I don’t want stuff in print where somebody can come back and say you know did you slam this person. You know? because even though I’d say well I think they deserve it. Um, some things are with it. Some things aren’t so so anyway I’m doing a reread of a series that I read first. It’s it’s pretty extraordinary. Really this was one of the first books I ever bought on my brand new kindle back in the day and I’m not going to give a year so you guys can’t sleuth out what I’m reading but um because I know how y’all are, but and I loved this book.

16:28.70
jeffekennedy
Love this book and I love this series until I felt like the series kind of went off the rails so that could be any number of series right? Um, but yeah I I remember I got that Kindle for Christmas from my mother. They were very expensive then. And thank you mom and I bought 3 books and this was one of them. You know, bought them on my kindle you guys it was like ah the angels were singing. It was the best thing and 1 of the best things was is that at the end of this book I had to read the next book and I could read it immediately and all your kids out there who don’t know what it was like when we didn’t have remote controls. Um, there were so many times when you. Had to wait so long to get the next book in the series and and not because it wasn’t out because you couldn’t find it anywhere. Um, you know doing things like in our library alone. There was no online ordering of any sort dinosaurs roamed the earth you had to watch out so that you didn’t get. Eaten by the tyrannosaurus rex on the way to the newsstand you know you could ask your local bookstore to order it but sometimes they couldn’t get it sometimes they wouldn’t get it if it was romance sometimes they would be like yeah um, so. So it was a miraculous thing. Ah and I’m sure younger people get really sick of older people waxing on about the amaze mean amazing things about technology. But I think I’ve told you guys this that i. Said to my grandson he was doing something on his phone and I said you know there was a time when we only used those to make phone calls and he goes ah I know everybody tells me that was like you okay, fine kid that’s but it’s true. Ah. But yeah, being able to buy that second book was yeah angels wept so now I’m rereading the series and it’s just interesting to read it with my lens now because when I first read that I was not writing fiction or I was just. Beginning to dabble in fiction. And yeah, it’s it’s interesting to reread it? Um, yeah, and that’s all I’m going to say at this point I’m not Goingnna talk about what my trigger was to start reading this or other thoughts. Maybe I will later.

19:10.80
jeffekennedy
And no know um did I have a point in bringing that up now who knows who knows Jeffe do you have a point about anything question and well so let’s see god so this week’s going to be intense working on this book. Getting it done. Um, the revision going fine. That’s weird. Ah this is a weird book doesn’t do I say this every single time don’t I um, but yeah, this is a different kind of book. I don’t even know what more to say about it than that I mean the revision is going fine but I keep worrying that I don’t even know what I’m worried about on it. It’s just um. Not following the trajectory that I expected I ah somebody asked if my last week I made the reference to the Groundhog day loop no I’m not doing that with lean on right I had I almost wish I had it’s too late now. Because that would have been an entertaining thing to do but no, it’s more that they they’re making incremental progress but it is you know how when you’re trying to figure out a relationship like that. You know you just do a lot of retreading and falling back into bad habits. So anyway, it’s moving forward I’m I’m making progress on this revision I think I have something like a hundred pages still to revise and then. Maybe be longer. That’s this is my concern is it’s looking like instead of being the 95000 words I wanted right now the beats are looking more like 102K fuck me. So yeah I could always push the date out I could. You know, extend the release date by a week but I really want this release in may get that money in may um, maybe that’s not as that important we shall’ll see so anyway I’m gonna go get to work instead of babbling on about it. Hope you guys are ready to kick off your Monday have a good week and I’ll talk to you all tomorrow take care bye bye.

First Cup of Coffee – May 6, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast




Transcript
00:00.41
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of fantasy romance and romantic fantasy I am here with my first cup of coffee.

00:14.47
jeffekennedy
Lovely. Um, today is say it with me Friday woo Friday may sixth. Um. Yeah, yeah, as the week winds to a close I feel like we’re we’re in a good place with all of the things. My folks got the results back on their ct scans yesterday. And my mother’s proud to announce that their brains are not scrambled um their neighbors tested positive for covid and they were recently at an event with them. So there’s that never ending cycle. But um, went to the endocrinologist yesterday. Those of you have been listening for a long time may recall that my husband David had a lot of medical stuff before Christmas dealing with his. Um, gut and his swallowing and all of this and one of the things that they found when they did the scans of him at the hospital at urgent care was that he had some nodules on his thyroid so we just now got in with the endocrinologist. And she did um, an ultrasound and she said that the nodules are very very small that they’re not big enough to biopsy so he’ll check back in a year but good news there and. In other medical news I I am absurdly pleased by this you guys so one of the things I had to do being a woman of a certain age is I got to have a bone density scan and I went in to see my doctor the other day just to discuss results on things. And he said that. Ah he said my bones are beautiful. He said my bone density scan was beautiful. The exact word he used he said that I have the bones of a young adult of a healthy young adult. How about that. Cheers. David feels very vindicated because he’s always said that I have strong bones I’m very strong so bone density scan confirms it the bones of a young adult now if only I could have now the.

02:56.98
jeffekennedy
Eyes of a young adult or I don’t know the metabolism of a young adult I would take I I wish I’d my metabolism back but bones will be young adult good thing to have that’s ah know breaking bones is always a. Hard thing on people hard to recover from so. It’s funny because I was reading a book where you know somebody got really broke hurt very very badly. You know broken legs broken arms all this you know and they were saying the books you know things like. I think this is part of why I don’t write action scenes because I just can’t suspend it disbelief enough but they’re saying well it’ll take him a few months to heal and I’m thinking he’s never coming back from that. He’s never going to be a hundred percent of what he was. But we kind of gloss over that in fiction I still think about my cpa who you know fell and broke is about my age fell and broke his femur and he just fell down a couple of steps and you know snapped that Femur and you know it had been 2 years and he was still trying to recover from it and that was with like. Amazing medical technology. So ah, yeah yeah I know I know I’m supposed to just like be like oh well, you know he’ll heal I think that’s 1 reason why I have magic healing I had a conversation with um with Nnedi Okorafor – she was in town and do do I sound like I’m name dropping. It was really fun meeting Nnedi, she was an interesting person. Really wonderful writer and we had some great conversations and I toured her around and she she loves jewelry so you know it was like It’s an easy gig you know getting to talk with fun writers and then taking them around to cool shops so that they can buy things. It’s Santa Fe tourism should like totally employ me. So anyway, um I thought it’s probably not relevant that it was Nnedi except that she asked me an interesting question. Which I don’t think anybody else has ever asked me but she said if you could pick any superpower and we were talking about you know like characters with amazing powers and all of this and how you write it effectively and um, she said if you could pick any superpower. What would you have. And I said I would pick healing people I I would want to be able to to heal anybody and and make anybody um you know recover from any kind of disease or injury and she looked at me funny and she said but you know that that leads to chaos because then you know
05:50.77
jeffekennedy
Ah, people wouldn’t die. It. It would disrupt a natural order and I said I don’t care I said it would absolutely be that I would do it anyway. I would just heal everybody anyway and she was laughing at me for it and I said well what would you pick and she said well I’m shallow I want to be able to fly. Pick flying and she said but you would be causing chaos to the human race and I’m like I know and I still don’t care. Ah, ah now maybe I have to write that character I am thinking up this next ah this next story I really need to be focusing on the book I’m writing which I’m currently revising. It doesn’t suck I just worry that it repeats and I’m I’m not sure I have good enough perspective on it I may have to get somebody else to read it for me because I’m I’m worried it circles the same thing which I know I’ve been saying. All along about this book. Um, and I know that part of it is because the characters circle that they’re kind of stuck in this loop and how do people even write like groundhog type stories because ah yeah. How do you keep it straight. Maybe they write stuff down. Maybe they have outlines, Jeffe. Alas, um, yeah, so anyway I’m thinking about this this whole new I should be thinking about like the next. Bonds of

First Cup of Coffee – May 5, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast




Transcript
00:00.12
jeffekennedy
Good morning everyone this is Jeffe Kennedy author of fantasy romance and romantic fantasy I’m here with my first cup of coffee. Delicious. Ah today is Thursday may fifth I want to say March Fifth may fifth ah, one of our nebula conference organizers made that mistake the other day. She. Said if we could have that back by March Sixth that would be great and she had to follow up with the extra email saying I mean may sixth. Um, so I of course helpfully chimed in and said we only wish it was march. Alas, it’s a little chilly here this morning. Chill breeze blowing I started to go out to the grape arbor and it was too chilly. That’s why I put my jacket on now I’ve taken it off could see I’m on video having a little mister Rogers moment I did not mention this the other day and I meant to when I was talking about. That episode of Julia which faithful listener Laura Darnell tells me has been renewed for a second season. So I guess she started watching it and found it delightful that is a perfect word for it. This show is just delightful. You guys. There are so many things about it that um are heartwarmingly wonderfully delightful. So brief spoilery moments if you don’t want to know I mean I don’t think it’s not an actual like plot type spoiler. But it’s a really cool moment. When you figure out who this person is so Laura if you don’t want to know cover your ears for a moment but at the end of that episode that we watched last week there was this lovely moment where after Betty Friedan has like gutted Julia unfairly totally unfairly. And she is Julia has gone out to lobby just to get a breath of air and she’s sitting there and she’s trying not to cry but actually crying as so many of us do and this man comes up to her and says how much he liked her speech and he is so gentle and so kind. And he and he’s he says how magical and it was a really great speech then and I will not spoil her that way because there’s some lead up to what is she going to say and he said he really loved what she said and a particular thing about it and.

02:39.24
jeffekennedy
And he is so kind and he is kind and warmhearted in the same way that she is and I went. Oh it’s it’s Mr. Rogers and it was it was Mr. Rogers and I don’t know I mean this is sound goofy you guys it was lovely. it was it was in and he asks some if you should leave her alone and she said no if you would just sit with me for a few minutes. Why does that make me verklempt I don’t know ah some of the girls in the faro group were talking about. Um. Bridgerton second season of bridgerton I was talking about it too. But then they continued and there there was a debate over whether they liked second season better than first a lot of people didn’t seem to like second season as much as the first I liked it. Better. But um I love slow burn I love I love Richard Firstborns hello only child you know who feel like they have to do and be everything and I I love I loved everything about it. So again, slightly spoilery. Towards the end after Kate has like sacrificed everything they were saying that these were things that they didn’t like about it. They didn’t like how her ah the relationship with the sister which I actually loved and but I’ve also read the books a couple times so I had. I don’t know strong opinions already. Um, but 1 of the things they were saying they didn’t like was that after the sister figures out what’s going on I’m trying not to spoil her but you know maybe maybe I will spoil her and. Cover your ears or or go away I’m not going to say anything interesting today anyway. Ah so so the premise is I’m I’m going full spoiler here. Folks Kate is the older sister. She’s given up on marriage. She figures she can’t anyway. Ah, there are a lot of reasons for this and everything’s been put into grooming her younger sister to get her the ideal marriage which will get her an inheritance that Kate will never get and all ah all of these things Kate now see now I have to tell you guys all the details. And you probably don’t even care if I’m going to tell you anyway. So there’s 2 sisters Kate Nedwina and Kate is the daughter of an East Indian man and a british woman fell in love with him and he already had Kate.

05:27.28
jeffekennedy
As his daughter she was like eight years old when they got married and so she raised Kate as her own and then she also had edwina so edwina has british grandparents and edwina is the one who stands to inherit whereas Kate is you know the daughter of this. You know indian merchant um, she’s got no british blood in her and she know she’s not supposed to be part of this british aristocracy whereas it’s Edwina’s birthright via her mother right? So everything’s been put into getting Edwina the perfect marriage. And so even though Kate falls in love with Anthony Bridgegerton very early on she is determined that well she actually hates him and she doesn’t want to phone for eduwina but Edwina sets her sights on him and he sets his sights on Ed Weida and it’s a brilliant match. It’s like everything that Kate could want for Edwina. And Edwina is like I really want this I want you to be nice to this guy and so Kate does Kate sacrifices everything even though you know like she’s in love with Anthony she doesn’t do anything about it and Anthony doesn’t do anything about it because you know hello Richard Firstborns who are going to do their duty before anything else. Which I love I eat that up with a spoon and then towards the end Edwina realizes the paraho are in love and I mean it’s this fantastic moment because I feel like season 2 borrowed heavily from some of the is it. Okay drama I wanted to say k-pop k drama the korean dramas where they do these long long looks and Anthony and Kate just exchange these searing glances that are full of all of their. Denied lust and love and and at one point a critical point and I won’t spoiler that but Edwina sees it and it’s like the scales fall from her eyes. It’s almost a classic classic mythological moment and Edwina says like. Oh my god have they been doing this the whole time has everybody seen this but me and she feels totally betrayed and I was all right with her feeling totally betrayed. Other people didn’t like this so much I think they wanted it to be like less fraught. But then. Edwina is very unkind to Kate. She is cruel to Kate in her pain and feeling of betrayal and she basically says to Kate um, but she just accuses Kate of some of some terrible things.

08:17.86
jeffekennedy
You know of hurting her and and we really feel with Kate this whole time because we we know that Kate has only ever done this to sacrifice for Edwina that she was ready to sacrifice her most basic happiness like this her one true. Love. So that Edwina could be happy and have her inheritance and have everything and it’s dramatically unfair and so some of these girls did not like that at all because they felt like it was unfair to Kate and it’s like it is unfair to Kate. It’s awful and it. Made it so good. It was um I just loved I I loved it and I’m going to do a rewatch. So so there it’s um, maybe part of the reason I love it is because it’s always a story challenge. To get the reader feeling along with the protagonist so that even when they make mistakes and both Anthony and Kate make a lot of mistakes they make a lot of mistakes out of pride. And out of this sort of single minded determination to do their duty by their families and that’s um, it’s not always easy to find that sweet spot where where the protagonists are doing. Absolutely the wrong thing through the very best of intentions and that this is tied into their character and into their internal wounds their blind spots and when it’s well done where you are like totally on board where you. You know what choices they’re gonna make youre like oh don’t do this thing I know you’re gonna do this thing I know why you feel like you have to do this thing but don’t do it and then they do it, you still feeling along with them. Um know clearly it doesn’t work for everyone. Ah, let’s see so me and my work. Ah I’ve started revising this book. But you know I definitely um that act 2 climax crisis I whip back and input. All of my notes. From reading the first 3 books and the novella into a document and I’m revising with all of that in mind and I definitely was hitting a point. Um yesterday where I was feeling like I hate this book.

11:04.88
jeffekennedy
This book sucks this is going to be the book that ruins my career I need a particular name for this crisis. Ah, it’s so funny because I can feel all of those emotions and even knowing that I do this every time I still feel them so we’ll see. Right now I think the book is terrible. Um, cheers I was talking with a friend of mine last night and I won’t say who but 1 of my author friends was ranting and. This is what we do right? when we say step away from the keyboard. Don’t don’t put this online what you do is you call up your author friends and you rant to them and on the phone where nobody ever will ever repeat it and this friend of mine even said she said you know this is why I love you because I can rant to you. She says nobody ever knows that I think these things and I said no everybody thinks you’re super sweet but it’s totally cool. This is this is what we do but she was upset because she had seen a review saying something about 1 of her books or stories. That that said well um, this the author didn’t put in her best effort and and she was frankly incensed because it’s fine if you don’t like the book. Got all stories work for everyone right witness season 2 of Bridgegerton right? Not everybody likes everything like we don’t have to but because a particular book or story didn’t work for you doesn’t mean that the author didn’t put in her best effort and it’s. Think that reviewers do sometimes where they project and I think most authors find it very irritating because they’ll say things like well the ending was rushed because clearly the author was attempting to meet a deadline or you know the the author was thinking this or that and it’s like you know. You hear us say it on the podcast. You don’t know you don’t know what goes on in our heads and ah creating something is. It’s not a science It’s not an exact thing you know where we are not building widgets. There may be some authors who can crank out books like widget I’m not saying names I’m thinking them. Um, there are authors who can reliably deliver the same thing over and over again and they make a good career doing it not everybody wants.

13:55.41
jeffekennedy
To do that and not everybody has the same creative process to allow for that and if I were going to be really bitchy which is why I’m not naming names I would say that some of these authors who essentially create book widgets are not actually being all that creative. They’re just following a mold and doing the same thing over and over again which can be very satisfying audiences. So while I I will admit that I that doesn’t work for me. You know it’s like well you know if it can make a good living doing it and it’s satisfying to find. Go ahead, but not everybody works that way and you know as I often say that’s and as I was saying with my friend last night I actually talked with 2 of my writer friends yesterday because I’d had a distress that we were doing mutual ranting I did. I’m like what does this even mean a conversation that I had with somebody else sorry to be all obscure but I don’t spill all the tea here at first cup of coffee. That’s why it’s not first cup of tea. But oops I lost. My train of thought there. Oh you know what? when we oh this sorry but but but if we were editing I would edit that but we’re not so oh well, the. The whole point there is and we were saying this back and forth to each other. You know it’s like if it would be There are easier careers to have this what I’m trying to say and I even said to her. Yeah, you know if um, if we wanted to. Just make money just have a job that makes money we would be stockbrokers or bankers or finance people or something like that. It’s this is not the easiest way to make money and being the creative process is so fraught that way and not always within your control. But. Part of why she was so offended by that particular line was she was like every time I sit down to write. It’s my best effort she said I don’t I don’t care what else is going on in my life when I write it I promise it is always my best effort and so she was actually she was like. You could say a lot of things you could say that I didn’t write this book as well as another one or that I have you know, rushed the ending or you know that this story didn’t work for you or that you didn’t like the characters or whatever but don’t say it wasn’t my best effort.

16:42.22
jeffekennedy
Because they’re all our best efforts and and I totally feel that I mean that’s like here I am with my act 2 climax crisis and it’s like um, it’s totally my best effort but and i. I don’t know if I’m going to pull it off I don’t know if it’s going to work. Um, yeah so I’m I’m pausing because I’m debating saying a thing and I think I’m not going to say it? yeah. I’m not going to talk about what kind of bothered me from from yesterday. Alas, if you could be in on our venting phone calls you all would probably enjoy that the fly on the wall for these things but that’s why we have venting phone calls. It’s it’s a funny thing. You know about the business and it’s a piece of advice that I sometimes give to younger writers and then sometimes withhold because I don’t want to um, rain on their happy parades. But you know like some of this stuff just never gets easier. And and and we talk about you know like you know it’s good to have writers who are like the same face that you are because the problems that we have you know are are champagne problems they are problems that you know that my ten years ago self would have been thrilled. Have no like the thing that is currently aggravating me I would have been thrilled to like people to have this conversation with this person in the first place it would have like felt like a huge success just to be even having this conversation with the people involved you know and now it’s like. I am happy to be having the conversation but some of the content is aggravating to me and it’s like I don’t want to be dealing. That’s some of this. Um you know sometimes I feel like you’re a garmma and I I want to be left alone to write my books. Dont buck me about them which is probably why so many writers end up becoming that person I totally get it now. So yeah, we um, yeah so I guess I have no idea if I was going to like say anything. With relevant content today. It’s always amusing to me when you guys comment and say really good podcast today and it’s like ah I don’t I don’t know why please tell me I’m it’s always interesting to hear which ones you guys think are really good podcasts. But um, yeah, it’s not like I plan it much like my books. Ah.

19:33.24
jeffekennedy
All right on that note I’m gonna go hope you all are having a great Thursday winding up the week and I will talk to you all tomorrow take care bye bye.

Two Pieces of Advice on Crafting the Perfect Opening Line

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

Ah, the much-discussed, celebrated, and labored over first line… Is it that important?

(See what I did there?)

Many in the writing and publishing world will go on at length on the critical importance of the opening line of any work, long or short. There are long-standing contests for opening lines – brilliant or cringingly terrible. Writers are expected to trot our their favorite first lines (which I notice is also part of this week’s assignment at the SFF Seven). But do those opening lines deserve the significance they’re given?

Yes and no. The thing is, first lines are low-hanging fruit. They’re easy to pick on. They require very little reading and it’s easy to analyze a single line of text. For the teachers, coaches, and advice-givers of all stripes, an opening line is a simple aspect of a work to assess. In that way, they’re probably given far more emphasis than they deserve.

Unfortunately, a whole lot of the advice out there – not unlike a lot of writing advice – isn’t terribly helpful. Writers are told that their opening line must “hook” the reader, who is presumably like a fish in this analogy, and reel them in to keep reading more. And hopefully buy the work in question.

And people rhapsodize over favorite opening lines, analyzing brilliance, but – again – this rarely yields useful advice on how to write them.

I spent a lot of years not sure what made an opening line a good one or not. Only recently, with a bunch of published works behind me, have I come across actually useful advice on how to craft an opening line: It needs to establish the sort of story it is, and pose some sort of question. It doesn’t have to be a literal question, but it should invite the reader to wonder about something of interest to them.

A famous example of this is Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem How Do I Love Thee. (Those who listen to my podcast, First Cup of Coffee, know I’ve been going down an Elizabeth Barrett Browning/Robert Browning rabbit hole lately. I blame Connie Willis.) Almost anyone can quote the opening line, even if they don’t know the rest of the poem:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

What does this line do? It establishes that the work is a love poem, and invites the reader to wonder about what those ways are.

Thus, my opening line above: I established what sort of writing this is – an informational article on first lines – and I posed a literal question that I’d be addressing.

Once I figured out this was all I needed to do, it made crafting that opening line much easier! Here’s one of the first ones that I used this technique to write, from DARK WIZARD.

Gabriel Phel crested the last ridge of the notorious Knifeblade Mountains that guarded Elal lands on nearly three sides, and faced the final barrier.

This first line isn’t brilliant by any stretch. What it does, however, is inform the reader that this is an alternate fantasy world, and it invites them to wonder about who Gabriel Phel is, why he’s in this inhospitable land, and what this final barrier is. That’s it. And you know what? It works. That book has done a better job of hooking new readers than anything else of mine. I think there are other reasons for that book’s success, but I think that opening helps.

What’s most important to remember is: just because the first line comes first, that doesn’t mean it has to be written first. Certainly not perfected first. A lot of writers spend forever crafting that opening, trying to get it perfect – possibly because of this emphasis on first lines – and can circle that effort endlessly. That’s my second piece of advice. Craft the opening once the work is finished, or at least drafted. It will wait. And that gives that low-hanging fruit time to ripen.

 

First Cup of Coffee – May 3, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast




Transcript
00:00.00
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of fantasy romance and romantic fantasy. I am here with my first cup of coffee. Ah, how that’s needed today is Tuesday may third and I’m running behind I’m just totally behind Today. It’s almost nine here. Ah I think I was um more stressed out than I realized about my folks car accident that happened on Sunday I talked about it some on the podcast yesterday but they’re both home now. My stepdad had to spend the night in the hospital and ah. But he did not require surgery on his arm. He has to get it checked out again in a couple of weeks so I think they’re fine I have not heard yet from my mother this morning I’m assuming she’s still asleep and then um David had some problems with his medication last night. So he had to wake me up and have me help him with that and so it took me a little while to go back to sleep again. So I just slept this morning I didn’t get up until like six thirty so why is it already almost nine I don’t know I’m also moving slowly actually I don’t think I got up till 7 now. That’s true I didn’t get up till seven so I’m still moving slowly I did my weightlifting I did my stuff writing sucked yesterday I did not get much done. I tried I did my 3 hours it was not very good. But um, my friend Kelly Robson said thought she was it was interesting. What she said I’m gonna see if I can bring up her exact words. Let’s take. We’ll see if the computer lets me.

02:12.87
jeffekennedy
Might take forever for the she said she said that I wasn’t emotionally available for fiction. She said for writers like us who are all about emotion. She said. That she could totally write like wine reviews on the day her father died but she couldn’t write fiction and I think that’s interesting. Do we think that’s true I don’t disagree with her. It just doesn’t feel that way to me, but certainly i. Had very little writing I could do yesterday I’m also feeling um, a bit at a loss on how to get to the end of this book I’ve got about 25000 words to go I know what it’s going to be more. Maybe I don’t I feel like I don’t quite have all the threads in my grasp but I may start at the beginning. Yeah excuse me I thought I was gonna sneeze again. But I didn’t sorry, didn’t i. Pause and time for that first one. So yeah I’m thinking about going back to the beginning and starting my the revision. Um I’m wondering if I know enough about the end to do that. Those of you who have listened to me for a long time will probably identify the stage at which I am it’s the act 2 climax um, and yeah, but now that I think about it and I hear you guys out there nodding along. This probably is my standard act 2 climax crisis and I do need to go back to the beginning when I couldn’t get much done yesterday I did go back and like start searching for my square brackets and looking up some things so that I could at least be semiproductive and I went. Back through? Um, my kindle notes on the prequl novella and put those into a ah word document and I’m gonna do that for the other books too. So that I can try to order my thoughts and then maybe I will start the revision today. Um, that’s probably the thing to do I’m noticing this grapevine. That’s ah crawled up on top of the lilock I need to train that to come back on over to the actual arbor.

04:57.69
jeffekennedy
I had to move over to the side because I’m so late and the sun was really shining on my usual chair can see see very sunny once the arbor finishes leafing out that won’t be such a problem but it’s still. Still baby leaves this one to see for those you on video see just like little bits of leaves. It’s my hanging plant that I po it myself. So um, yeah. Try to get back into it. It sounds like my mom won’t need me to come to Tucson so we’ll see we’ll see how that goes. Um, it’s a very beautiful morning here and the lilacs really. Blooming so I’m going to cut some eye locks and put those in my office and yeah, I’m clearly muzzy headed. So let’s see. Um. I left my note inside but I know what I wanted to talk about. Um I mentioned yesterday that we’ve also been watching Julia about Julia Child and I’m very much enjoying the show. Actually we’re both really enjoying it. Um, which is always good thing but it’s about when. Julia Child first started her Tv show and how she went about doing that and it was um, it’s it’s really well done in that the gal that they’ve got playing Julia child and I can’t think of her now her name now. I should look it up though all right? So her name is Sarah Lancashire and she’s a british actress 2 years older than I am and she’s a tall gal I don’t know she’s as stout as Julia or if she’s wearing um you know padding and so forth. But they’re not trying to make her be other than some of the things that made Julia child so I don’t know I want to say endearing iconic that she was um, you know. She was awkward. She was not a graceful person. So I’m thinking of other people who played Julia Child is it um did Meryl Streep play her in that one anyway. Ah sarahrakisher does a great job because she does the funny voice and people were Mark on.

07:44.15
jeffekennedy
Her funny way of speaking and she is not beautiful and she is not graceful but she has also managed to perfectly transmit. The um, what people loved about Julia Child her warmth of personality. And how she did not take herself seriously and and at the same time that she had this ability to be completely. She was the velvet steamroller right? She she stood up for herself and stood up for what she wanted to do. Which wasn’t easy and she um she I want to say that she like very gently gets her way. She believed so utterly in what she was doing and this episode that we watched the other night. Which let me see if I can go back and tell you which episode we’re on. We’re almost done which is sad. It’s been one of those slow drip releases. Um, it was episode 7 fog ra and I think. Yeah there’s just 8 so Thursday’s going to be the last episode alas, ah but it was really great because she goes to New York city along with other people who work on her show and she you know. Gives the speech as she does gives this wonderful speech and several things happen. Um, where it’s almost like a romancing the stone theme through this movie in that or this series in that. Um. Some people are completely disdainful of what she’s doing you know a cooking show on public television. Nobody watches public television then there are the people who think that public television should only be about things that are erudite and deep. Ah her editor who ah you know that sort of that her her primary editor is great but then there’s the gal who’ is the head of Knopf who ah you know published Julia’s cookbook um the gal who is the head of Knopf doesn’t own a television. Um. And thinks that television is is a fad that will go away and that only books are permanent. It’s it’s interesting to see the interplay of sort of these changes in thinking about stuff and but everybody’s just kind of

10:37.38
jeffekennedy
astounded that all of these housewives are watching this cooking show and making the food and they go to lutes in New York City the publisher takes Julia and her editor out to lunch at Lutece. And I and I have to do a little aside here because I I even paused and told David that um you know every once while I have as a writer like this kind of jealousy where it’s like well I never had the head of the publishing house take me out to Lyn at Lutes in New York or the equivalent. Don’t even know if flutes is still there but you know times have changed obviously. But also I have never been high dollar enough. But then I thought well at the same time. However I have had my 2 different editors take me out for lunch. 2 different occasions and take me out for dinner. Um I’ve had no 3 editors so a couple editors different editors have taken me out for dinner at conferences or different places and my agent has taken me out for lunch and dinner and. You know? So it’s sort of like it’s not quite on the glam scale. But then I have to be really thankful and count my blessings for what I have had which has been pretty wonderful and and the yes it is incredibly shiny I remember in 2019 and the before times I was at. Um Rw a national conference in New York City and that was when my editor at St Martin’s did take me out for lunch at a very decidedly low g glam place but she was a young editor and that was you what she she could afford and I still. You know, appreciated it and it was lovely and my agent went to and we all got treated um and that was um and my excuse me my publicist went to this was all, um, right before the release of the orchi throne and we were all super excited about it. But. Feels like kind of an innocent age ago I think the orchid throne did fine. It just didn’t do as well as maybe as they hoped and then we had such big plans for the follow up for the fiery crown and that was may of 2020 you know so it was kind of um. As far as paper books go kind of a big fizzle. Alas, but at the time we were very excited and when I got to New York city I you know flew in kind of midday and then I went to meet agent Sarah that evening for drinks and walked the.

13:23.40
jeffekennedy
You know like 10 blocks to her office from the hotel and it was um, it was very shiny and I thought here I am walking through New York city to go have drinks and dinner with my agent in New York city and it was it was awesome um and to continue the aside there has been a ah an article going around by ah Christine Katherine Rush on why you should hire an ip attorney instead of an agent and she makes you know as she does. She’s good at writing stuff up. And she makes compelling arguments for why? an ip attorney can be really useful to negotiate a contract for you and how they have more credentials than an agent does. And yeah. Now if you’re looking for a 1 ne-off negotiation then you probably are better off hiring a lawyer and her argument is is why would you? you know bulk at paying a little bit of money upfront to pay a lawyer and or maybe more than a little bit as opposed to paying 15% in perpetuity to to some agent who doesn’t even have all these qualifications and if that’s your lens sure. Um, and I I don’t want to I don’t know if I’ll go into it later this week if you guys really want to hear me talk about it. You know where to find me ping me about it. But um, the she these kinds of and I’m going to call it well I won’t call it I won’t use that word. Um, but that particular angle and I have seen. Other people passing it around self-pubishing authors who are on the virulent end of the spectrum of this is you know tread publishing is evil agents are evil and I’m not saying that’s rush’s perspective but the other people who are sharing it. You know that this is why you should. White agents are evil and why you should never have an agent and it’s um, it’s ignoring the very real things that agents can do for you besides taking you out for drinks and dinner. Um, and if you guys want me to talk about that I will. But I won’t do it today because this is already a long parenthetical back to Julia um, she’s at the french restaurant and the french the chef the head shop of of lutes comes to her and knows who she is.

16:11.32
jeffekennedy
And and this is sort of the romancing the stone aspect to it is the surprising people who know exactly who she is and the chef says um that they have all of these people coming in who have watched the show and requesting particularly dishes that she’s cooked on the show wanting to have them at Lutece. And even things like sweetbreads and but then you know it. So it’s lovely and delightful. But then he follows up and this is ever so slightly spoiler spoilery so cover your ears if you want to know nothing but he then advises her to leave the cooking to the men and that is. Cooking is you know french cooking is is not for women which is ironic but then the the show finishes up towards the end. Um Betty Friedan is at the big press dinner for the public television awards. And she and Julia start talking and Julia in her very earnest, warm and welcoming way invites Betty to ah to talk because it betty has seen the show and betty launches into a diatribe that. She is um that Julia is setting back the cause of the women’s movement that she is encouraging women to be behind the hot stove more instead of going out to the world and it’s such a. It’s well done. It’s such a crushing moment because we know because and Julia says to Betty for then you don’t know me at all and and it’s true and we who have followed Julia’s journey do know her and we know how very hard she has fought in a very feminist way. To make this show happen in this very male dominatated world and her producer is a young black woman who has also been fighting by her side and it’s like Betty Friedan just like totally doesn’t get it because she’s hung up on the cooking aspect and. The other thing that she doesn’t understand is just because this is a traditionally female activity of cooking dinner and that it’s these housewives who are doing it that it’s about mastering something. It’s about the sheer delight of. Being able to master a skill and have it go right and wrong and I’ve I’ve talked on here many times about throwing knives and that analogy of learning as you try to learn to do something to enjoy the failures equally as well as the successes.

19:01.80
jeffekennedy
To enjoy when you don’t stick the target as much as when you do which is a very taoist perspective and it’s not easy to learn but Julia child really had that in her show because sometimes when you cook things don’t turn out sometimes it just doesn’t bread doesn’t rise or the sauce doesn’t thicken correctly and she had a real talent for ah enjoying it anyway where she’d be like oh well that didn’t happen and. And there was there’s a great lesson in that and so it was um, you know it’s just interesting the thing that things that people grab a hold of you know and proclaim as being worthwhile and not and serving the cause and not. So yeah I I mentioned that I’ve been listening to poetry and a new to me poem that I don’t recall the name of sorry in the sequence that Tom Hiddleston was reading I’ll leave the link up and it was um. It was very sad. It was about um, ah, a man the poet catching I think it was a male but catching a hedgehog in the mower. It might have been called the mower and and he finishes up you know and it’s about how how he’s caused this this small death. And he finishes up by saying something along the lines of you know that we should all be a little bit kinder to each other and I’m I’m thinking of that now with Betty for then you know it’s like we could all stand to be kinder to each other. And on that note I am going to go get to work see if I can make this more productive day than yesterday I hope you all are being productive in the ways that you want to be and I will talk to you all on Thursday bye bye.

First Cup of Coffee – May 2, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast




Transcript
00:00.00
jeffekennedy
Good morning everyone this is Jeffe Kennedy author of fantasy romance and romantic fantasy I’m here with my first cup of coffee.

00:12.73
jeffekennedy
Ah, so it’s been it’s been a thing ah I had a great weekend I kind of finished off with a bang. Oh I should say Monday today Monday bla blah blah it is monday. May second we are fully into the merry months of may which means um, sexy things for those of you who know we won’t get into it even though we are hardly Pg here at first cup of coffee. Yeah, whatever. Ah I did get this secret garden cleaned up if you’re on video you could say it’s looking much better I did not quite finish the vine behind me that needs yet to be done. Might be able to see that I have the hummingbird feeder up I’ve actually spotted hummingbirds. It was so nice to have them back again. Um, and everything is leafing out ah in cleaning up the yard yesterday. The garden I got a really. Nice surprise and I don’t know if I mentioned it here on the show last fall but I was looking back at old pictures of our garden and Laramie, Wyoming where we lived for 20 years and we had had this beautiful. Bleeding heart by the front door of the first house we bought together and it was in the shade east facing and it was gorgeous. It was like a couple feet tall and. I don’t know I might have seen 1 in someone else’s garden but it reminded me I was like oh I love that bleeding heart I wonder if I could grow out in Santa Fe was a little bit of background on this is I do love to garden you guys probably know that already. Although this was here when we bought the house. It is however changed over enough that I think I can start taking some credit for it. But um. Um, I yeah I’ve I’ve always really loved garden and in we had 2 different houses in Laramie where yeah, we really created some some knee gardening type stuff.

02:44.69
jeffekennedy
We put in ponds and waterfalls and my garden at 1 of them the first house with which had the great bleeding heart was actually on the town’s ah, garden tour one year which is not. Ah, fantastic accomplishment probably because um it was a small town but I was proud I was proud and and I put took flowers and plants to the garden show and won prizes so there you go my grandmother loved garden. And my mom says it skips a generation that’s her excuse. Although my mom loves to do potted plants and she’s amazing at design and I just splashed my coffee everywhere. That’s not good. It’s a Monday somebody has a kiss on the Mondays. So um, last fall I thought well oh I should this was the other bit of backstory is that when we moved to Santa Fe I thought oh it’s going to be so much easier to garden there because we always. Joked about gardening and laremie as being an exercise in building character because the environment is just really very harsh. It’s high altitude and it’s cold. A whole lot of the year we had a shorter growing season than Fairbanks Alaska that was great detail to share with visitors. Ah. 1 of my friends a poet had a ah a chapbook of poetry that was entitled hope in zone four because we were the zone 4 which was we were like teetering on the edge of zone 3 and maybe not. Not even that sometimes but that summed it up I thought that was a great title hope and zone for can’t remember her name right now you could probably look it up Alice oh well. So um. When we moved to Santa Fe I thought here is my chance I will be able to um garden without having to build so much character and it’s interesting because yes in some ways it’s easier. The growing seasons much longer. There’s the warmth of. Water becomes a big thing and it’s too hot for some things. But anyway last fall I thought huh I wonder if I could grow bleeding hearts here. So I got 3 bare root plants and I planted them at 3 different locations of the garden and yesterday and properly forgot about it. That’s 1 thing about gardening is.

05:32.78
jeffekennedy
Um, are there gardeners out there who like remember absolutely everything they plant. This is an interesting corollary to the fact that as a writer I consider myself to be a gardener. Um, and I totally don’t remember everything I plant until it grows it pops up. So yesterday as I was clinging things out I found a little bleeding heart and it was already starting to bloom it so I’ll put a photo off that because I know you’re dying to see and then I was like okay where did I plant the other ones and I found one other and right behind me and it’s also about to bloom and. The other one I think is hunted the crab Apple I’m gonna have to go look for it. Um, for a while I did have these markers like these copper markers that you could use a special pen to Mark things on um, it it didn’t last you know the garden doesn’t love. Having things really neatly laid out at least mine doesn’t um, one of my friends in Laramie who was also a writer and was also a gardener. We shared a great deal that way she said that she had read an interesting study on that people with. Really well ordered gardens tend to have have well-ordered gardens because they have more chaotic lives and people with really organized lives have more chaotic gardens um behold my chaotic garden. She always thought that was really funny that I was like I never know where I’ve planted things. And some things don’t come back I mean that’s the thing about Santa Fe um we things just don’t always over winter um rodents dryness sometimes it gets really cold but we had a lot of things over winter this year um so yeah. And the lilacs are starting to bloom. You probably can’t see it very well. But I’ll turn the video in case, you are on video. You could see that the lilacs are starting to pop so that’s cool. Um, so yeah I got that all finished by yesterday afternoon and. Showered off and was enjoying the grape arbor and got a call from my stepsister that my parents were in a car wreck. They’re both okay more or less okay totaled the car this kid going really really fast. Um. They were going through. They’d stopped his stop sign and we’re going through the intersection and my mom keeps calling the kid. We don’t know how old he is but he was going really fast and slammed into them spun them around stepdad had to stay the night in the hospital. Ah, he’s.

08:20.63
jeffekennedy
He’s generally okay, his blood pressure is high and my mom sent me pictures of the car and the air bags had gone off and on his so he was driving on his side. The blood is on the air bags. He got a big hemotoma on his arm and his leg and had to Lancet and. We’re having trouble stopping and bleeding and all of that so stay tuned. Um, my stepsster is funny because a couple of times that something like this has happened she calls me which she almost never calls me. We usually text she calls me and she says so if you talk to your mother. Lately yeah and the second time she’s asked me that and I know I laughed at her for it later because I and she said well I don’t know what you already know and I’m like yeah I know I understand why you’re asking it. It’s still funny because now I know if hope calls me and says have you talked to your mother that means that something has happened. So so that was our big thing. Um I talked to my mom this morning and she did get good sleep. So that’s something she’s was really shaken up and so we’ll just see how things go I asked her if she wants me to come to Tucson and she said not yet. So. Um, but if you’re listening to this mom I will a couple other things. This is just like back to our usual programming. Um I’ve started listening to poetry. This is a new thing. And it’s ah amazingly immensely gratifying and well refilling I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before so some of this came out of ah the rabbit hole of reading this biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning I think it’s funny because the transcript always makes browning lowercase I have to go in and fix it I don’t catch them all but they um obviously were poets and married to each other and it was fascinating. To read and there were some excerpts of their poetry but it mostly focused on them and talked about so like their works in context of what was going on in their lives at the time and their relationship and so forth. So after I finished the book which I think I finished on friday. Something like that I looked up a few of the poems because I wanted to see what? um you know, just get the context for it. Some of them I knew already some I did not I was of course familiar with how do I love thee, let me count the ways. Although I don’t know that I’d ever really.

11:09.61
jeffekennedy
Read the whole poem and paid attention to it. So as I was looking that up googling on my phone I got suggestions for hearing people read and so I’d I’d read the poem. Um, it’s it’s not called how do I love thee. But I can’t recall what it’s called right now but the actual title is and I listen to um, a famous actress Helen Mirren read it. And it was lovely hearing her reading it and then you know how it is when you start googling things I got the very helpful suggestion of did I want to hear my bestie Tom Hiddleston read me some poems and I thought that that one was going to be in it. But. It was um, it was not that was like a red herring on the keywords but still delightful and I listen to this 30 minute thing and I’ll I’ll try to remember to post it in the show notes because it’s well worth listening to It’s a collection of poems. Read by Tom Hiddleston who does a great job of reading. He’s got a lovely voice too and and it was some poems that I was familiar with from school and so forth and other ones that I was not and I was getting ready in and the morning you know like doing my skin care routine. And all of that. It’s a little breezy this morning you can kind of see my hairs flying around supposed to be Wendy today alas, which at least keeps the smoke off. We do have a fire up in the ymaz mountains which transcript will not get right up up near Los Alamos and Saturday are. Air was listed as unhealthy. So I just stayed in on Saturday but then fortunately wind shift to direction and it moved out so I was able to be out here on yesterday. So that was a positive. Um, what we’re saying oh the poems. So I was listening to these poems and just found it really stimulating and invigorating and I never thought of that as being a thing for refilling the well and when I was on http://poetry.org looking up some of these poems that pop ups and I reflexively close pop ups because I hate popups and I hate that we can’t stop them anymore but they did ask me if I wanted to receive a poem a day in the mail mail email and I you know like said no write as I was.

13:56.49
jeffekennedy
Reflexively closing their fucking pop up and now I kind of think maybe I do want that it would be interesting. 1 thing about poems is and you guys probably learned this in school too that they’re almost always better read aloud and I learned to read a poem. 3 times right? you read it through um just to get the poem in once and then you read it through much more carefully parsing it for sense and then a third time again faster and and one of those. And I’ll usually the last time read it out loud or is the first time even if I just get poems much better if I read them aloud so listening to other people read them is great and I one of the ones that Tom Hiddleston read was The Love Song of J Alfred Proofrock from which I recognized many many lines and I’m sure I had to have studied that at some point in school. But I’ve never paid that much attention to it and again this is something about you know what? we bring to to a work. Ah I never knew probably because I was. Ah, dense teenager when I first read that poem or studied it I think people may have done it for like poetry competition and speech and debate because I did do poetry one year I read um, an and Sexton Poem you do not do old black shoe. Now that I think I did it like way too dramatically with a blue star on my forehead anyway I’m sure people did j alfred proof of love song of but I never picked up on. All the reflections about growing older and how do you feel about love later in life. Um, and it was really enlightening and delightful and I recommend the listen my coffee got really cold. It must be chilly out here. Chilllier than I thought but we’re almost done. Um, so we watched another episode of winning time the LA lakers story last night and also another episode of Julia about Julia Child which I think I’ve also recommend enjoying both of those shows very very much in the episode last night there is this point at which they’re talking about how basketball is only a game and Jason Segel who plays Paul Westfield says you know why are we even doing this.

16:44.27
jeffekennedy
It’s only a game and the older man 1 of the team managers starts talking about when he was a young man and he says he graduated from high school on Monday married his sweetheart on Tuesday and shipped off to the navy on. Wednesday night so he has to be referring to world war two I would think and he says you know here they were a bunch of kids on this boat and the on like once a week they would stream a game baseball basketball football. Whatever and they would all. Watch this game and become totally involved in it and he said here they were in this life in death situation and it yes it was only a game but it was also this much needed distraction and and that really hit me because you know i. I’ve been disdainful of sports in the past and and a few of my friends have called me out on it and I think rightfully so because there there’s nothing wrong with being into sports any more than there’s anything wrong with being into romance. Ah it is. Not I don’t want to say it’s a distraction. It is something that allows us to look away a little bit from the very difficult things we’re dealing with and there’s. There’s just um I think there are people who want us to make want to make us feel that there’s something bad about that and there just isn’t apparently this woman and I don’t know who she was but she tweeted something a couple of weeks ago saying um, ah she. She even started saying I’m probably going to get in trouble with this for this which if you start your tweet saying that you should probably seriously rateconsider whether you really want to tweet it. But she said how can any of you be reading fiction at a time like this. We all need to be reading nonfiction so we can understand what’s going on. There are always these people in the world and apparently she later deleted the tweet after getting thoroughly shouted down but you know these people who. Think that you have to be totally focused on the brutal reality of the moment. Um, you, you don’t especially when you know we we now have the curse and blessing of being able to know all of these things that are going on around the world.

19:26.29
jeffekennedy
There isn’t an escape for from it unless you give yourself the escape and so my permission wand is inside but I shall wave it nonetheless in absentia ah, you do not have to watch the news. You do not have to read nonfiction to understand what’s going on. You can watch your sportsings games. You can read your escapist romances. You can listen to Tom Hitddleston read you poetry because all that you can control is right here right? Your your internal environment. So. You do what you need to do to create your own zone of happiness because then that gives you the the energy it refills that well and it enables you to go out there and then make changes in the world and on that note. I will talk to you all tomorrow take care bye bye.

First Cup of Coffee – April 29, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast




Transcript
00:00.60
jeffekennedy
Good morning everyone this is Jeffe Kennedy author of fantasy romance and romantic fantasy I’m here with my first cup of coffee.

00:15.25
jeffekennedy
I need that kick today today is – say it with me – friday!

00:27.59
jeffekennedy
Ah, ah, April Twenty ninth for all intents and purposes. Not for all intensive purposes which is how some students hear it the end of April I mean we get tomorrow. But. If today is actually your Friday and your last work day of the week that’s pretty much sand of april.

00:56.79
jeffekennedy
Um, so amazing huh First third of 2022 over has it been fast for you or slow. Um a lot of people. It seems like been having. You know, not a great year so far even though things are better. You know we’re opening up from pandemic and everything um people still coping coping with all the things right? So let’s see. Things are good here. We have a little bit of haze from the fires a little bit of smoke haze and very cold tumbling wind this morning I tried to go out to the grape arbor and it was um, yeah too too chilly too. Um. With the high walls around the garden. It’s usually more protected but not this morning so I am being a weeny and being inside.

02:10.24
jeffekennedy
I’m trying to think of what do I have to tell you I think I’m a little tired today I kind of hit tired yesterday afternoon I’ve hit 10000 words for the week that the guy should turn this off. Okay, um, um, it. 67500 on this book and yeah I’ve done over 10000 words this week a little bit more 11000 if you count a couple of blog. Posty type things that I’ve done. Um, so yeah, so the question is it’s not really a question. Ah I I’ve been doing slightly more than 2500 each day just by like 50 words to get myself back on trap track. To finish on May thirteenth is a day I want to be done drafting so that I can then spend the week of May sixteenth doing a full revision and the following week doing a proof I’m doing something different this time did I mention this. I am I’m going to do my own proofing. Usually I pay a proof reader. It’s funny as time goes on I stop paying so many editors and turning into these authors that I speak out a guest saying that everybody needs an editor. But. Do think everybody needs an editor except now I think I don’t um, I’ve stopped paying a developmental editor partly because it’s expensive. It added several weeks into the drafting time and. I didn’t feel like I was getting that much out of it I didn’t feel like um, the editors I was paying to give me content edits were really changing all that much about the story or the things that they were changing I wasn’t convinced that it was making them. All that much better which is kind of a funny place to be but if I have doubts I have my crip partners or beta readers read and since everybody uses those words. Interchangeably I think it’s just out of fashion to say crit partner ah nobody seems to use that word anymore. I think maybe it’s the the shit sandwich thing you know nobody wants to use the word criticism anymore. Um shake my cane shake my wand.

05:00.18
jeffekennedy
Oh and it chimed. ah ah ah yeah so whoever having someone read to give me content subsantive feedback on the book. Um, probably I should do that. I do everyone’s while but it’s when I have doubts so I had gone to having someone proofread the book whos also would give me copy edits and 1 thing I found in doing my big reread of the Heirs of magic. Books because I read the prequel novella and the first 3 in order to write this book for and I kept finding mistakes and I know that there’s you know mistakes are always going to get through but I was trying to decide. I mean I write pretty clean copy I’m I’m fortunate that way that I’m a good speller and I know the punctuation and grammar rules you know and I always say that I don’t know Commas I think comma rules are arbitrary. So I was thinking oh and then one other thing happened is that now I have all 3 Bonds of Magic books in Audio Grey Magic is still waiting to go live but my audiobook narrator. Sent me lists of like errors and typos that she found because reading it out loud. She catches those things and my proof reader was adding five days into the process which and she was doing a great job. You know. Really nothing against her I know that things are always going to slip through but on this book I thought I would experiment and see because I know I want to make sure to catch everything to wind up this series and possibly in this world I don’t know if all right in this world again. Um. Yeah we’ll see but I’m I’m feeling like maybe that’s enough for this world for the moment anyway. So if I spend a week revising this book and then I thought well if I did my own proofing if I spend four days the week of May Twenty third reading the book out loud then I should be able to catch all the typos I can look up any of the formatting our grammatical stuff that I’m not entirely certain of and save myself some money and also give myself that final.

07:51.86
jeffekennedy
Chance to go through because I find things like those word echoes on those awkward phrasings. So this is my experiment I’m going to see if that extra pass of reading aloud um will add anything. To my revision process. So um, let’s see seems like I something happened on Thursday yesterday that I wanted to tell you about hold on who else. I suppose anything that happened Wednesday I would have talked about yesterday I did notice looking at my calendar I was trying to figure out what all I’ve been doing the last few days who knows playing on the streets obviously but shout out to agent Sarah it is her birthday today. Happy birthday Sarah! Sarah Younger at Nancy Yost Literary Agency who works her butt off for her clients and I say this? um I think it’s easy for people to say that. Ah, you know and it’s authors develop certain lingo that then other authors imitate wanting to sound like real authors you know and they’re like oh my amazing agent I remember that when I was a newbie writer. Ah like this one gal I followed was always talking about. And should always put it in capital letters. Amazing agent I don’t remember Anastasia it wasn’t that I don’t remember who it was and you know she would just gush. You know oh spoke with amazing agent and this was in the newer days of Twitter when I felt like we had more conversations. Got to know people. It could be people still do that. But I’ve ended up backing away from Twitter so much and now that Elon Musk wants to turn it into a free for all of we all are we gonna be leaving Twitter.

10:01.92
jeffekennedy
I’ve been seeing some think pieces on what it means for a billionaire to own a social media marketplace like Twitter or Facebook and how that shapes the world question is what are we gonna do about it. Somebody posted the other day about um that the Eu has passed a law. It’s like in the first stage it hasn’t been ah, fully executed like whatever their version of like then you know, starting in the senate and having to go to the house or vice versa. So it’s not a thing yet but they did pass the resolution to make the law or what have you ah to force companies like Amazon and Facebook and so forth to reveal their algorithms and to make them egalitarian and people were saying oh they were excited. Celebrating saying you know Amazon might finally have to reveal their algorithm to us you know like how are they you know promoting some books and not others and I thought I didn’t want to reign on their happy parade. But I was thinking. It’s just never gonna happen Amazon. These companies are never going to ris feel there there I’ll go the rhythms they’re gonna consider it proprietary information. They won’t do it I I could be wrong. It’s happened put it on the calendar. So anyway, um, how did I get there.

11:37.24
jeffekennedy
Sometimes I wish I could replay this thing so I could find my train of thought again sorry I’m a little fuzzy brained today. So let’s see algorithms legalities. Is it gone forever. It might be you guys are shouting at me I also wish that I could hear you tell me what was I thinking about something I was gonna tell you and then I figured out know that Sarah’s birthday I guess yeah, that was it. Agents ah see I can rewind mentally kind of um, but anyway the scout that I used to follow you know and people would always be like oh my amazing agent this and and following her particular journey which I’ve always hated my journey to publication. Ah, we don’t hear that nearly so much anymore probably because there’s so much self- publishing but especially back then because we’re talking more than ten years ago now right? That’s amazing. You know like 2009 is when I joined Twitter. Things were very much about tribe publishing you know and so people would be like posting their milestones so that you like we could follow their journey from pre-published to astonishingly successful the problem with chronicling your journey to publication like that is that. Not everybody made it there and that certainly happened with this gal and I could see her being going back and forth with her agent where she would like revise her book that her agent had signed her on and the agent still didn’t like it and she would talk about oh well, she was going to have to gut it again, but amazing agent Anastasia had given her. You know all of these great notes and she was going to do it again and and I mean this went on for a long time and I was thinking and she’d never even gone on submission and even then being well I wasn’t entirely a baby writer because I’d been in the nonfiction circles for a long time. So I knew how publishing worked and was like she just. And I keep you revising forever chasing some goal some intangible it wasn’t clear to me like what this agent wanted her to do and then eventually she ended up parting waste with the agent you know and she reported this faithfully too. We’ve parted ways because we’re just not a great fit and like and this agent never took her book out on submission. So it was a live and learn kind of thing. Maybe that was beneficial to me that she chronicled her journey to not publishing I don’t think she ever got a book published.

14:24.16
jeffekennedy
Anyway, um, was her agent really amazing was she as delighted as she wanted her chronicle to portray probably not but my agent Sarah is a hell of a worker. She is. Communicative ambitious she takes amazing care of her clients. Ah she is a delightful person in every way and I know that you know like I’m not always an easy client to work with.

15:04.25
jeffekennedy
Neither is Grace Draven for that matter. Also one of Sarah’s clients because we are very definitive about what we need as far as making money and what we put into our self- publishing careers which isn’t always easy for an agent because and there are some agents out there who are like no I don’t want you to so. Publish and Sarah doesn’t ask that of us she she works with us and I I appreciate her I appreciate you Sarah if you listen to this? Um, yeah, you really are an amazing agent. So um, the other exciting thing is that Lonen’s War is out today in Kindle Unlimited with the new covers I probably have to figure out how to brand things. As far as the metadata for Kindle Unlimited readers but because right now the ranking is really really super low. Ah you know and it’s interesting because and I’ve said this often right that I feel like the kindle unlimited ecosystem is just a really different set of readers. And I see this all the time I see these? um you know, authors celebrating other author who are like Kindle un limited famous that I’ve never heard of and the reader is recommending these books and series and they’re just these circles almost don’t overlap anymore. I grew irritated with some of the science fiction and fantasy people the other day and I won’t say why sorry I’m not going to spill that tea but there are circles of snobbery in this business and people forget that. Their particular circle is not the only one in the universe and they take that because they’ve they have never heard of an author that therefore what they’re doing is not worthwhile and it’s not true. That’s not true. So. This is like so far the most abysmal release that I’ve had in a really long time. But I think it’s because I’m so unknown to this Kindle unlimited audience. So I’m looking on it as a challenge to to pick it up I was ah. Venting to some of my writer friends hi gals. Thank you I appreciate you yesterday because one of my longtime readers and I mentioned this I think on yesterday’s podcast does not like the new covers for sorcer moons and and it it kind of got me down and and one of the gals said you know not to let it.

17:53.95
jeffekennedy
Diminish my joy and an assistant Carien said that said the same thing assistant Carien is always ah, awesome. Awesome assistant andastasia ah, um, but yeah, this girl. Who is my reader said well that she missed the pretty covers and said um, finished up with saying she said it was only weapons and she wouldn’t pick these up in a store and I was like oh okay, well first of all I mean the first covers are always going to be there. Guys they’re they’re out there if you love the first covers. Great um, but also I’m not trying to tell this series to the people who already read it right? I’m trying to communicate the genre to this new group of readers. And for the record it is not only weapons on the covers. It is. There’s lots of other elements on the covers and and Carien was resistant to me changing it at first too and now even she is saying that she loves the look of the new series. It’s it’s much more cohesive than it used to be and. I’m looking forward to yeah to just to reach these new readers. Ah, it’s it’s exciting. So um, yeah, lones were out today if you’re in kindle unlimited if you know people enkindle unlimited please share. Um. I I want to want to reach those fantasy romance readers slow burn romance lots of epic fantasy and warrior stuff in it which this was another thing when we were discussing it when this gal said you know gone were the the girls and the horses. And the dragons and that it was only weapons and that it looked like masculine fantasy and I thought why are we correlating weapons with masculine fantasy because I mean and this is someone who’s read all of my books I have female warriors right? You know I invented an entire martial arts system for ah well for Ursula and then ah Kaja and Jenna/Ivariel all follow it. Jepp follow follows it and Jack does too now. They’re all part of that. System and it’s part of the marsh I I not part of I imagined it reimagined it from mar martial art systems that I trained in and I have weapons in my office and and I’m a girlie girl. So um, yeah i.

20:41.71
jeffekennedy
I don’t like the idea that that warrior stuff is correlated only with masculine fantasy. So anyway, off I go to get my final 2500 for the week I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Um I hope I get to get out in the garden this weekend. That’s my my big goal for it and I will talk to you all on Monday take care bye bye.

21:16.62
jeffekennedy
I’m having trouble I like hit my coffee cup with the mouse here. This is the blooper reel all right by.

First Cup of Coffee – April 28, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast




Transcript
00:00.00
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of fantasy romance and romantic fantasy I’m here with my first cup of coffee as the chimes echo away. Delicious. Today is I have no idea Thursday April Twenty Eighth and I am looking at my plant that I potted the lobelia does not seem to be doing well whyness lobelia always seemed to not do well. Just dries out so quickly here have to pause you now that we are back outside. We have Jeffe obsessively checking her plants all part of the brand here at first cup of coffee. Ah I will endeavor not to do that. So um, hope you all are having a wonderful week. My Week’s going pretty well so far knock on wood dive. No wood well does great plain. Oh the arbor knock on wood. Helping get my 2500 words on Storm Princess and the Raven King

01:30.23
jeffekennedy
Feels like it’s going well um, yeah, so we’ll see if we can sustain that get that done in the next few weeks um been uploading the rebranded covers. For um, Sorcerous Moons. They are ah so far I’ve gotten the first 3 books up did my 4 matters getting me 1 per day so they’ll release starting tomorrow. So Friday Saturday Sunday. Ah yeah, so. 1 reader commented about the pretty covers being gone I mean they’re not gone. They’re immortalized in history but but yeah, um, I’m I’m trying to rebrand I’m trying to reach a new audience and so. I mean that’s always a balance right? You know you try to reach new readers but sometimes the old readers feel left behind old in a former sense. Not an aged sense. Ah, she commented that that these looked like mill. Fantasy which I thought was funny because I don’t think they look like male fantasy. Um there’s definitely more masculine element to it and lonen’s double bladed axe is front and center a consistent element for all the covers and. That’s not to emphasize Lonen necessarily one is it’s a striking image. Um, and for me partly symbolic of of Oria’s power as well. But yeah, she said oh well the horses were gone and. Female elements were gone and it was like but and dragons were gone but they’re not, they’re still there. They’re just more subtle elements. There’s the dragon’s tail and dragon wings. There’s the representation of the the horse silhouette in the background. It’s there if you look for it and oria’s hair and her magic which is really the one of the most essential parts of oriah so of but. That’s the thing is when you try to reach new readers. You know you’re trying I’m trying to reach people who who maybe haven’t read my books at all before that’s partly why I’m putting them in Kindle unlimited because there’s a lot of readers that only read on Kindle unlimited as I talk about on here.

04:19.67
jeffekennedy
Probably ad nauseum and yeah so I’m excited about it I’m I’m interested to see what happens it says an experiment.

04:35.17
jeffekennedy
Ah, sucking down the coffee this morning I am going to ride her coffee later this morning so that’ll be fun first time in a few weeks. She’ll be able to sit outside just like I’m sitting outside here this morning in the secret garden planning to do a lot of gardening this weekend I have a lot of cleanup. To get after here and it’ll finally be nice enough to do that I think we’re supposed to have wind again this afternoon and tomorrow but hopefully looking like the weekend should be pretty nice. So I watched the movie gifted. Um, with adorable Chris Evans and what’s the little girl’s name Mckenna Grace Octavia Spencer is in it to always want to call her Octavia Butler which I think is funny. Ah the actress not the writer. Maybe because I don’t know that many Octavia ah not that I know her anyway I watch this movie because it was brought up at the Jack Williamson lectureship I know I keep referencing that but we had so many great conversations there. And that movie had been recommended I think by Connie Willis and I had never seen it. Um, what was it 2013 movie I’ll link to it the show notes maybe not even that old. Well we won’t look it up right now. Anyway, it’s um, it’s it’s an amazing movie I I loved watching this movie. It’s about Chris Evans is this um uncle who. After the death of his sister is raising his niece who is 7 at the time of the movie and he is living in is it Florida or South Carolina I think they say it’s Florida um. Preparing boats for a living. The script is so great. It’s really well written within a few moments of of like the opening scene of his conversation with this little girl. Her character is Mary. You learn so much about them and they’re arguing about whether or not she has to go to school and she’s you could just tell by the way that she’s debating this that she is really super smart and and he replies to her. Ah.

07:26.67
jeffekennedy
There’s just a couple of different things he says but 1 thing is he says we’ve already discuss this ad nauseum and she says ah and she said what does as ad nauseam mean and he goes ah looks like somebody needs to go to school to learn some things. And then later when he’s having a conversation with her teacher who is identifying Mary as a math prodigy which she is and he says no, she’s just using the the trakteberg formula I think I have that correct to to do these multiplications. It’s not a big deal. Which he’s putting her off because he knows it’s a big deal and you you put together very quickly that he is also a genius but is very deliberately not using his intellect and we find out later that he had been teaching. Ah, had been a professor of philosophy at Boston University and had quit after his sister died and and it’s wonderful. How these things are revealed why he’s doing what he’s doing and his sister was a math prodigy and his mother is a math prodigy and you know they. Want to have them go and work on these important you know unsolvable math problems which I’ve read some interesting essays on how on these like supposedly unsolvable problems and and what they really mean, but it’s a great device for. For movies because otherwise it’s like there’s not a um, a tangible goal when you want to give like your genius character a tangible goal that they’re striving for a math problem makes a lot more sense to an audience then I don’t know what you know like. Writing the great novel or whatever it is whatever that means

09:25.41
jeffekennedy
I promise I won’t go on a rant about what it means to write a great novel so tempting though it may be so anyway. Ah a lot of it is about him wanting her. To grow up having a normal life. Um and not suffer what her mother suffered by being treated as by not getting to have a normal life and it really just it’s it’s a beautifully done movie. It poses a lot of very interesting questions about. If you have a talent um or a genius. Even what that what responsibility do you owe to it. Um, if any yeah so I enjoyed that very much. And ad nauseum I won’t rant addd nauseum I can’t remember what it was. There’s something else that he says that he uses some sort of um, word you know like a $5 word or or something I don’t recall what but very. They do a nice job of revealing character through just how he behaves and and how he speaks even though he is trying not to be this thing anymore. It’s like inherent and and in the same way it is in his niece I also tried to watch Spencer um about princess Diana Lady Spencer played by ah Kristen Stewart which I’ve been wanting to see for a long time and we ended up with this subscription to hulu. Which I want to say it was an accident you know is sort of like oops I stumbled and tripped and fell into a subscription to hulu I think it was because David wanted to watch the super bowl and we were trying to figure out a way for him to watch the super bowl so you know like we signed up for the month free and then got charged for it and then I was like how did I end up subscribed to hulu. Which is I know entirely their scheme so I canceled it. But I’d already been charged so we have it for like thirty more days and when I canceled it. You know they want to know my reasons for canceling and one of them on there said, um, one of the options was too many ads. And now I wish I could have checked too many ads because we’ve been watching some stuff on hulu while we you know since we paid for thirty more days of it and the reader there are too many ads it. Ah just I know this is I’ll probably just be saying this from now on my gen x thing.

12:13.64
jeffekennedy
But it really pisses me off to pay for something that then also has ads. It’s either you pay for it or you suffer through ads you shouldn’t have to do both and I’m um I’m very bitter that the world has changed this people.

12:32.27
jeffekennedy
Ah, anyway, so I started watching this on hulu because I was like oh yeah cause David was he was napping and we’d already eat and did or I was getting ready I was cooking dinner and stuff and I thought oh well I’ll watch this because I bet he won’t want to and and then if I think he will. You know I can always stop and start over and it was um, discordant what is up with that people. It’s like they wanted to use all of this discordant jazz to show her mental breakdown which was this necessary. And I even looked at the reviews to see if anyone else bitched about it and I didn’t see any. So maybe it’s me I thought Kristen Stewart did a great job I thought she although I thought she made Diana awfully diffident which apparently like her bodyguard said that. Stewart got her meant got Diana’s mannerismism is better than anyone else. But yeah I didn’t I didn’t care for her diffidence and I don’t know it was just so over the top I thought you know it. It takes place at Christmas at sandra noon sandingham palace and it’s right before the divorce and all of this and so of course things are going badly but I just I don’t know I didn’t care for it. I’m not going to keep watching it I didn’t like how much of the victim. She’s portrayed as maybe. Maybe she rallies later in the movie but you know I’m one of those people that you know diana always my princess I was always on her side against camilla and after watching this, it’s like ah I don’t know so There’s my inarticulate review of that movie. Ah maybe I could watch it muted with only closed captions. So I don’t have to listen to that I found the music so disturbing in a way that I didn’t want to be disturbed. And then the other thing we started watching also on hulu too many ants cashhtag too many ads was ah pam and tommy about tommy lee and pamela anderson and ah it is really a delight. It has a lot of the same irreverence and sort of storytelling gambits that they used in the dirt about motley crew I’m sure tommy lee consulted heavily on this series. Apparently pamela anderson had nothing to do with it.

15:18.92
jeffekennedy
Ah, so I’m sure he like used the same writers I didn’t look but he he borrowed heavily from what made the dirt a charming movie to watch which we’ve watched a couple times because we’ve really it’s really fun if you haven’t seen that. Um. But pam and Tommy was it Tommy and pam I think it’s Pam and tommy a link to it ah is she is played by Lily James who I just adore ever since I saw her in Cinderella. I adore her and Tommy Lee is played by Sebastian Stan and I now Stan Sebastian Stan I didn’t really before you know like the whole bucky thing winter soldier. Never really floated my boat. But I’m getting I’m getting the mystique now and it is wittily done and my my only objection man that’s probably a strong word I think Lily James is doing a great job playing Pamela Anderson but Lily James has this essential sweetness to her. She’s I don’t know she’s lisome and has this artlessness to her personality that I don’t know if it means that she’s not a great actress. But she doesn’t come across to me the same way. Pamela Anderson always did she doesn’t come on. She’s not as brazen and confident in a way even though she’s trying to seem like that. It’s just that Lily James has this. Yeah, this. Artless wholesomeness to her. But anyway, it’s a really interesting show and I’m enjoying that and then I’m still finishing this book I’m almost done now on ah Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning and you know it’s it’s extraordinary I don’t. Read that much historical stuff unless it’s historical romance and I kind of fell off of reading those but it’s extraordinary to read about people living in victorian times and maybe this is just extraordinary for me because i. Haven’t read tons of it. You know like Jane Austen stuff regency stuff. Um, anyway, this maybe it’s because it’s nonfiction. But the um the prevalence of disease is just extraordinary. How people are for.

18:08.89
jeffekennedy
Everyone getting sick and I’ve heard people reference this, you know and talking about like with the pandemic that with the pandemic talking about how they now understand why everyone in victorian times you know writes letters about their health. It’s um. It’s really interesting to to read this and you know like a child will get sick with gastric fever. Ah, and then be dead by evening and I looked up what gastric fever was and it was typhoid and and I guess I knew. Kind of distantly that you know of course antibiotics weren’t introduced yet but they had cholera and typhoid and tuberculosis I knew they had tuberculosis but I mean they were just. Um, you know, like with everything they ate and drank they were risking death. You know, no wonder the victorians had such a fascination with death because people could just die at the drop of a hat and of course Elizabeth’s Barett browning was not in great health for most of her life. And just the way she struggles with her health and at the end it’s sounding like probably a lot of depression just really is making me conscious of what a huge thing it is. For us to be liberated from the ravages of disease in you know, just ah, you know like 100 years that that changed so dramatically. Ah you know and now we have ah all the anti vaccine stuff. It’s such a luxury for people to you know, not want to get vaccines because we don’t have this thing where at any moment you could encounter the thing that kills you by nightfall definitely and. Interesting realignment of perspective for me. So um, on that note I’m going to go celebrate my good health get my words done. Um, hope you all have a wonderful Thursday and I will talk to you all tomorrow take care bye bye.

Jeffe’s Five Effective Work Habits for Writing Productivity

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

My series rebrand of the six-book epic romantic fantasy saga, Sorcerous Moons, is complete! Book One, LONEN’S WAR, releases Friday, with each subsequent book releasing one/day for the following week.

This is my first (and possibly last!) real test of whether my books can be successful in KU. I’ve run A/B tests before and I’ve always made 2-3x as much money in sales on Amazon alone than via page reads in KU. But we shall see! Tell your KU-loving friends. 😀

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven is The Write Stuff: What five effective work habits make a professional writer the most successful? I can only tell you mine and that’s defining “success” as being productive. The other kind of success – fame, money, adulation, awards – depends hugely on timing and serendipity. But we’re focusing on work habits, so here are mine:

1. Consistency

You don’t have to write every day, at the same time every day – though I do extoll that as THE single most effective method for building a consistent writing habit – but consistency is key. I build my schedule around protecting my writing time and that habit carries me through all sorts of difficulties.

2. Persistence

The other piece of building a writing habit is keeping it going. So many writers give up without finishing a book – or finishing multiple books! – or they give up after a few books. Or, when attempting to write consistently, they take time off, change their minds, prioritize something else. Persistence is what gets words on the page.

3. Focus

Shut out the world, ignore the new shinies and frolicking plot bunnies. Close the office door, put in the noise-cancelling ear buds, disconnect the internet and silence the phone. Focus on the writing and only on the writing for the time that you’re doing it. Think about the story and only that. All other considerations come later.

4. Integrity

Write what you believe in and write it your way. Don’t chase trends or try to make your stories a clone of someone else’s. This may not seem like an effective work habit, but it is! Keeping to the integrity of the story YOU are telling allows you to focus on that and not the market, or whatever the loud voices are currently shouting about.

5. Flexibility

The previous four have all been about ritual and drawing firm lines, but with those come a need for flexibility. Be ready to change up what you’re doing if you have to. Reinvent yourself regularly. Try rebranding series and putting it in Kindle Unlimited. (See what I did there?) The world changes, sometimes rapidly, and we have to be ready to change with it.

First Cup of Coffee – April 26, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast




Transcript
00:00.16
jeffekennedy
Good morning everyone this is Jeffe Kennedy author of fantasy romance and romantic fantasy I’m here with my first cup of coffee.

00:17.71
jeffekennedy
Superb today is Tuesday April Twenty Sixth I’m indoors again. It’s cold. It’s only like um well now it’s up to 45°f and there’s a cold wind blowing. So indoors after this do I keep saying this to feel like I keep saying it to David after this, it’s supposed to warm up. Although maybe we’re supposed to get a big thunderstorm tomorrow afternoon wouldn’t that be nice.

00:51.60
jeffekennedy
Um, so um, things are feel like they’re going well knock on wood knock on real wood. The book is progressing nicely I I don’t think I mentioned but I have. Upped my word count slightly to going for 2500 words a day and seeing how sustainable that is um, for those of you who have not been keeping avid track of everything that I do. Um, I finally had decided that what I’d been saying for so long that I write 3000 words a day five days a week was actually a lie and that I don’t write that much on a consistent basis and that maybe it was. Over time draining draining the creative well and leaving me feeling brain dead tired and sneezy hold on a moment. Didn’t want to sneeze in your ears. So. I’d looked back to see what my actual average was and it does work out to more like 2000 words a day five days a week 10000 words a week more or less and some of you gave me very interesting feedback saying that for you it varies it goes up and down. And I know some writers do it this way you know like you have your your big heavy weeks that do really well um, you know, maybe you get a 5000 word day and then the next a 1000 word day and some of you were are very happy with that which is great because what’s the mantra here. Figure out what your process is and own it. What works for you is most important for me I am always going for sustainable creativity. Um, whether or not that’s a good idea. Yeah i. Right now I’m I’m thinking I’m pausing and thinking um is that a good idea I decided I need a little bit more light so is there a reason that I think that’s good idea and I may have to go back and reevaluate that. But.

03:28.80
jeffekennedy
And now now I really am thinking about it I arrived at that a long time ago when I first started writing novels when it occurred to me that I could not work in creative bursts. Which had been my habit when I was writing short. Um, one thing I started to do early on in my writing career was I went to working for 10 hour at my day job. I was working for an environmental consulting firm and so I would work from um, like 7 to 6 taking an hour to lunch for lunch and then I took Fridays off. So that I could have a full day on one day a week in order to write. It’s funny I hadn’t thought about that in a long time when I talk about things I did early in my career I always talk about the writing every day I did that first where I got up very early in the morning. So that I could write for an hour every day at the same time every day just to build the writing habit and it worked for me I didn’t want to do that I resisted it but it did work to start running the water through the pipes. But then later, especially when I had the. Career type job for the environmental consulting firm. It. Um, its start and and I’d switch to writing novels that I realized I couldn’t oh maybe I hadn’t switched to writing novels yet that might have been part of it. Because I was writing short I was writing primarily essays and so what I would do is I would think about them all week and these were like 1500 word 3000 word essays and I would think about them all week and then write them in one big burst which. You know that that worked for me. However, when I started really getting into writing novels and trying to figure out how to write a novel. Um, yeah like that first one took me forever to write. It felt like and I think I was doing the Fridays working on that too. Um, I big as it’s hard to remember that’s funny. Yeah, what ended up happening later was once I started getting book contracts traditional publishing contracts.

06:09.50
jeffekennedy
And I had to write to deadline and I had to figure out how to write to deadline that I kind of had a big come to Jesus meeting with myself I feel like maybe I’m not supposed to say that it’s you know I come from a a lapsed catholic family. So when we talk about. Come to Jesus meeting. We say it with a lot of irony. But when I’ve said it lately to people they kind of give me a funny look and I wonder if it’s just like you know the christian stuff is just like so not funny anymore. But that’s what we mean in my family is the come to. Come to Jesus meeting is ah when you have the hard talk and you have to like repent of your sorry ways and do better Maybe it’s just like this weird. Lapsed catholic thing and people don’t understand what I mean when I say it anyway. So I had this meeting with myself and 1 thing that has always been true of me or at least I believe to be true which is in. And important distinction was I felt like I didn’t work very hard at stuff all through school. Everything people were always telling me how my teachers and so forth that I wasn’t really applying myself and they would be like. You know you’re so smart but you’re just coasting um high school college grad school. They also have the same things to me and even in my early work and and it didn’t matter that I could get you know a’s. You know ace the exam or you know do whatever. Um you know, get all my work done I could get more work done than anybody else. It was that I didn’t appear to be working hard enough. So now we’re delving into my psychology. This is like a ah weird thing that I’ve wrestled with most of my life where. People are always telling me that I don’t work hard enough now. Oddly enough now people tell me I work all the time. My mom even said something to me about that when we were there last weekend you work all the time that’s like which is it. But anyway so when I had to come to Jesus meeting. With myself I thought. Okay, if you really want to do this if you want to write novels and make a living as a writer then you have to figure out how to work incrementally over time. You’re not gonna be able to do this big bursts of creativity and so that’s where I came up with all of this sustainable creativity i.

08:55.65
jeffekennedy
I want to figure out a way to work very consistently and and to be fair, this has worked well for me over time and so I’m just tweaking it and I had gone down to 2000 words a day which felt very easy. It was great. And it was really nice when I was done writing that I still had mental bandwidth to deal with other stuff and I’ve actually been making inroads on my to do list instead of feeling like my to do list is billowing so I’m I’m feeling at a very happy place. Um. In order to get the storm princess and the Raven King out released on may thirty first I want to have a certain amount of time to go back and revise it make sure that I get everything right? the way I want it to be. And in order to give myself that revision cushion I I could get it written at 2000 words a day but there’s like no buffer. So I thought okay, well since this feels easy I’m gonna take it up a little bit to 2500 words a day five days a week and see how that feels so so far it feels okay so far it feels good. Um, you know the the proof the test is how it feels in the long term and I still have mixed feelings about. Taking time off between books because it definitely sets me back so far as the training as being in shape to produce words at a particular rate. Um, so so I don’t know I don’t know on that but I’m feeling very excited about these next. Book projects that I want to write so I kind of want to get this book written and move on with my life. But I’m also really liking the book. Um, it’s it’s different I say that on every book don’t I this one’s different than I expected. Um. But in some ways this one is it’s surprisingly romantic I think it’s the most romantic of this particular series. Ah I don’t I feel like I don’t always go in for the full swooning romance. But um. This particular book with Lena and Ryan they are well they got this this tortured love right? So anyway, that’s where I’m at with things. Um, so.

11:44.44
jeffekennedy
My sticky note from yesterday that I never got to ah, we’ve been watching and I mentioned this before the Hbo miniseries winning time story of the l a lakers and really liking it a whole bunch. Watch the most recent episode on Sunday night I’ve recommended it before I’m still recommending it Jason Segel, John C Riley but great people in it. Um, Sally Fields. I think Sally Fields really enjoyed in this particular role. Um, but it’s it’s interesting because I mentioned that over the weekend I you know met up with the writers and. Sat at dinner next to Melinda Snodgrass and we talked about shows we were watching and everything and I suggested this one and she said oh I don’t like sports stuff I don’t watch sports stuff and I thought well okay, fair enough and I’ve been known to say the same thing but. And I have been the one to scoff when people are like oh but sports were a metaphor. Um, you know like I feel that way about the war movies like men bonding and war movies just doesn’t do anything for me and I don’t care if it’s a metaphor for the human condition or whatever. Yeah. You know that’s the only way men can figure out how to be friends I’m sorry ah callous of me but there we are but in this case, there is this is such a well-written script. That there’s actually not all that much basketball in it and it’s about this trying to create a thing trying to make a thing happen which is a story that is always fascinating to me overcoming. Um just all kinds of terrible luck. Ah, kinds of stuff happens and trying to make this a winning team so that you know cause John C Reilley plays this character boss who has like pretty much staked his entire fortune and there’s gonna be all these repercussions. If if they can’t pull this out so there are all sorts of really interesting conversations about winning what it means to succeed and I really appreciate these takes on things.

14:30.50
jeffekennedy
And I wonder how much they are influenced by Ted Lasso which is another sports show. That’s not really about sports and I hope that I didn’t ask Melinda if she watched that but you know there are similar themes in both It’s about what exactly are you trying to accomplish Ted Lasso the coach played by Jason Sudeikis is very interesting in that he says things like um. Like he doesn’t think that it’s important whether or not they win or lose the game that what matters is how they play it which you hear a lot It’s a little bit of a cliche probably but he he actually believes it and has it come through. Ah. In the winning time in the lakers story. It’s critically important that they win that they’re going for winning this championship in order to um, not lose at all ah lose all the money and have the team. I don’t know fall apart. What have you.

15:46.91
jeffekennedy
And it’s um, it’s interesting because in both shows even though the stated goals and the stakes are very different. There’s still that. Underlying wrestling with what does it mean to succeed and maybe that’s the same thing that I’m talking about with with word count or what I talked about yesterday with trying to evaluate like are you doing good work. Are you growing? Are you stretching? Are you success Eatinging um you know success is such a fraught concept. There’s so many ways to measure it but a lot of it has to do with what are you? Why are you doing this thing in the first place and that’s something about being a writer that um. You know there’s easier ways to make money you have to be doing it for the right reasons. Um and those they’re your own right? reasons doing it because you love it. Ah, there are a couple of characters in winning time. Like the former coach Jerry West who’s like won’t leave. He resigned his coach and yet he’s still hanging out and and he’s like he can’t get away from the game because he loves the game. Um, you know and there’s. There’s a lot of focus on Magic Johnson who is a rookie um in his very first season and then and there are older players like Karim Abdul Jabbar are on the team and. Your magic is wrestling with growing up but also with you know, trying to play professionally and why is he doing this what what is he trying to accomplish and there is this great bit in this. Episode on Sunday where he meets Dr J who I don’t recall ever hearing before but ah, you know I don’t really follow sports and I was young for a lot of this but Dr J was playing for the um Philadelphia seventy sixers I believe not that it matters. But Magic Johnson goes there. You know they have a a game and they meet he meets Dr J at a party and he and his girlfriend Cookie are you know, meet him and and magic’s trying to be all cool and she’s like I know.

18:37.14
jeffekennedy
That guy you could see I saw his face on the posters on your bedroom wall because you know they were boyfriend girlfriend in college and stuff and and he’s like yeah yeah, it’s not a big deal. She’s like it is a big deal and it is about you know meeting your heroes is such a big deal because you do this. And and we do this as writers right? you you grow up reading the books by these people and you feel like you know them, you feel like they’re your friends in a way and in the show. Dr J is very friendly to magic Johnson he. You know, invites him to a party in his room him and cookie and and his wife is really sweet to cookie very welcoming. You know and sort of being admitted to the the inner circle which is big too right? when you’re. Coming up as a writer and you meet these established writers and they sort of admit you to the circle. That’s a level of success right? because you’re like oh I get to hang out with such so and this is amazing and and I often say one of the best perks of being a writer is that you get to make other writers be your friends. In the way that you only imagined they were when you are reading your their books and even when they then meet on the court. Ah there’s this sort of extraordinary moment where Dr J comes over and embraces. Magic Johnson and he calls him young blood and he’s like you ready to play this game in blood and and magic’s all happy and and I even commented to David I said it’s so nice to see you know like an established person in the field and established pro be welcoming to the the rookie end. And then Dr J proceeds to slaughter him on the court and it it feels like a betrayal because he magic thought he was his friend and I think it’s Jerry West comes and says to magic johnson later you know I’ve seen him do this to other people. You know this is. This is a thing that he does where he makes you think that he’s your friend and then he uses that against you. It was like oh oh burn. But the thing is is this happens in the writing world too I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced that particular thing but certainly. There have been plenty of times when I have met my literary heroes writers whose books I admired so much and then they turn out to be total assholes and you know when people say that I am and and this is my favorite thing when people describe me as being generous or.

21:24.63
jeffekennedy
Kind. Ah, it means so much to me because because that’s who I want to be I want to be generous and kind to the younger writers because there were a few I mean there were plenty of writers who were generous and kind to me and continue to be and I am grateful for them. But there were a few who were not and it’s so shocking and it’s something that we talk about a lot. It’s like should you meet your heroes because when you meet your heroes. There is always that possibility that you will be disappointed in them. And that they will be unkind to you because 1 thing about people and maybe about writers in particular I don’t know if it extends to basketball players or other types of creators. But that ego is fragile and. They are forever insecure and there are some who will look at the young blood and see that person coming for their career instead of being instead of realizing that they were the poster. On the bedroom wall the book on the shelf. The inspiration that this rookie wants to it just bask in being around them. They see them as the young predator coming up to take a bite out of him and it’s unfortunate. But. And something to brace for that. There will be some who will do this and it’s um, like I said shocking and and crushing on a deep level and I love that they showed it in this show sports metaphor or not on that note I am heading off to work on my own books. Hope you all have a great Tuesday and I will talk to you on Tuesday you all take care bye bye.