Category: Blog

First Cup of Coffee – March 29, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast




Transcript
00:00.12
jeffekennedy
Ah, good morning. Everyone this is Jeffe Kennedy author of fantasy romance and romantic fantasy I’m here with my first cup of coffee and with a cat if you’re on video you may have seen the tail go by and here he is. Ah, he jumped up on my desk right? as the camera was going live Jackson say hello to everybody I don’t know why he takes he has to be up here right now except that he’s been very much into loving lately. And so now you get to see his but because that’s how a cat shows their love now you’ gonna sit there. Okay, he said right there she’s sitting off to the side now you want see I left my office door open because David’s taking a bath here. We go. We can have first cup of coffee with a cat. Yeah cats don’t like coffee. So today is Tuesday March Twenty Ninth hope you all are doing well, it’s a rainy Tuesday here in Sara Fe I don’t know if Jackson’s thinking that maybe he wants to go out already. You want me to leave him in the photo range there. We go, you can see the back of his head. Um. Yeah, sorry I’m thoroughly distracted by the cap visit. That’s why I get for leaving my door open. So let’s see. Um, yeah, wick’s going well for me so far hope it’s going well for you I did get my 2000 words yesterday. It’s it’s interesting. It’s um. Much easier to get them on Monday after a couple days rest and then harder towards the end of the week so I have to see is um, is 2000 a day really sustainable I sure hope it is because I don’t want to slow down more than that. But I do have to abide by my. Own advice right? find out what your process is and own it there. He goes going on his merry way. So that was special day though. It doesn’t that mean something the cat comes to visit. You. So probably not the households where you have lots of cats that come and visit you all the time it seemed like I had a few things to talk about today and now I don’t know what any of them are all right um.

02:44.62
jeffekennedy
So 1 thing I do know I want to talk about is I mentioned. Um well I guess ah was on Friday when I was talking about the set changes in membership requirements and I mentioned the story about how my. My story Pearl got published in 2 different magazines almost at the same time by accident. Um, and I mentioned that it was the second time that that happened to me and the. First time was in this wyoming wildlife magazine which was the magazine and is still the magazine for ah wyoming game and fish. So I was living up in Wyoming at the time and I worked for wyoming gamon fish I was working in the lab there as I was finishing my master’s degree because I was cutting bait getting my master’s and going to become a writer so I’d started writing essays. But still had to finish writing my master’s thesis and I had I was sending out essays places all the time. Yeah, and I talked about this some on Friday I think yeah that I had um. You know my ping pong method where I would send a story out I would have it at 3 places at a time which looking back on it I was really proud of my I’m really proud of myself that I did that it was a good way to do it by. Treating it like ping pong as soon as rejection comes in you send out another you, you deemphasize the importance of a rejection. All a rejection is is noticed that you need to send it out somewhere else. Um I’ve never been able to. Subscribe to the what seems to me overly perky advice like when people say every rejection you get put you that much closer to publication. Um I I never really got that one but it was a. You send it out. They send it back I could get behind the ping pong thing and I had my list of publications of the order that I wanted things published in organized um I sorted by different criteria.

05:31.22
jeffekennedy
Um I didn’t always know what I was doing for instance I did not understand I mentioned this on Friday when I was talking about trying to get that science fiction story published I didn’t understand the arcania of the science fiction and fantasy short fiction market. Which I now understand much better than I did then and yet I still find it. Um, arcane I guess I’m glad I’m a novelist. There’s it’s a very particular community. The short fiction market and I did not understand then. That there were ah the the qualifying markets that would qualify you for SFWA membership and people would submit to those first because that would be more likely to make them SFWA members and really it’s supposed to be that they paid pro rates and. Take this moment to do ah a little bit of a plug for so what? because what we’re doing is now that we’ve changed membership requirements. We’re creating a much more comprehensive scorecard for marketplaces that will take into account many more things than whether or not they pay per rates. Because just because a marketplace pays what we consider to be and really we need to change our lingo I need to do that too minimum pro rate minimum pro rate is ¢8 a word which is like you guys rock bottom I’ve talked about how you know like. And back in the day the glory days I got paid a dollar a word, a dollar a word and we’re calling minimum pro rates ¢8 a word that is a little bit differentlayer. Um, but I don’t know what voice that was so. We need to take into account the fact that even though marketplace may pay a sense a word that that doesn’t necessarily put food on the table right? which is really our goal we want writers to be paid. Professional rates. We want people to be able to make a living from their art and their craft. So. There are other things about marketplaces whether they are open to submissions. There are some marketplaces that say they’re open to submissions. But really, they only take. Stuff that they solicit or that come through agents not necessarily bad but it it is a factor in is this something that a writer can access. Um you know, like what kind of commitment. Do they have to to bipac.

08:20.78
jeffekennedy
Um, how responsive are they? what are their contract terms like how soon do they pay a market may promise to pay a minimum professional rate but drag their feet forever. They might try for right? Scraps. So these are all things that we want to take into account and we’re going to end up giving different markets scores and you know like the more they pay the higher they score they get. But also there’s other scores in there. And this short fiction committee has been working really hard on this and they’re amazing and eventually I would like to expand this out to novel markets and so forth and you know like even. Online retailers. What score would we give Amazon I mean we make the money there which ends up being like the make or break right? but responsiveness can be lacking although we do sapwa has an Amazon Liaison who has been very responsive I can email her and she has replied quickly. So so that’s something and that’s good to have for when we we saved that for when we need to escalate things. So anyway, um. Here I was back in the day sending out lots of short fiction pieces and to all kinds of markets and so I had sent the I had sent an essay to Wyoming wildlife and I don’t think I’d realized it at the time. But. Actually I was no longer working for game of fish I had been working for game and fish and was no longer because I had gotten this job as an editor writer with a petroleum group because I was building my writing chops and but the editor of the magazine Chris Madson didn’t realize that. And they had this policy where they did not pay department employees for articles and so imagine my surprise when David brought home the magazine because all employees got a free copy. Got a free subscription. And here was my essay by Jeffe Kennedy least correct by line this time called bullets and it was about me learning David teaching me how to shoot a ah gun which I didn’t want to learn how to do? Um, so.

11:01.67
jeffekennedy
Not only did they not pay me but I had no idea I was going to print it and this is this is an example of not a great marketplace right? because they and this happens sometimes magazines just they edit your story and they don’t tell you anything about it. So I ended up having to go to like the higher ups in game and fish and be like you know. Basically they stole my story and Chris Madson had to apologize and pay me I did get paid I don’t remember what I got paid. It may have been a dollar award because I was bringing out like all of the industry guns. They’re you know fighting for those rights even then right Um, and part of the concession part of the I know to make it up to me. Which I thought was funny so there was this guy who was um, his name was John Kennedy no relation unless it’s like way way back was I don’t remember what his title was but he was one of the higher ups in the agency part of it was is he said that they would agree to publish. Like 2 more essays from me to make up for this and so all I had to do was like send the ideas to Chris Manson who was like really pissed that he got called out on the carpet for doing this. It was a shitty thing to do. He should have never done that in the first place but he was really mad to get caught. And that he’d made the mistake you know I think he thought I was an employee so he could just publish it and do whatever the hell he wanted so you are all storytellers I assume or you would not be story. Readers. You would not be listening to this podcast I bet you can guess where this story is going. Yes I I never published another thing with that magazine I sent Chris all kinds of essay ideas and he ignored ignored me entirely and I had told John Kennedy that this would happen and he’s like oh I don’t think so but he also didn’t care once he dealt with the problem and came up with the solution. He um, moved on with his life. Um, but it’s interesting because it’s one of the ways that um. Publishing I’m trying to think of um, the analogy for this though but like every industry takes advantage of the creators as much as they can. We know all these stories about you know, like the um, the movie companies.

13:53.25
jeffekennedy
Having their stables of actors and controlling their actors lives and you know you see the biopics on that like about Judy Garland and that sort of thing we know things about like the record companies and how they use the talent and try to control the talent and. The same thing happens in the publishing world traditional publishing from short fiction markets to the publishers who don’t put the books out in the world. They they will take advantage of the creator as much as possible. And it’s not It’s not always malicious and in fact I think a lot of them would would protest me saneness and I may get protests about this because they will say no that they. They love their writers. They love their creators without their creators. They wouldn’t have content and they understand this and they know this but the thing is is that they are also in business they are doing this thing because it’s a business for them and so yes, they need the content and they love the content but they’re not. Doing this out of the goodness of their heart now I will caveat this that there are some short fiction markets in particular that and even some small presses that are doing in out of the goodness of their hearts. They’re also struggling because they yeah you know there but there I’m not being articulate, um, a lot of them are struggling because they’re trying to do their best but they aren’t necessarily um, doing as well as the cutthroat ones which is ironic right? So what’s the what’s the solution here. What are we talking about? ah. I think it’s that being your own champion that you just have to be ready to fight for yourself. Um, you know if we go to the the rock band example one of the things that we we can see in the movies that we know that happens is that the rock bands get out there and they’re. They’re partying I mean it’s a really difficult schedule. You know they’re going from place to place and they’re clock shifted and they’re partying hard and they’re encouraged to party and very often they are. Everything’s deducted from what they’re making I have a. Friend who dated a member of Dokken remember them back in the day and he like failed to pay taxes for a lot of years and he got levied these enormous fines and blew all his money in.

16:38.41
jeffekennedy
Much later was like living in his mother’s sewing room. He had nothing left. So the thing is is that you don’t there’s never an excuse to not be smart about your business practices and I think that the business minded people know this about creators is that creators. Are not necessarily business minded. We don’t want to be right? But if we did. We’d be in business right? But you got to learn, you’ve got to be ready to fight for your rights and you have to be ready to you know to get mean with people you know and not all of us like to do that either. But you have to keep in mind that if they can take advantage of you. It’s usually to their benefit to do so my nose is so itchy today. That’s why I keep pausing I’m sure it’s like the allergy thing getting pollen itches. So you know I guess the other message I have here is that I didn’t have any way to leverage Wyoming wildlife or wyoming game and fish after that point once I had signed that agreement. There was no no further penalty. And really I didn’t have a whole lot of leverage to begin with other than threatening to expose them. You know it was ah that’s often. The only recourse we have against these groups or companies or corporations right? is. To make them look bad to threaten their sales. That’s the only thing they really care about getting fish is a government agency so it was a little bit different there. Um, but ultimately they have the ability to resist and so. That’s what we have to do as creators. That’s why we have organizations like se to be able to band together to create that leverage and to support each other so that’s and death the sermon I suppose. Ah, yeah I don’t think I have anything else to talk about today I hope that you all have a wonderful Tuesday and I will talk to you all on Thursday you all take care bye bye.

First Cup of Coffee – March 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.

00:14.42
jeffekennedy
Ah, excellent. Today is Monday March Twenty Eighth last week of March Twenty Twenty two um yeah I had a busy weekend. Um lot of different things mostly like non writing related. If you’re on video you will see I did some office rearranging. It may not be obvious to you mostly? it’ll look like that you have a wider perspective and that’s because I moved a printer cart that was on the far side of my desk. Over to underneath the window on that side the east window because I no longer need to have and it’s this has been the case for a long time I’m no longer limited by the cable on it. It’s a wireless printer which I seldom use anyway. And for some reason last week I started thinking about this more I wanted to be able to see out my window more and put the monitor against blank wall instead of having the monitor block the window. So this way I will be able to see the birds being merry. So as a result I am now farther away from this wall behind me so and you could see my bookshelves so that was something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. Got that done this weekend. A lot of little things done like that and it was very beautiful weather especially yesterday and I got out into the garden and big news baby learned to use a chainsaw so one of the things that I have discovered about. Landscape here sort of landscape maintenance and the desert southwest when we moved into the house there had been landscaping done xeriscaping um xeri- not zero- I’ve seen people write it as zeroscaping which is just a level of I’m going to say ignorance that just amuses me I understand why people make the mistake and yet there’s a big difference between xeriscaping and zeroscaping.

02:45.36
jeffekennedy
And now I’m totally gonna have to fix that on the transcript anyway. So there are these yucca that are planted in clumps and so it turns out that yucca over time they sprout new greenery on around the edges. But the center of the clump can die off especially in severe drought like we’ve been having but I think it’s also a factor of age and some of this might have been like original landscaping from when the house was built you know and now we’re um, coming up on I think we passed 25 years anyway actually we’re coming up on 30 years yeah 30 years since the house was built I used to live in a a nineteen oh six house so I always think this is like a brand new house. So. This had been something that I’d been noticing for so the last couple of years was that we had these sort of dead clumps of yunk yucca in the middle with the greenery around the edges but they were kind of being smothered by the old stuff. And I thought okay I need to dig this out and I was talking about this with my friend Megan Mulry who I saw yesterday we we went to see the lost city I’ll talk about that. Ah actually all I could say about is he it was great. Was so great. But I was telling her about my my yucca travials and she was sympathizing because it’s like you know I’m using the big rake the heavy rake you know, sort of digging it in there and inking pulling and some of the dead stuff will come out but then there are these bowls these very deck. Trucks that are at the base of it. You know that are like I don’t know um I’m showing it with my hands I’m trying to think of how to describe that I mean we could just say like ten inches across and they’re surprisingly dance I commented to David that. When I’ve seen things about you know, like the native americans having woven stuff out of yucca if you’ve ever been to an exhibit that has shown that kind of thing where they show all the different stuff. You know the baskets and the you know tunics and all of this stuff that they’ve woven from yucca fibers and I’d always kind of wondered. How do they get that much now I know because it’s like these things are just compressed fibers and you could sort of draw out the fibers and everything I was kind of tempted to play with that and see um a reader I’m not going to. But if I were someone who did spinning and weaving.

05:34.14
jeffekennedy
It would be interesting to play with that stuff. So anyway I had tried like cutting some of it hacking at it now this is gonna work so I asked David to show me how to use the chains up. Yeah. And he helped me some he doesn’t quite have the physical strength or endurance really anymore to do a lot of that because it’s a lot of work even with the chainsaw I you guys my back is sortidated but shoulders are sore um I knocked off around two and went and took a shower because my allergies were also killing me where. Our junipers are just full of pollen and probably hear it my voice like a gust of wind will blow and you’ll just see this huge cloud of pollen flying out of it so I went and showered off all of the pollen and then just. Read for a little while while I before I went to meet me and for the movie but up to the movie. Ah, you know I stood up and I was like oh I stiffened up a little bit during that time. So I got it part of one clump I got at. Very worst clump. So I’m gonna sort of do this by increments. This is one of the things that I am learning to do is not to try to do everything all at once. So now I can get at some of these It’s just kind of it looks messy and unsightly I don’t know. If a lot of stuff I leave if I think it’s part of the natural progression of plants. So I leave stuff over the winter. That’s the other thing I did was I raked up a whole bunch of stuff from over the winter I cleaned out in the secret garden our first just in time for our first daffodil to bloom i. Clean that out Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning our death bill had popped open so crack open the window here. It was almost warm enough to sit outside this morning can move out to the secret garden soon. So I’ll put the. Brand new daffodil on the show notes and let’s see so the lost city lost city of d. It was fabulous but can I say it was fabulous. Um, it was. The exact right amount of homage to romancing the stone and with a blend of new invention. Um, the arc was fabulous character arcs ah.

08:23.85
jeffekennedy
I really loved I mean the the nods to romancing the stone were amazing and and like the very best moments from romancing the stone but then also Sandra Bullock has her character take. Agency in a way that Kathleen Turner’s character didn’t always have and that’s phenomenal and then um, Channing Tatum he’s just great I mean I don’t know that I’ve ever really been a huge fan of Channing Tatum but he um. He brought a a depth to a character that doesn’t have a whole lot of depth. He really just and he’s got this comedic sense. They really played off together. Well apparently they’d considered Ryan Reynolds for the role and I love me some Ryan Reynolds and I thought he was great with Sandra Bullock and the proposal I loved that movie too. But I don’t know Channing Tatum was perfect. Perfect for this role. Ah, he plays her fabo esque cover model. They make one fabio joke in there which was. Ah, good fabo joke as opposed to all the tired fabio jokes and and they they had some interesting things to say about romance and so you tune out if you don’t want any spoilers at all I won’t. Spoiler anything important but I’m going to tell you a little bit about the movie Sandra is obviously a writer and very smart and her she’s a linguist and historian and so she’s written these books about this character who’s an archaeologist. And she’s she’s in mourning because her husband died and she’s also conflicted I want to I don’t want to say completely bitter. She. She doesn’t want. She’s an introvert she doesn’t want to go leave her house. She doesn’t want to go out and do this book tour stuff you know coming up with a plot arrangement for her to be wearing a hot pink sparkly Jumpuit in the jungle is is fabulous I mean it’s just It’s great and for them to have it end up in shreds around her very shapely figure I was looking and Sandra Bullock is 2 years and one month older than I am and she she’s looks amazing I realize this is her job. But.

11:09.57
jeffekennedy
She looks amazing. So um I thought was very funny because when she goes out onto the stage where channing Tatum is also going to appear as her cover model for her books dash. Um, and. You know she doesn’t want to do it anyway and her editor or publicist says I think she’s our editor you know tells her not to use big words which I think is funny because I think I’ve mentioned here that my agent tess asked me not to use big words on occasion. So I mean there was some. There was a nice interplay there of of these things and Sandra Bullock says at 1 point how like her linguistic history books never sold and now she writes schlock and jenning tatham says something to her about that which is great because. He’s also you know obviously beautiful. There is an extended shot of his naked ass gonna tell you guys right? there and and it was it was fine fine with a capital maybe in all caps fine. I’m gonna have to fix that on the transcript too and he’s um, not a super smart guy. He’s not a super intellectual or educated guy and he gets stuff wrong and she corrects him on stuff. But he’s also this very nurturing caring person. Um, and you know they play it for comedic effect. But he’s also just kind of you begin to appreciate him. As along with Sandra as the movie goes on and at one point she says something pretty sharp to him about basically being a brainless model and. And he says something to her later about that you know like not knowing who he is and yes, what he has tried to do and it’s it’s this wonderful mirror of of her. You know that like he he tried to be a serious actor and. Couldn’t make it and but he could make it as this cover model and so that’s what that’s what he’s doing and and he says to her about not to call her book schlock because she you know he said you know talks about.

13:55.66
jeffekennedy
The enormous amount of pleasure that it brings to people and how meaningful it is so it’s just all really well handled. It’s um, the romance is handled in exactly the right way with a certain level of um. I what’s what are the words that I want with delight and affection and respect. But at the same time going in for for the full romance. So yeah. And there’s there’s a really wonderful epiphany at the end about about mourning and about what’s meaningful and yet it’s still funny. so so yeah enthusiastic thumbs up weld done Sandra Willock well done chenning day. Ah. Red Pitt is amazing. He’s in it for a surprisingly short amount of the movie. Ah, but it was great. So um, um, excuse me. So yeah, it was um, it was good weekend. It was productive and was while. Oh and I did something else I did tell during I was running a little behind for no good reason I slept a little long still getting used to that. Um, even though I went to bed plenty early. So also been watching Bridgerton this weekend I through 3 episodes of Bridgerton really loved how they handled in episode 3 the Anthony’s backstory and all of that at Aubrey Hall I thought they’re doing a great job in some ways. Almost better than the books showing his um trauma from watching his father die that is not a spoiler. We know that about Anthony um, and and the way that any hint of that sends him into a panic really well done. And I love love the cow playing Kate and I I like the um you know making Kate and eda be East Indian I think that is a nice um, folding in of diversity I’m I’m perfectly good with it and I think. Kate has just the right amount of self-protective rigidity for the character and dignity a lot of pride and dignity on Friday evening I went to a reception. Um.

16:45.58
jeffekennedy
That was put on by Ucross Foundation Ucrosss foundation does writers residencies and when I was a baby writer sometime back in the mid 90 s I did a residency at ucross for two weeks and I think I mentioned this on the podcast before um, just amazing, just incredible. Couple of weeks of my life. Ah pivotal for me as a writer I would say transformative and just in seeing myself as a writer. So the ucross board usually meets in Santa Fe because the founder. Who originally started the cross foundation raymond planck had a house here in Santa Fe before he died and I believe the board still meets here. They they fly in and they usually bring in some kind of guest. In this case, it was a poet M.L Smoker who I very much enjoyed meeting. She was lovely. And enjoyed her reading very much and they also invite like local fellows people who have been you crossfellowship recipients in the past. So you know free food open bar, interesting conversation with people. Um. It was funny though because I did talk with a few people. It’s a very arty crowd very artsy as you may imagine and when I mentioned they were asking me what I was up to now you know and I said oh well I was mainly writing fantasy novels and that I’m the current president. Science fiction and fantasy writers of America they were just all oh that’s nice, but I may be um, adding the lip curl there but um, yeah, totally not impressed. Not interested so speaking of genre. Related prejudices there. We go so the more things change right? Ah there’s a new director of the foundation and I should have chatted up with him more but you know like what does it matter I think that’s like maybe a thing we do when we. Imagine going to like reunions or to in some ways that was a reunion right? because like they knew me when I was a baby baby writer you know and hadn’t didn’t have my book yet and um, not. You know, just a few publication credits and was working on something totally different which is why they probably admitted me if I’d been working on genre fiction. They probably would not have given me the fellowship which is you know, interesting to contemplate but you always think you know you go back and say look look at all these.

19:34.60
jeffekennedy
Things that I’ve done and then they’re like totally not impressed. I was like okay well you know everybody’s got their um goal posts. You know like we’re all playing on different fields with different goal posts that. Meaningful to us and I think that’s what’s important is that the goalposts we’re shooting for are meaningful to ourselves if you are always aiming for the goalposts that are meaningful to other people I think you will not be happy. So on that note I’m going to go. Work on the storm princess and the Raven King I’ve been rereading the eras of magic books so far so reread the long night of the crystalline moon and I’m partway through the golden griffin and the bear prince which is good because I’m encountering details that i. Need to incorporate so that’s my project right? Now you all have a wonderful Monday hope it kicks off a fantastic week and I will talk to you all tomorrow take care bye bye.

First Cup of Coffee – March 25, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast




Transcript
00:00.00
jeffekennedy
Good morning Everyone this is Jeffe Kennedy Author of fantasy romance and romantic fantasy here with my first cup of coffee.

00:14.93
jeffekennedy
Ah, pretty wonderful Today is say it with me friday. Woo happy Friday everyone March Twenty Fifth hit ah blast Friday in March of 2022. Amazing I just feel like it’s going fast could be just me. It just me.

00:50.50
jeffekennedy
So let’s see where are we with things I feel like I’m still doing pretty well with the new plan of 2000 words a day although caveat. Um. I did not hit my two thousand yesterday. However, I’m still on track for the week and I feel like it’s still good. Um I had a lot of distractions yesterday and that was my own fault I let myself get distracted. Um, alas. I think part of it was the new schedule maybe oversleeping some but also I was taking my attention off of the writing and dealing with other things. Um. And I guess I could. There’s no reason that I can’t talk about it because one of the things we’ve been working towards for a very long time in SFWA is changing the membership requirements and in some ways you could say that I’ve been working towards this hm. For how long wait I can find this date hold on I know I don’t have to tell you to hold up I’d tell you to hold on. Okay I found it I’ve been working on this for almost ten years since 2013 how do I know this. Because ah my very first science fiction short story was published in September of 2013. It was a story called Pearl which is no longer up for sale and the reason it is not up for sale. Is because it does not have a happy ending. Although I love this story but I talked about it with grace at one point and felt like it was just not on brand for me because it doesn’t have a happy ending so I took it down and i. Have this idea someday of expanding it in my spare time into a longer story with perhaps half ending I don’t know I don’t know if it would work sometimes I think about maybe I should just put it up again with the warning but then it gives away the ending who know. Let me know if you have thoughts anyway, it was very interesting. Um, so this is like you know 2013, 2012 I don’t have notes on when I first wrote it I had to look up the publication date of it. So I wrote.

03:37.46
jeffekennedy
This story and up up until then I had been writing essays and well that’s not precisely true I had written some other things. Wow what’s the order of this. Okay I found it. This makes much more sense I have been working on this since 2008 that’s when Pearl was first published. Um, yeah I wonder where these folks are now. So anyway. That makes much more sense because I knew that I had started shopping my fantasy romance novel rogues pawn the book that became rogues pawn um in about 2007? Ah so but I had written this story first I know it was the first science fiction story I ever wrote and then the fantasy romance novel I started writing later but you know how these things go with try and get them published. So this was back in the day of sending out. Um. Well, it wasn’t paper submissions. It was via email. Um, excuse me but email was funkier then it was not as seamless I don’t even remember what system I used was it outlook already by them. I know I was using word perfect. So I wasn’t using Microsoft anyway, that part doesn’t matter. But um I did have my website I’d had my website since um oh like 95 I built my first website myself. But you know from my first publications and so forth. So anyway, I was always multiple submissions gal I’ve been a believer of that from the beginning I’ve never thought that I’ve always thought that that was bad for the writer. It’s it’s in favor of the publication I even gotten an argument with the editor once but I have um I would have a rule that and this was my ping pong rule I’ve talked about it before because I sent out lots of essays and short stories and I would have everything out. At 3 places at a time and as soon as a rejection came in I would treat it like ping pong and pop that one back out I’d have it all ready to go like where I was going to send it next. So always at 3 places and I kept track of this on spreadsheets I was using excel.

06:21.30
jeffekennedy
So I would be ready to go with you know, like the next place but I would also track like how long a place had had it so and here what I was terribly newbie writer I didn’t know much about the science fiction fantasy community. I didn’t have any friends who were writing in that world. Um, so you know now I know more than I did them but I had the story out parole to ah. Ah, magazine called Abyss and Apex and I also had it to a place called Aeon and Aeon accepted the story to rejoicing and I contacted Abyss and Apex. And I you know, emailed them and said you know and and this is what I did all the time when I would have something accepted is I would contact the other places that had it and I would say you know this has been accepted by this other magazine. Um, you know wanted to let you know can you tell me. Tell me the status of yours because then I would like if a couple places accepted and I would pick which one I wanted because the power lay with me then right and I think actually I’m going to modify this little bit. On abyss a and apex I had inquired much earlier yes because I’d had it for a while and they had said let us check. Let’s let me check on it and then never got they replied then but then never got back to me again. So when eon this is right. Then when Aeon accepted I set my standard of you know this has been accepted elsewhere. So I have to withdraw which is how I got an argument with this one editor at a literary magazine at a university because I sent her my you know. Sorry this has been accepted elsewhere I have to withdraw it notice and she wrote back and she said well you know we don’t condone simultaneous submissions and you shouldn’t have done that and I wrote her back and I explained I said you know having that policy. Ah. Makes the assumption that your time is more valuable than my time he said and it’s not fair to writers. This is a ah predatory practice if you know publishers even then you guys baby Jeffe I was you know fighting for this kind of thing but you know I was also working a job as ah, environmental consultants and.

09:07.87
jeffekennedy
You know it was I knew what fair business practices were so she wrote me back and she said you know I never thought of it that way we’re changing our policy so Jeffe fighting for writers rights way back when. So and then she ended up publishing one of my essays the following year. So you know it always works to communicate with people don’t burn those bridges stand up for yourself all of these wonderful take home tales. So anyway, Aeon publishes my story and they are you know. Wasn’t too rousing response but you know we also 2008 we barely had social media I think I joined Facebook in 2009 I’m pretty sure my Twitter was 2009 so you just didn’t know back then. And that was that was a good and bad thing. You know sometimes you knew how you know and I don’t know you wouldn’t get the say you didn’t have the same sense of whether or not something had been received. Ah, but then one day I get this email saying from abyss and apex. A kind of blistering email from this editor accusing me of playing her false and she’s like you double published the story you published it in Abyss and Apex and Aeon at the same time. So it turns out Abyss and Apex had published my story without. Telling me I’m serious reader I I mean it’s amazing and it’s not the only time this happened to me it happened to me with another magazine too. They’d never sent me a contract. They’d never sent me edits they published it. Um and it had gotten great review. Ah, but unfortunately. And actually it might have been Ian who contacted me about it saying what the hell was is also in abyss and apex who also had not paid me I mean all of these things and I was like I know nothing about this so the editors thrashed it out between themselves and it turned out that. The editor at Aybss and Apex was you know, horribly chagrined and embarrassed and said that she’d had a breast cancer scare and this had fallen through the cracks and I don’t know I mean how could they’ve not corresponded with me ever. Well so what it turned out was that I had contacted them with an email. Address that during this long time that they had had it had gone defunct and they had like sent the contract to that old email address I never got it I never responded. Um and so that was how it happened when I told my friend Kelly Robson this story

12:01.46
jeffekennedy
She who knows far more about publishing short fiction. She was like wow that’s really unfortunate because apparently abyss and apex had a much higher profile this is ending up being a very long story but you know Eon At Least well corresponded with me. I don’t know so anyway, um, Aeon was not on the list of SFWA’s approved markets so SFWA has had this thing forever where they have this list of publications that pay professional rates and are. There are approved markets and you could qualify for membership if you sold a certain number of works to an approved market. So I had Aeon was not on this list Abyss and Apex was which is partly why Kelly says that so. There was this thing on this sip well website because I wanted to be a member right here I have my science fiction story I was already a member of Rwa and I contacted the office as it said to do about getting my. Market added nobody ever replied to me. It was very frustrating and I wasn’t able to join SFWA until like 2013 or 2014 when I sold my first 3 book deal. So. For me for a very long time I have not liked how the SFWA handles their membership requirements and this has been you know like I was added to the short fiction committee and I was like why am I on this committee when I first joined them they said well because you were. Mad about that whole thing with ion and I was like oh yeah, but but by then I was writing all novels and I felt like I didn’t have a lot to say about short fiction. Um, so anyway, this has been an effort for a very long time and yesterday we. Sent out the email with we had a big bylaws vote we changed the membership requirements. This is something that started with Cat Rambo’s presidency when I was first on the board of directors and Cat wanted us to be able to admit. Um. Game writers and we started talking about how to admit, comics, writers and graphic novelists and the problem is is that all of SFWA’s membership requirements were predicated on word count like you these different categories and myriad categories for you know, like if you.

14:49.95
jeffekennedy
Had a piece that was this long and how much you got paid per word for that and for a long time. Um, you know like the flash fiction writers were very upset because they would get paid plenty but their word count wasn’t enough to qualify. So then when we started looking at. Membership qualifications for game writers. You know where they might not have that much actual prose it got murkier and then when we started looking at for comics, books writers and graphic novelists. You know. They might have very very few words and they might be in like little speech bubbles and how do we count that we’d also had these sort of archaic rules in there about the english language requirements and. You know we’re supposed to be an international organization and why are we talking entirely about english language and so by the time Mary Robinette Kowal was in office. We’d really come up hard against the comic books and graphic novelist thing because. She really wanted to get them admitted to the organization and and the figuring out how to fit them into the membership requirements was just incredibly sticky. So she said okay, we’re going to do a 2 hour work session. And all of us who were invested in this and I don’t know there were maybe six eight of us on this call and we go got on Zoom and this is a couple of years ago now and we decide to th thrsh this out you know and so it’s like okay we’re going to finish this call. We’re going to if we have to be here the whole time if we have to go long. We will. And we’re going to figure out how can we do this and we ended up coming up with this incredibly dare I say elegantly simple solution where we change the requirements to be based on the catalog of work and so now in order to be a full member if you have. Made $1000 from your catalog of work then you meet the membership requirements. It doesn’t matter how long the work is it doesn’t matter in what medium the work is produced if you’ve made $1000 you’re in associate. Is a hundred dollars and you know and it’s funny and something that we did in tandem with this was we were changing that whole qualifying markets list which is big change for people and applies very much to those short fiction markets.

17:35.62
jeffekennedy
And what we’re doing instead is we’ve created a market scorecard where we go through the different publications and we give them basically a grade so it’s a it’s a big change. It’s a big change within the community and a big change for us and I feel like it’s an enormously positive one. Um. But yesterday there were a lot of questions and I was kept going and answering them I felt like I needed to I had to go to Mary Robinette cause we hit 1 snag and I was like do you remember why we did this and so I was texting with her later on the day and. Said I can’t believe there’s so many questions because people are like well what about poetry and what about this and what if I do x y z and I mean a lot of them were good questions but it’s like so many questions and Mary Robinette that was like you don’t have to answer them all. That’s like I know. But so anyway. I got distracted yesterday. That was all a very long way of saying that. But I’m hugely happy about this? Um, achievement I’m really happy to have gotten this out there. It’s very funny because when we put together the press release on this. Our communications director took out I’d put in a thing about acknowledging Cat Rambo and Mary Robinette koal on their contributions as the administration on this and they um. And she wanted to take it out and I said no I think it’s really important because we’ve been working on this a long time I want people to know that we didn’t just make this a spur of the moments decision and I also want to acknowledge their leadership on this and yesterday I saw this tweet where somebody thanked Cat and Mary Robinette for making it possible for them to join and cap very graciously said. Don’t forget current president Jeffe Kennedy and theel just liked it. She didn’t like it thought it would be nice of her to reply because I said thanks cap you know. Thought it would have been nice of her to reply and be like oh my bad and thank you too Jeffe but now she didn’t so I guess I’m I’m chopped liver. Ah funny how those things work isn’t it. But yeah, it’s a big accomplishment. A lot of people worked on this who have not gotten acknowledged. And I’m super excited. Super excited to to sort of open these gates that were very rusty and creaky and did not work. Well, it’s also going to be a huge benefit to our staff that’s going to be much much easier for them to review. Membership.

20:18.66
jeffekennedy
So that there will not be newbie writers out there whose emails are never replied to again. Oh that’s the angel singing on that note I’m gonna go I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you on Monday youall take care bye bye.

First Cup of Coffee – March 24, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast




Transcript
00:00.80
jeffekennedy
Good morning everyone this is Jeffe Kennedy author of fantasy romance and romantic fantasy I’m here with my first cup of coffee. Ah happy chair dance. Today is Thursday March Twenty Fourth only a week of March left and which means that the first quarter of 2022 is almost gone. How did this happen. We don’t know it’s a mystery. I always love that line in Shakespeare in love with the I can’t think of the afters name but the date owner where he’s like it’ll work out. People are like how how and he’s like I don’t know it just ah yeah, something like that that was probably bad. Ah. Not a brilliant anecdote. There’s another movie quote from you for you. Ah, so my week is going well the ah 2000 words a day is working remarkably well um, I’m yeah on track so far this week we’ll see what happens yesterday Darynda proposed a slight change to our um. Morning routine. So we’re starting at Eight o’clock this morning well almost eight o’clock I there eight o’clock was the plan and then I as you guys may or may not know I don’t set an alarm I wake up naturally which is like something that I cling to I don’t want to have to set an alarm. Now that I’m a full-time writer. It’s like the one gift I give myself. It’s a a special thing for me that I get to wake up naturally otherwise I tend to be a real bitch of a boss so this morning for whatever reason it It’s very interesting if you do sleep on a natural calendar. You will find that and I’ve been doing this for what almost seven years now wow ah your sleep time or at least my sleep time waxes and wanes from night to night. Some nights are shorter and some are longer and last night was a longer night for whatever reason. Um, because as I recall I think I was in bed by like nine I usually I’d start turning into a pumpkin after about eight o’clock and of course the daylight savings time.

02:34.82
jeffekennedy
Has kind of messed that up. But you know my evenings are very low key and I start winding down early and I’m one of those people who falls asleep really fast. So I was asleep for a few hours and then my elderly cat Isabel beautiful fluffy Isabel. She doesn’t get as much press as Jackson does I’m not quite sure why maybe because Jackson was like the kitten and Jackson’s very charismatic and I think feel like Isabel does get short shrift because sometimes people will say well you know does because because. Visitors you know Jackson is so gregarious and so engaging and charismatic and everyone’s well people will say be like well does isabel do anything almost in those exact words you know like is there anything special about her Isabelle’s also a main coon cat and she is blue smoke. Min ku cap and I’ll put her photo on the show notes here. So and I realize I’m going off off topic but hey that’s the brand here at first cup of coffee. So last night. Isabel Isabel is now 16 and she sleeps a lot and she’s deaf and last night every once’s while she wakes up I don’t know if there are nightmares or I’ve tried to look it up and it’s like ah a kind of dementia in cats. Otherwise she doesn’t seem to have any kinds of dementia but she woke up and she was crying and crying. And she has this very loud meow now that she’s deaf and I was sound asleep. But for some reason that penetrated which very little does I’ve often joked or I don’t joke David says that the great thing that he brings to our relationship is that if the house burns down. During the night that he will carry me out of it and save my life because he thinks I’d sleep through it. So this penetrated and I got up and I didn’t know David wasn’t in bed. He’s often up at night. So I went blially out looking and. He like came out of the kitchen and I said where is she and he said I don’t know and she was back in his office and that was at Eleven Fifty five so I’ve been asleep for a few hours and so I picked her up and brought her in. Bed with me which she just doesn’t come do on her own anymore. She used to sleep with me every night but now she sleeps in his office which is the warmest room in the house and I think that’s why I’m interested to see if this changes as summer comes on but we have um, brick floors with radiant heat.

05:21.90
jeffekennedy
And I have the temperature in his office. David’s just I mean he’s skinny skinnier than I am and and he’s just ah, you know as he gets older. He gets colder so the warmth in his office come guest room is. Up there and Isabelle has this little throw rug that we’ve put down for her and it’s this one corner of the floor that she’s figured out is like where the radiant heat gathers. There’s certain places where the floors definitely warmer than others and the cats have found those in their feline way. So she. Spends a lot of time sleeping on that little rug in his office and but I brought her into bed with me since she seemed disturbed and she slept by my pillow for most of the night so that was nice because I know I woke up once around 4 and she was there and I went back to sleep. And normally if I go back to sleep like that it means another hour and a half and sometimes I’ll calculate it because it’s like far is a little early to get up but usually like another hour and a half and that’s right in line with you know, like scientific studies on sleep cycles that a full cycle is an hour and a half more or less. So but then I woke up at six thirty oops so um yeah we’re supposed to start at 8 it’s seven fifty seven now but we moved at tape 15 at my behest during it was ready because she said she wants to. To start and were earlier which is big because she originally for her meeting me at 9 was a lot for her and I had you guys know I track everything you know I was like well you know I’m usually starting by 9 we could just make it be 9 but for me writing wise the earlier I start the better off I am and I do have graphs to show that I get better work counts if I start earlier. So this works great for me. It’s just a little bit of adjustment. Especially after daylight savings time kicking in but it’ll be interesting to see how that works I’m going to keep doing the two k per day this week and then next week I might see if I can go up to 2.5 um, yeah, we’ll just sort of see I’m going to experiment a little bit I’m going to be curious. We have some travel coming up so that’s going to change things around some we are going to go up to Blackhack Colorado.

08:10.51
jeffekennedy
And meet up with David’s siblings for a couple of nights just a little get together and I’m going to do the It’s a it’s a casino hotel thing and I don’t really like and I’m like. But they do have a spa and I’m going to do I’ve been dying for a body scrub and they do a body scrub and wrap so very excited for that and then at on April Seventh and eighth I will be down in portalis. New Mexico fabulous Portales which is ah where Doronda Jones lives ah and it’s down right near the Texas panhandle but it’s where Jack Williamson famed science fiction writers from. And I’m going to be down there and doing some panels and stuff I believe they will also be streaming looks like some interesting panel topics too. There’s a new guy in charge this year David Sweeten who seems to be I haven’t met him in real life yet. But he seems to be just really on the ball I’m really smart and he thinks I’m a great writer so you know clearly he has excellent taste and discernment. So I’m looking forward to this last year I was on a weird panel that it’s it’s this happened. To me a lot and I think it might be the whole crossover fantasy romance um woman writer with kissing in her books is ity a is it really not fantasy confusion but there are certain conferences. Especially these very little ones where I think what happens is that the organizers don’t really this always sounds bad. They don’t know who I am ah and I think this can happen to any of us you know, like there are certain people that they know what they write. But what happens is is if you are a writer that like quivers doing programming hasn’t actually read if they don’t know much about you then they end up sort of sticking you on panels in weird places like I got put on a panel that. Like a great transgressor on this and I’ve complained about it before is mile highcon up in Denver which I like to go up there because I have family up there. Denver’s my hometown. A lot of people in the area I know.

10:55.37
jeffekennedy
I’d like Mile Hi Con but they always put me on these fucking weird panels like once they put me on a superhero panel. You honest like I don’t really write superheroes or not even really I don’t write superheroes at all and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say. And so last year with the old organizer on the Jack Williamson lectureship I got put on this panel on what was it was like writing science fiction or something. I wish I could remember the topic but it was really kind of strange I was like I do not know why I’m on this panel and the bad thing is is there are a couple of reasons for writers to do panels 1 is that it’s fun. Um, some of the. Most gratifying times that I’ve had as a writer is being on a panel with other wonderful writers where we end up having these amazing conversations. That’s the pinnacle because then you get a lot out of it being on the panel. So that’s good reason. Um. Reason that we do it is promo is to know, get ourselves out there um have people know who we are the other reason to do it is to be nice to you know, pay it forward contribute to the community. It’s like and I and a lot of writers view it that way. Because they’ll be like I don’t want to be on more than one panel for the conferences and I’m like really then why are you going? What are you doing there. They’re like oh it’s so exhausting. Really you know it’s like you know they’ll be like I’m on three panels cisconfer and. 1 every day and it’s exhausting like oh well, what do you do all day I know I’m bitching I just think about people who have jobs that you know like where they actually have to work really hard i. Well I will always say that being a writer is mentally draining and you really have to balance that creative flow and be smart about how you do it, especially if you’re a full-time writer or not even especially, it’s I think it’s worse if you’re trying to maintain another career and kids and family and all of that too. You know you really have to balance that energy but you know some of these writers I know for a fact have like never had a full-time job and you know there are jobs that you know like if you are working at it all day long. That’s all it’s a lot It’s.

13:37.90
jeffekennedy
Just you know a lot of running around in meetings and dealing with stuff and I will always say that the most the hardest job I ever had was being a cocktail waitress you know, full stop I am so glad that I don’t have to make my living as a cocktail waitress. Because waiting tables sucks you guys it sucks and it’s really hard and I know that people who haven’t done it sit back and be like well she goes a scurry back and forth between the kitchen. It’s like you have no idea absolutely no idea which is why I always tip well unless somebody really. Sponning it in anyway. So I’m sure I had a pointer in there somewhere I got interviewed on um, was it Tuesday afternoon yeah Tuesday afternoon by the kingdom of thirst podcast Abigail a great interviewer. We had so much fun I really enjoyed her podcast I should go ahead and link to it in here. So that. In fact, I’m going to type that in right now so that you guys can check it out but my old air. And a couple of weeks um kingdom of podcasts but she was talking about this podcast about first cup of coffee and just saying how. Relaxing. It is that it’s zen and I love that I love that it’s she said it’s just like having a conversation with your friend over coffee and it’s just like a nice chill thing to do and I love that I think that’s awesome. So. If I can’t think of stuff to stay say I feel like I can always fall back on the fact that that I’m just offering a zen experience here. Actually really, it’s more of a Dallas experience but we’re not going to to quibble lines there. So um, my point and I did have 1 oh that darinda and I are starting earlier. Um and maybe trying to get our 3 hours done by noon which is great and yesterday I was done by like 1130 and I got more stuff done on the to do list. You guys will be delighted to hear it i. Um, trying not to obsess about like getting everything off the list which I think is helpful. You know it’s that um, you’ll like the measureable goals. The ones that you can actually reach so but I got several things done off the list and so that’s great I got.

16:24.41
jeffekennedy
Bright Familiar uploaded, the audiobook. So just waiting for approval on that and then that will be out soon and other just little piddly things. Oh and so this is where I was had kind of started with all of this I did register for. World con in Chicago at the end of August beginning of September – Chicon. So I am planning to attend that and I also went ahead and registered for world fantasy con in November so planning to be at that and I will be at a polycon. In July so I need to get fact, let me make a note tear put this on my list I’ll get carene to put these appearances on the website.

17:20.45
jeffekennedy
So that’ll be good. So it’s like um, yeah for but but that’s the sound of the ah the world gradually sort of like revving up again. We’re kicking into gear. The other thing that happened yesterday is I got to. Email with an amazing writer someone who I particularly fangirl cut to exchange emails. You guys I can’t tell you what it is yet, but it’s very exciting, very exciting news. Not my career related but otherwise related. So. If you are canny. Your little brains will be thinking about what could this be? Ah yeah, so it was um yeah, particular little fan Girll moment there that I got to email with this writer from my myer. Who I admire I almost never use whom I just dislike whom I once had an editor my quiinsington editor had a special note saying this author hates whom don’t use it. So so yeah, it’ll be interesting to see how shaking it up here. A little bit will do and. Feeling good about things. So on that note I’m gonna go and meet up with the fabulous Darynda Jones and I will talk to you all tomorrow you take care bye bye.

Jeffe’s Writing Space

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

This week at the SFF Seven, we’re sharing our writing workspaces and current TBR list.

Why both of these somewhat disparate things? I have no idea. My TBR isn’t physical (mostly). I keep my inventory of unread books on a – you guessed it! – spreadsheet. There are currently 323 books on it.

I know.

I’ve been working my way through it, really I am, but even my determined efforts end up being like fighting the hydra. For example, I’ve had Juliet Marillier’s Daughter of the Forest on my To-Be-Read “pile” since April 19, 2017. (Thank you, Amazon for that purchase date.) I finally started reading it on February 12, 2022. LOVED IT. So, what did I do? Yes, bought the entire six-book Sevenwaters series. I’m now 60% through book six, Flame of Sevenwaters. By removing one book from my TBR list, I ended up buying five more and spending more than a month bingeing Juliet Marilllier and not addressing any of the books I already have. And I might not stop here. There’s a couple other books of hers that I’m eyeing. We’ll see how I feel when I finish this one.

As for my writing space, I have a dedicated office that is ALL MINE. You can see it above. We got an unexpectedly heavy snow last night, so it’s a darkish morning and you can see the snow out the window. I love my big window as I can watch the birds and other visiting wildlife (and they are merry), and I can see all the way down the Galisteo Basin to the Ortiz Mountains and Sandia Peak. My desk is hydraulic, so I can adjust it for sitting, standing, or walking, with my treadmill below.

I used to have my framed book covers on the walls, but I realized I didn’t like looking at stuff that represented past efforts. So, I took them all down and hung art that’s inspiring to me. The poster over the window is one I made that says, “What would you write if you weren’t afraid?”

And there you have it!

First Cup of Coffee – March 22, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast




Transcript
00:00.00
jeffekennedy
Good morning everyone this is Jeffe Kennedy author fantasy romance and romantic fantasy I’m here with my first cup of coffee but I left the spoon in it’s a good thing that I noticed that. Before I sipped today is who knows Tuesday March Twenty second I could show you guys this little spoon for those of you on video. It’s um, make sure it’s the right way up. It wasn’t I think people used to collect these things. But anyway it says um Denver engraved. It’s a little like a little baby silver spoon I like it because I could do just a little dollop of cream I’m pretty sure it’s real silver and it’s got a um indian head. I would say native american head but this is clearly like fantasy indian somebody’s conception of the thematic ah ideal of Denver was this ah I don’t know. I mean it’s really kind of funny because if you could see him on video like there’s ah, an ear piercing and a necklace that looks considerably more maori than any native american who lived anywhere in the Colorado area. Definitely an artist’s fantasy. But then in the bowl of the spoon it says Denver and so I kind of like it. It’s it’s a nice little petite spoon I should probably sell it melt it down for silver just because it’s a little bit heinous with the fantasy indian chief on there but um. I like it I was some I think my grandmother’s might have been what if my great aunts. There were a lot of Maiden Aunts among the Kennedy family.

02:06.52
jeffekennedy
So um, today is a special day because I know something that I rarely know about my own podcast but today is episode 700 whoo ah, a little while back I was trying to figure out how many episodes I’d recorded and I believe Laura Darnell was very helpful with that and telling me exactly how many there were I got a little confused even though I do keep it on the spreadsheet of course um some of them were like 2 parters. Mostly through my own technological ineptitude. So but now I figure out a better way to keep track and I believe that today is officially 700 so kind of cool and and I even made a note to myself to remember it. And say something. Other people know like how many episodes they’ve had I do not well clearly I do know more precisely I should say that um, when I first started doing this lo these what five years ago honey how time flies. Um I started keeping track by seasons. Um, so I did um season one you know and and then where I started season 2 I started over so season 2 episode 1 whereas other people do it numerically which is probably wiser and I did not keep track of dates for that first season I had 80 episodes in that first season and I know I started like sometime around July. Probably look at it on buzz sprout. But do we care that much. So anyway I should probably like put the years on these that would be helpful so this is season 5 so we know it’s been five years and this is 2022 last time I check. I’m just gonna tap these in here right now. Sorry if this is boring.

04:26.31
jeffekennedy
Yeah, so season 1 was 2018

04:35.29
jeffekennedy
Pretty amazing. How so. I was just noticing I keep track of that on my goals spreadsheet because I have a spreadsheet for everything and as no say ah I have not updated these goals in a while. Um right. I have goals for 2019 2020 and then clearly I did not do it for 2021 and 2022 so I guess I must have moved on to other things but I should probably like. Revisit that and see which things I’ve already done and which things I need to do always good. Okay, there now. My spreadsheet’s a little bit neater for at least today I get to do. On the kingdom of thirst podcast today being interviewed on that so that’ll be fun and it’s um, cold and snowy morning here in Santa Fe more snow. It’s nice. So yesterday we got quite a bit of rain it rained whilst allll the day i. Did get my sweet pea seeds planted before the rain started so that’s that’s ideal that’s like the ah the gardener’s nirvana right is if you can get things planted right before a gentle soaking rain and the sweet pea seeds are great. That’s part of why you can plant them early because they can withstand the frost. So um, yes I saw again Laura Darnell who often comments on stuff was nice to hear from her she um, had not been familiar with sweet pease. How is this possible. Ah, you know like I said I follow I was talking about this yesterday anyway, you know I follow my grandmother again my grandmother with the anus indian spoon I follow her gardening advice. My mom often says that the green thumb skipped a generation that I have my grandmother’s. Gardening ability my grandmother beautiful garden but my grandmother would plant sweet peace seeds in Denver on St Patrick’s day and so I do the same or more or less st patrick’s day is the trigger and I don’t know she did it exactly on.

07:03.64
jeffekennedy
And soak the seeds and buttermilk overnight like she does. But boy you know all, but you know my even my mom complaining that she did not have ah a very good garden. She I always thought she had a great garden and my aunt. Um, they we always had sweet pe. And and my mom would cut the sweet piece and bring them inside and they are. They’re so fragrant. They’re beautiful and they’re fragrant and um, they bloom for most of the summer so so yes if you are not familiar with sweetpeas. Go get you some I’m Laura I hope that you will share some photos of yours. My mom can’t grow them in Tucson. It’s just way too hot as but you know in Laramie Wyoming they were great and I don’t know. Kansas City maybe they’ll do better in like the spring and the fall might get a little hot for them in the muggy part of summer since Kansas City really does that muggy part of summer. So um. Yesterday was good day. Got my um 2000 words we got the Jeep into the mechanic have to do a little bit of work on it but it should be certified for David David to drive it for lyft and uber today. And he already has a scheduled ride for tomorrow. Did you guys know that lyft is doing a real scheduled ride thing. Um, it’s it’s really pretty cool because you know how like on uber it offers you the scheduled ride option. But then it’s not. They don’t actually schedule a ride for you. They just like send out a call for a car at that time because uber is so freaking wedded to that algorithm they do not want to budge off the algorithm. So this is something that has cropped up in the last couple of months where lyft has asked. David sent him a message through the app and asked him if he would like to accept a scheduled ride for this address at this time on this date and he can opt in or not and then the first time we were like what is this? What is this strange creature and. It was someone in our neighborhood who needed a ride to the albuquerque airport. So the at once he confirmed we’re like okay try it. Why not once he confirmed then it said okay you know be online on the app like 15 minutes before this time.

09:52.81
jeffekennedy
And he did and then it directed him to the pickup and and he drove the person down to Albuquerque so it’s it’s a real kind of scheduling and it’s it’s great and he’s gotten one for like you got a request for like may fifteenth. Um, so. You can you can actually plan ahead and I think it’s just so smart of lyft to be doing that because it’s what we all want you know uber keeps trying to force us to bend to their their algorithm I think they think that they’re going to be Amazon and may and enslave us to the algorithm. But. What they don’t realize is that the reason that we become enslaved to the Amazon algorithm is because Amazon makes seems really really easy for the consumer. They give us exactly what we want in exactly the way we want it. Ah. And uber is not doing that they they want their algorithm to work and they want us to you know be and trained to it but something like that like actually being able to schedule a ride and have a car show up. And exactly the time you want it to show up. Um, uber doesn’t want to do that. So interesting. So sir David’s already got a ride scheduled for tomorrow so he’ll be back in action. We still don’t have word on the camera. Ah apparently Usaa was taking down to their. Approved storage facility in Albuquerque which is an hour away and this is new. This is new because we’ve had Usa a for a long time but you know they’ve gone public now and things are different. Things are changing which is unfortunate because I don’t I try not to resist change for resisting changes sake but some of these changes to sa a I feel like are not positive.

12:13.11
jeffekennedy
Then also it adds time so we shall um we shall see apparently whether or not the car is totaled is still in question I mean obviously it’s in question but different people have weighed in Darynda’s husband owns. Um. Body shop and he looked at the photo and said he doesn’t think the car is totaled so he said unless there’s damage. You can’t see which is possible. So so why she’ll find out and. Got my nails done yesterday I went with yellow mom isn’t that funny I was kind of thinking yellow anyway, my mom and I were talking about how we’re like into yellow all of a sudden I think this is like how fashion trends happen I always think of William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. Predicting the trends before they become a trend is yellow. The next trend you heard it here first on first cup of coffee. So um, yeah, otherwise I’m I’m feeling like. And maybe I say this all the time my business to do list is very long at this point and some of it’s because I’ve broken things out into smaller tasks. Ah but like i. Need to upload the audiobook for bright familiar I have to register for a couple of conferences I still owe spreadsheets to someone because I was crunching her. You know like how she does her writing over the course of the year um I’ve got to set up a preorder of. Gotta put some books on ingram because I didn’t do it. Yeah, bright familiar and gray magic I didn’t put on inggram and I’m just gonna have to bite the bullet and do it um make a preorder list for a polyon I had to update a bunch of books and I need to reupload them I go. Ah, the faro gal gals a blog post for March and now we are March Twenty second I really got to get that done. So I’ve still got figure out a plus marketing I like I don’t know what is time who am I but. I don’t understand why I’m like not well I guess I do kind of understand why I’m not getting to all these things but it’s annoying me that I’m not getting to all these things I should look at my at those goals right? Um, which.

14:54.58
jeffekennedy
I Do have these different categories like revivifying the to do list minimizing the tasks that float for a long time god. That’s an ongoing thing so I won’t examine this list but maybe that was meant I need to um I need to figure out ways to get to some of this. Stuff that maybe you know maybe it’s partly being president of sfwa that like those hours that I would spend doing business-y things I’m spending a lot of that on SFWA things.

15:32.64
jeffekennedy
So um, what else because I wrote down those things to talk about. Maybe I don’t have much else to talk about. Yeah, maybe I don’t it’s interesting talking to people about conferences I’m sorry we’re not doing nebula conference in person. Ah the board felt very strongly that it was too much of a financial risk. I wanted to do it but I wasn’t gonna go against what the rest of the board wanted and it made things easier in a lot of ways. Ah but I was texting yesterday with Mary Robinette Kowal and. For for a funny. It was actually very funny because someone asked a question in the sifwa slack that had to do with last year’s conference like how long the panels were going to be up and because we’d kept the recorded panels up in the nebula airship. And somebody they asked how long are they going to stay up because they hadn’t finished watching all of them and I was like oh that’s a really good question even I do not know the answer but let me talk to the team and find out what everyone is thinking because I was a part of the events team last year and and. Then this text pops up for Mary Robinette and and she answers the question she says um, let’s see if I can find it here. Well she said we told. So she just texts me out of the blue and says we told panelists that we would leave nebula panels up for 1 year and I was like and I said god is that you and she said verily it was I and it turned out that she. Had notifications set on that channel and so it had she didn’t even remember she had had it because I know she doesn’t monitor slack closely and so she’d gotten a notification on it and answered the question for me and it was just it was just a funny thing. You know like. It goes in here and comes out there. So then we text it back and forth for a little bit and I was catching her up on just she’s very good about checking in with me on whether or not I’m being aggravated by being president and then she asks me for background stuff on some of the.

18:16.39
jeffekennedy
Ah, stuff that we’re dealing with and it’s um, it’s very kind of her. It’s very supportive of her. We one of the things that we have in so well which is a semi-official role is the role of past president and the past president I mean we have lots of past presidents. But we have. Usually each president designates 1 person to be their past president advisor and she is that for me and she’s good about checking in with me and just like doing the are you taking care of yourself thing because 1 thing about having been president before is you know that some of it can be aggravating and stressful. So at any rate I said well um, you know if we get to see each other in person again. We can do a a long drinking binge and I think it’s gonna be I told her I think I think I’m gonna go to chicon at the end of August. Um, world con in Chicago but I think that’s the next time so but at least there will be that time so that’s one of the things I have to do is register for that conference and I’m gonna register for world fantasy convention which is in New Orleans and November so I’m committing. And committing to things du but Don it’s exciting all right I’m going to go and get going on my things I’m gonna try to get some of this shit off of my to do list but this is my resolve wish me luck. And I will talk to you all on Thursday you all take him bye bye.

First Cup of Coffee – March 21, 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. Which is actually not all that satisfying. It’s green tea this morning and I didn’t get the water hot enough. Alas today’s Monday March Twenty first was my stepdaughter’s birthday today. Happy birthday Lauren ha. So um, how was your weekend. Mine was good. Mine was good. Um, rejuvenating I did stay unplugged almost entirely yesterday I did plug. Turn on the laptop in order to set up a Zoom call with my husband’s siblings and so we did a cocktail hour with them. What was fun. Oh I take to. And went ahead and made some coffee and I boiled hot water and tried rejuvenating my grain tea so going to let that steep. Ah all right? So let’s dry that first cup of coffee. Ah, that’s so much better. All right? So Monday Monday Monday I’m going at it with renewed vim and vigor. Hopefully um I didn’t quite get. Two k per day every day last week I actually did about the same as I did the previous week which is interesting. Um the previous week I got eighty nine sixty and last week I got 87 64 so not quite as good. And that was the previous week was going for three k per day which I still didn’t do. But I think I’m going to do another week of trying to do two k per day and see what happens. Um Thursday i.

02:27.81
jeffekennedy
Hit tired and didn’t get much and then Friday I did better but I still got just 1500 I was I don’t even remember Fridays feels like a long time ago. Um I was not getting many per hour on Friday. Well no, what my problem was. 4 ah 2 6 15 and 5 ah two were my 3 word count averages. Oh although I that’s right? So for that third hour I actually went back and revised the prologue in chapter one because I sent those off. To the romantic fantasy shelf is organizing a benefit anthology for ukraine and they had asked me if I would contribute something but they wanted like a 5000 word short story and reader I do not do 5000 words short stories and I didn’t really have anything that I could give them um and they so they said well um Miranda Honfleur and Jessica fry have been organizing this. They said what we’re asking some of our authors to do and they were very flattering to me so that that always works where they said something about me being like a leader in the field and I don’t know what? All. Ah, but it was like oh you know? and besides I wanted to help but they said you could give us the first chapter of your work in progress and then it’s a sneak peek for the readers and I was like oh because you guys know I just don’t normally show stuff until I’m done. Especially since sometimes my first chapter changes. So but they’re putting the caveat in there and I think that this first chapter won’t change that much of course now I’m totally paranoid that it sucks and everybody will hate it. But. When I went back to revise and I spent an hour we’re revising the prologue in chapter one which together are pretty close to 5000 words. Let us just see what they are. That’s why I love excel. And knows that excel is telling me now that I can ask it to analyze my data without all those troublesome complicated formulas which I think is kind of funny. It’s like I know how to use formulas. Um 4500 words between the 2 so so yeah that’s what I did I didn’t want to send it.

05:13.20
jeffekennedy
As is and so I went and revised and I didn’t end up changing a whole lot. So for what it’s worth.

05:27.80
jeffekennedy
I could have put a little dollop of cream in this and it would have been better zip terrible if I pop off and fix my coffee yet again, it’s a Monday I’m gonna do that. Okay. And guys will be relieved to know that I’m finally happy now so much better that even if I do just a tiny little spoonful of cream. It just helps take the edge off. So um, yeah. Was kind of a different weekend I ended up running a lot of errands. Um, for those of you who watched the podcast on Friday you will know that our car is probably totaled David got rear ended. Um, we haven’t gotten the. Final word yet, but that’s what that’s what everybody is predicting so we shall see I suppose there’s possibility that it will be repairable. But I I think we’ll probably find out today. Um. So on Saturday David was feeling I mean he was sad. You know he goes out and drives for uber a lot on the weekends and he was so he was kind of feeling at loose ends and kind of. I mean it is a loss right? I mean I I know that like a car’s an inanimate object but he um went out Friday morning and got all his stuff out of the car and he said it looked kind of sad being there in the tow lot left. Left alone. He said you know we’ve had that car for 5 years and he’s spent a lot of time in it. So um, so Saturday I had a board meeting for a SFWA at 11 so we kind of hung out in the morning. Took it easy bread and stuff and then I did the board meeting and gave them notes for the one o’clock nebula conference planning meeting and instead I skipped out with David and we went and looked at cars we went out for lunch that was very nice and we. Went to carmacs the inevitable stop and we went to Toyota to look at their came rays and we went out to the Tesla dealership because we were thinking maybe of going electric or hybrid. Um, but.

08:09.92
jeffekennedy
The cost for the car is probably yeah like even a used tibrid car is probably going to be a lot more expensive than what we want to spend so we did a lot of number crunching. We do have a jeep. And he’s going to see about maybe being able to drive the gp if we don’t have the car payment. The camera was almost paid off. We would have had it paid off by like November of this year so that’s it that just figure. Um, the good news is we don’t know much on it. But. We um, you know if we’re not paying insurance and not the car payment then that frees up some money each month and he figured out that it cost him something like ¢13 a mile to drive. Camera and it’ll cost ¢19 a mile to drive the gep so it’s not terrible difference. So we’re going to see how how that works we’re going to see if he can drive that for uber he has to get it inspected and everything. But. Probably have to put a new battery in it. But we’re going to see how that works for a while and then maybe see if we could save up cash for a hybrid. So so that’s the plan. Um, we could finance it maybe. 1 of the things about and I don’t know if other people talk about this so you know David and I are both basically on freelance income at this point in time with him driving for uber he does get a small retirement stipend because he took early retirement and he gets and he has his social security. Which is also not a lot and I’m the major wage earner now. But one of the I know the downsides one of this odd parts about being a writer, especially if you’re self publishing is people don’t want to give you loans It’s hard to get financing for stuff and Grace Draven and I were talking about this. Not long ago because she’s looking at getting another traditional publishing contract for a standalone. She said she’s not going to do a series again. But she does have an idea that she gave our agent because we have the same agent and possibly go on submission with that and the major reason for her to go and I was surprised because Grace was like I don’t want to go tread ever again because she hates the externally imposed deadline. She doesn’t.

10:51.66
jeffekennedy
Feel like she makes as much money. In fact, she’s calculated. She doesn’t make as much money on tried. But if you’re getting paid by somebody else if you have a contract like that. It’s easier to get credit to get financing for stuff isn’t that funny. Whereas if you have freelance income where you’re just making money you know like from Amazon selling stuff you know selling your books on Amazon They don’t even care how much you’re making each month they don’t want to give you a loan. So I guess it makes you go to? um. More of a pay by cash which is good. Um, but yeah, funny thing so we shall see on the cars. Um, we we did have 3 which is arguably one too many for 2 people. Ah the ah thing is is is our other car is my. 96 jag convertible which doesn’t do great on snow and ice. So it’s a bit of a limitation there but the car’s in great shape. So somebody the other day called it. My vintage jag. Were saying Jeffe drives a vintage jag and I thought you know this is one of the things about you know and I and I feel like I you know I’m middleaged but you know it’s like getting up there in years. It’s like when I bought the car. It was not vintage. So it’s just um, funny how things in your life become vintage over time and I was trying to think about how old my stepdaughter is today and I think she’s forty I think she’s turning 40 rty today so and and when we were having the cocktail hour with David’s siblings last night it was um, you know we were just talking about the ages of the various grandchildren and so forth and Kathy his older sister. Her granddaughter. Is they’re taking her to blackcock Colorado to to the casinos for her birthday and I said yeah but is she old enough to to go to a casino and I was joking but you know they’re like yeah she’s 25, but so anyway, ah so it was. It was fun going out and looking at the cars and seeing what was available and we do have a couple of salespeople looking for something good for us apparently hybrid cars are moving pretty fast with the gas prices. So no surprise there and let’s see what else um.

13:43.95
jeffekennedy
Oh and then Saturday night I did the live stream the Youtube live stream for the group that is doing the campaign to combat violence against women be a w and they have I will include the link in the show notes because. They have um, part of their fundraiser I’m giving away several things so you can get a tuckerization from me and I forgot to talk about this before the live stream because I suck but you get a tuckerization is something that you can purchase and that means that you get to have your name. In 1 of my future books as a secondary character. Although um, what’s funny is Karyn Hardie in The Arrows of the Heart. That’s her book. She started out as she was a tuckerization that guide. Bought for his wife from another fundraiser and so that was that was her name and so that’s where when I she was originally a very minor character I thought she was probably only going to be mentioned and then I thought she was only going to have a cameo and then she ended up having her own book. So you never know you also I’m also offering a um, a 30 minute Zoom chat coaching or just to shoot the breeze and also a critique of first five thousand words of a chapter or some such. So I will put that link in the show notes but really great group. They’re pretty awesome and well worth bidding on those things. So so yet we ended up staying up late Saturday night which is just kind of funny for me. Um. That’s like a big deal. But after the live stream I hadn’t wanted to eat before it because we’d been out like running around. We’d had lunch outright and I wasn’t hungry before I’d just be there for the live cast by like six thirty so David made this dinner afterwards. So we ate late which is also very unusual for us and we watched the truman show and I was enjoying watching that I hadn’t watched it for a long time so we ended up staying up and watching the whole thing. So I stayed up to like 11 I know right. And then slept in Sunday morning. So that was lovely and then as I mentioned I stayed offline all day yesterday. So that was restful I got a lot of things done I went and bought my sweet pea seeds which I am going to plant today the tradition in my family.

16:34.27
jeffekennedy
At least it comes from my grandmother I don’t know if my grandmother got it from anyone is that you soak the sweet pea seeds in buttermilk overnight and you’re supposed to plant them on St Patrick’s day I didn’t do obviously I missed planting on St Patrick’s day but I figure as long as I observe that. Particular timing the magic still works. It’s funny because um, some of you who have been watching the podcast for a long time may recall two springs ago in March of 2020 when I could not get sweet piece sees I looked. Everywhere for them and I was planting them late because we’d been in lockdown of course and and and oddly enough my little local neighborhood hardware store which has a whole lot of stuff that we need. Um. They had tons and tons of seeds and they had 1 pack of sweet pea seats only 1 kind and I even asked the guy who owns the store and he’s like I think there’s there’s you know it’s like they buy the collection but the collection did not contain sweety sees so I went out to the nursery. My favorite nursery here in Santa Fe Newman’s and they had tons so there is not a sweet piece shortage I want you all to be aware that we we’re okay so I’ll get those planted today on one of my writing breaks and. I got some of my pictures framed and’s see the the little witch that krene gave me and you probably there’s too much glare on the one above from the window. But that’s ah, a new piece I got a a unicorn had to pause to sneeze. There are tree pollin is now high officially high. So. So it begins and I also framed the piece that you gave me for a Christmas mom so that’s hanging up so you know like lots of little things I got a lot of that kind of stuff done. This was my to do list from yesterday because I wrote it on paper. So I wouldn’t have to go turn on my laptop to look so I got quite a few things done. You’ll notice quite a few are crossed off not everything. But so anyway, um, yeah I guess I don’t have a whole lot to say today. But the. 1 thing that about doing the Youtube live cast is one of the girls said that she really liked listening to the ah the first cup of coffee and she was like it’s just like having a little chat over coffee and I said that’s exactly what I’m going for so I hope that it was.

19:21.18
jeffekennedy
Ah, good little trap for you guys too and I will talk to you all tomorrow take care Bye bye.

First Cup of Coffee – March 18, 2022

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog, Podcast




Transcript
00:00.67
jeffekennedy
Good morning everyone this is Jeffe Kennedy author of fantasy romance and romantic fantasy I’m here with my first cup of coffee.

00:16.73
jeffekennedy
Sometimes you just have to take a moment to savor the coffee. Um today is say it with me Friday woo March eighteenth kind of a darkish morning here in Santa Fe we from. Been getting a lot of sort of rain snow very springtime in the rockies around here. Great moisture. Did I tell you guys I don’t think I did I’m supposed to let go of this and I haven’t let go of it yet. We had a substitute postal carrier and he ran over my rain gauge I have. Had bought a rain gauge and put it out. We have sort of we have like a circular driveway with this cactus garden in the middle and I had it like two feet inside of the rock border of the cactus garden and this guy who was obnoxious anyway and I I woke. I won’t bitch about all the ways in which he was invasive I only saw the 2 days like our regular guy who’s fantastic and we tip in generously every year because he’s fantastic must have been on vacation or something how dare he and so there’s a substitute guy and he’d like. Clipped so far over into the cactus garden that he ran over my ringage and shattered it and I know I’m supposed to be letting go of it. It was not an expensive rainage. But I have no idea how much moisture we’ve gotten in the last few days because ran over my rain. Gauge I am bitter I haven’t complained about I considered it but he hasn’t been back so anyway. Ah yeah, so ongoing rains. No sleep. Little bit of accumulation. Not a lot. Not super cold either. It’s like hovering right around freezing. But yeah, very um, winterry kind of wintry press lots precipitations March which is good. We want it? Ah so. Yesterday yesterday was a day. Ah I did not get my 2000 words I got a little over a thousand. Um I I hit tired I I did my first couple of hours and I was gonna do my third and I still had like 900 words to go and i. Really hit tired I I wonder if it was partly from having the stuff done the day before like my body was still recovering from anesthesia or you know just like being poked at and all of that. But yeah I felt tired and so I um finished out some stuff.

03:03.13
jeffekennedy
You know, handled some SFWA things that I needed to approve and so forth and then I knocked off early and started watching snuggled into my chair and started watching Severance you guys been watching Severance? It’s on Apple Tv um I saw one gel I follow Regina Small who used to be with RT and was like when the first people to love my books so she obviously has fantastic taste and she had posted a funny set of pictures because they she’s got a little boy who’s like for and. She and her husband had a date night and so she had photos of her and her husband in New York with their wine and she said um, yes, your mom and dad had date night so that they could drink went out to pick oh that we was um. Splurched spl fliurched on a babysitter so that they could go out drink wine and talk about severance and I thought huh what is severance so I start watching it and there’s um, 6 episodes out so far. The sixth 1 comes out today and some it’s kind of a freaky show. And like especially after that episode 5 I’m like now I want to go out and drink wine and talk about severance with somebody facto I should tell Megan that so that she will um, put that on her schedule. Ah, yeah, it’s it’s one of those shows where I’m I’m so intrigued and it keeps getting twistier and twistier and I hope they won’t like make it so Twisty and weird that it ends up making no sense anyway. So I was watching my show and then. I had watched an episode and it’s pretty intense. So I bounced off and my mom had told me to watch a 60 minutes thing about Ted Lasso because I’d got my mom to watch Ted Lasso so I went and found that on Youtube and I was watching that mom and it had a fire going on the fireplace and I thought. You know, as soon as that was done. It was like a 15 minute segment I was going to get up and feed the cats and pour some wine and put some lazonia in the oven because David had decided to go out and get a few rides he drives through uber and so he said he’d go out and get a few rides before. You know evening the afternoon flights coming in and so forth. So about four thirty David text man he got rear ended so I will put picture on the show notes everybody was fine. Our car may be totaled. It’s.

05:48.90
jeffekennedy
It’s hard to say the the rear end is really missed up. Um, kicked off the muffler and the whole exhaust train pipe underneath I’m not a car person and ripped off the back bumper and kind of jacked up the trunk I mean it’s a. It’s a Toyota camera that’s got over two hundred thousand miles on it. 225000 so I mean it’s had a good life. It’s served as well. We’ll find out if it can be repaired so I drove into town to get David he had passengers at the time 2 really nice guys. Polish guys. From Denver originally from Poland I guess Polish accents but have been in Denver for like 20 years and they were just down here touring and they just wanted to get to the Plaza. They just wanted to see the Santa Fe Plaza and the cops had kept them there for a long time keeping everyone’s id so. Um, what had happened was I I won’t go too into the weeds for you guys because you don’t know Santa Fe streets and stuff. But this gal was in It’s a fairly busy street. It was on serreos for those of you who do know but serreos on the plaza side of St Francis so they had crossed st francis it was after the railroad runner train had gone by so over they surging forward. Leaping forward to get out and you know be ah free at last and this gal in front of David was in the left hand lane and he was right behind her in the left hand lane and. This other person came zooming up on the right cut left in front of her and across traffic to turn into this street where la shows is if you know Santa Fe I said I wouldn’t get into the weights and I did sorry and and so she hit the brakes and David. Stopped and had his foot on the brake and he was making sure that he didn’t hit hurt which he didn’t and the gal behind him slammed into him so but fortunately the gal in front of David got the plate of the person who pulled that shit because they. Toward left in there. But then there was traffic and they weren’t able to Zoom off. So apparently the cops had told David that they had already located that person so we’re David’s fine he seems to be doing well he’s had a couple hot bas. But so far now. Ill effects and I think they um you know didn’t hit terribly hard despite the the damage he says he got a little bit of Whiplash. So we’ll see how he did so it was a good thing I hadn’t started.

08:34.94
jeffekennedy
Drinking my wine I had to figure out how to put out the fire I’d won those fire logs and I to put it out because I thought all we needed was for me to come back and have the house be on fire. It was fine so went got him and then gave his passengers a ride dropped them off to the pla I’m like do you want me to. Drop you off at our favorite bar. That’s like a block from the plaza so you guys can get a drink and and they’re like no we want to get to the Plaza. So I was like all right, take it right to the plaza and drop them off so at least they achieved their destination but only at like an hour’s delay more than an hour. Probably. Ah, the 2 cars had to get towed off. Yeah so that was our excitement. We’ll see what happens with getting another car if this one’s totaled. We didn’t owe much on it. So maybe we’ll be able to get something else. Although David was saying I really don’t want to try to shop for a car in this market and that’s like you know it? So so hard to get cars right now. But maybe we can get a good use. 1 David’s really been wanting to get an electric car. Which would be great for you know, doing stuff around Santa Fe so maybe we’ll look into that that’ll be nice. So um, that’s what we’re doing and I’m going to the nice thing about. My new schedule is that I only need 2800 words 28 61 to hit 10 k for the week so I am going to try for that today because it’s less than 3000 math and. We’ll see if I can get that and that way I’ll be back on track and if not oh well that’s just worth worth shooting for right um. Yeah I’m closing in on the act 1 climax so I may be slowing down slightly on that because I I do need to get the stake set up and I’m still not entirely sure how this is gonna go I even asked doranda about this the other day because this is um, The Storm Princess and the Raven King last book in Heirs of Magic. Um, this is Salena and Rhyian’s story and I set this up in the prequel. Novella The Long Night of the Crystalline Moon and I knew from then kind of what.

11:15.77
jeffekennedy
At least what trope I wanted to use for this fourth book and and and those of I don’t some of you have been reading. Others have not but they have ah a huge problem. With their love affair and I think I could tell you because this is not spoilery because it comes out at the very very beginning of the prequel novella and book one so that Salena and Rhyian were lovers when they were teenagers first. Love beautiful and all of this and Rhyian screwed it up by cheating on her. And I know and in an unforgivable way. I mean is there a forgivable way to cheat. But um, you know basically he panicked she told him she was in love with him and he panicked and he screwed it up kind of on purpose because Rhyian is a messed up boy. So. Now. They’ve sort of been trusting each other’s company on this whole quest and fighting with each other for those of you keeping up with it and so now comes great resolution and so I’ve known kind of how I want them to come back together. But. Now I’m not sure how it’s going to dovetail with the external arc of the quest of what they need to do to resolve the quest and so I’m I’m overthinking I’m thinking too much. We’ll see how it goes but I’ve got like 18000 words on it so far eighteenth eighteen four 60 so and I’m shooting for around 95 so it’s not terrible. Um, we shall see him. So um I did make a note that I wanted to talk about cliff hangers which. This is a term that’s getting thrown about in reader stuff yesterday and some of this comes from responses to what I talked about yesterday with the readers really going after Jennifer L Armentrout which I am am reliably told Meghan Ciana Doidge commented on the Instagram post. That she thinks readers are reading it wrong and you know what do you do this happens I remember when I was teaching at community college teaching writing and I was using best american short stories and we were. Talking about some of the stories and one of the gals in the class said this story sucks. There’s there’s no nothing redeemable in this story and I said well the story doesn’t suck.

13:58.27
jeffekennedy
Story isn’t a bad story because obviously enough people thought that it was a really good story for it to get best americans short stories. So there are things that you don’t like about it. But it’s not objectively bad and she said no it is bad. She said my opinion matters. And I and I find that very interesting because I do think we’ve moved that way as a culture where everybody’s opinion has equal weight and it’s like well yeah I mean you get to say whether or not you like a thing you know and as a reader. Yeah, absolutely read the thing that you like and if you don’t like a book. Yeah, you don’t like it. But you don’t necessarily get to say this is what the book does ah because that is your subjective opinion and what happened with Jennifer is that apparently she tried to explain. That readers had misinterpreted some things about the book which Megan says yeah they misinterpreted but it’s it’s a balance right? because as I mentioned yesterday readers take in a book and make it their own. We all read things to our subjective lens. And I’ve talked about numerous times on here about going back and rereading books. Ah you know thirty years later and reading it in a totally different way because I bring a totally different set of experiences to the story than I did when I read it when I was younger. So this is something that really happens. Um, do readers read things wrong probably I mean there are times when people bring their own experiences to something and so they say well this is bad and it’s like well it’s not bad. And and and we can go to the other end of the spectrum on this because you guys have heard me rant before you know like um, Stephen King said that Stephenie Meyer was a bad writer you know and and people talk about like twilight being badly written and it’s like no no, no. People don’t read 5-800 pages of a book that is badly written. It may not fit a particular aesthetic that you have but that doesn’t mean it’s bad so cliff hangers. 1 thing that and I get this all the time too. People will say that a story ends that my stories end in cliffhangers and the thing is is if you are writing a series you are going to have open ended threads at the end of the book and.

16:47.44
jeffekennedy
Different readers have varying tolerances for how open endeded that ending is so let’s talk about what a cliffhanger actually is a cliffhanger is a deliberate device that was developed in serials I think from like melodramas. Where it was literally. The story would end with a person hanging off of a cliff. Okay, you know like we have the whole joke about um, you don’t like those old melodramas where the heroin is tied up on the railroad tracks and here comes the train lone game jones there is a song. Um, and they would end with the character in grave peril hanging off of a cliff a cliff hangar that is what a cliffhanger means it’s it’s a non ending well readers really throw this around now. That they call anything that doesn’t have every any story that doesn’t sufficiently tie up everything that they want to know by the end of the story. They tend to call a cliff hair and as my assistant Karine will say you know she says I don’t think they know what this word means and it’s like yeah. It’s it’s being misapplied and the thing is is that there are a lot of authors out there doing the serial cliffhanger style approach. It’s being used a whole lot in. Kindle unlimited ecosystem right? I even listened to a class taught by 1 gal who said that she’d built her career off of cliffhans and she said make them the cliffiest of cliffhangers make those cliffhangers sharp. She said those readers will. Write to you and they will bitch at you and then they will read the next book and so she was leveraging that it. It’s a method. It’s a way of doing things hydrop pause to sneeze there. So and I read. 1 of her books and it did end with the hero and heroine in grave peril you know it was like they were surrounded and it looked like they’re going to get killed I can’t remember the specifics but it was something like that and it ended and it’s like that. Is a cliffhanger if you have someone writing a series and you know it’s a series in particular if if a book doesn’t claim to be standalone then you’re going to have dangling threads at the end you are going to have some things that are open-ended.

19:38.23
jeffekennedy
Even a book that finishes a series or is a standalone may not answer every single question because sometimes there are things that can’t be answered. So. Maybe we’d need a different term I like open-ended. You know we could call it something else, but it’s not a cliffhaner and you know I actually don’t pay much attention to when readers complain that my book ends on a cliff hanger. Maybe I do pay some attention because I it irritates me because I actually don’t do cliffhangers I don’t do the literal definition of a cliffhanger I may have unresolved threads but not cliff hangers. So um. Just thoughts on that you know if you guys don’t if if you guys you know if readers don’t like open-ended endings then then maybe don’t read series. That’s one way to do it. And I know that there are some readers who deliberately look just for standalones. There aren’t a lot of those anymore. That’s true. Although um, dorda and I have been talking about wanting to have cliff hangers or not cliffhanars sorry wanting to have standalones. Just because we do get kind of tired of the cliffhaner accusation and also writing the last book in a series as heart. So it would be nice to skip that. So anyway, I’m going to go write mine. I hope you all have wonderful Friday I hope you have a great weekend and I hope it’s uneventful. Let’s go for uneventful, right? You all take care bye bye.

First Cup of Coffee – March 17, 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.

00:13.81
jeffekennedy
Delicious. Today is Thursday March Seventeenth St Patrick’s day so I’m a wearing the green. Yes I am irish – irish and scot come back from a. Long line of irish and scottish immigrants I know the scottish isn’t relevant for ah St Patrick’s day but some of the things I am wearing like the earrings my green celtic knot earrings I actually got in Scotland but. I am drinking coffee today out of my green Jameson mug which I did buy at the jamison brewery distillery gift shop in Ireland. Was kind of funny because David and I went to the Jameson distillery which is now located outside of Dublin and I forget the name of the town that it’s in but we he had been fishing that morning and we’d gone to this really cool remote beach where he’d been fishing and it was a. Very gray and rainy day which it seemed like it always was in Ireland at least the whole time we were there and we went to the distillery on our what you know we thought oh well we might as well go do a distillery tour since it’s all gray and rainy and of course the cruise ship. Tour buses had chased us even there but we were there at a pretty good time but the tour was like $30 a person I mean to tour the distillery and we were like well fuck that shit. Didn’t want to say it that badly. So instead. We went to the gift shop and and we spent way too much money in the gift shop but we had cool things I know some people talk about ah you know like it’s for I don’t know if it’s still a thing I haven’t been invited to a wedding in a while. But there was a time where like the young people getting married had these things where they wanted experience stuff. So sorry I got a phone call the clinic from yesterday following up to see how I am I am fine. Um. So what was I saying about shopping at the gift shop jamison distillery game them I lost my train of thought. But anyway we bought things there. Oh the experience thing that it’s um, you know that there was.

02:52.60
jeffekennedy
Like there was this one couple who got married and they like went to his particular website where instead of buying them plates or you know, whatever on their wedding registry. You could buy them parasaling or something like that and they were all you know we want experiences more than we want things which. You know, fair enough? Whatever but I thought this was funny that we kind of traded things for the experience. It was like now we did not need the experience of touring the jamison distillery but we did buy whiskey and my coffee mug and. Got gifts for people and I got an amazing jamison umbrella which I almost never get to use here because I live in the desert and it doesn’t rain all the time it is snowing a little bit this morning bright light snow. So anyway, happy St Patrick’s day to you all. Always find it a good um celebration of irishness. It’s not much of a party thing for me but enjoy the the nod the nod to the ancestors. So. Um, my week is going well the revised schedule of going for 2000 words a day you guys it feels downright luxurious. It’s just it’s amazing. How luxurious it feels and i’m. I mean I’m sure I’ll get used to it but I almost feel a little bit at loose ends because I’m not exhausted when I’m done so now I may be able to just start getting to some of this business stuff. But I think I’m so used to not getting to some of the business stuff that it’s it’s kind of unusual. No writer coffee today because all of my people are busy doing other things which people are out of town and taking classes and I don’t know what all they’re doing. But. So I’m trying to think if I have much to say today. Um, yesterday was kind of a funny day because you know I I think I mentioned on Tuesday that I’d go get the colonoscopy Darynda and I were laughing about it because I told her. My joke that you know I was saying you know a girl never forgets her first colonoscopy and Darynda was laughing and laughing and I was saying you know at least she gets me because other people are just like well I I guess you wouldn’t but and durantda thought it was so funny and she told her sister when she got there and k neverters.

05:39.27
jeffekennedy
You know she told Netters the joke and net is is like well yeah I guess you wouldn’t forget, you’re you know, getting a colonoscopy and it’s like during it’s like no you joke get the joke so you know at least we get each other um finished book 5 of the 7 waters series and started book 6 I guess I start today say that yesterday was kind of a funny day because I did log out by about one thirty and went on my way to to get my first colonoscopy and then afterwards just you know, got home around four thirty or 5 and kind of. David got takeout from harry’s roadhouse for us and I just kind of veged and I generally feel pretty good that that was actually the phone call I got oh I said that that the clinic was calling to follow up. So I guess that was nice. They said drive questions. It’s like what questions could there be. And everything’s fine. But so I do feel kind of bad segueing into the medical stuff. But then somebody out there commented saying that it was timely on hearing about the trials and tribulations of the medical stuff too. So I figure. All fair here at first cup of coffee. We talk about writing we talk about getting our colonoscopies. It’s that everything’s out on the table here. Yeah oh and I just remembered something else I need to do hold on. So yeah I’m getting closer to committing to. Setting a preorder date for storm princess and the Raven King since I’m feeling so much better I would set it for doing this at the two k per day schedule at my current rate. If I can sustain this which so far it’s feeling pretty sustainable. Um I could yeah have it out by the end of may which is a bet since it’s mid -march now it that I would make it a nice luxurious end of may date like may thirty first possibly except that’s the day that st martin’s releases all their paperbacks. There was considerable debate yesterday among a couple different groups of Jennifer L Armentrout

08:20.78
jeffekennedy
Massively successful author of fantasy romance started out in paranormal romance and then like many have sort of segued more into the fantasy romance. Um, and I’ve I’ve met Jennifer and she’s ah she’s a delightful person that. For those of you who haven’t been around for a dinosaurs age which I’m starting to feel like um Stephanie Prater high Stephanie a very sweet person I believe her nickname is the care bear reminded me that it was my author birthday yesterday. So these girls celebrate. The anniversary of their first publication and I couldn’t even remember what I had officially said was I was trying to figure out what my author book day would be and so I went with the publication of my first book which was wyoming trucks. True love and the weather channel. Which turned out to have an official publication date of March Sixteenth ah two thousand and four which is a funny thing because I actually had copies of the book I remember this that I had copies of the book in like November and I did. Book signings. You know what I should put a photo I’m not put a photo on the podcast of me you could see baby Jeffe um I’d look so young to myself now signing that book at my book launch event in Laramie Wyoming at my favorite local indie bookstore where. My best friend was the manager and all of our friends came because it was a small town and it was winter and there was nothing else to do. My mother came up for it. She gave me a beautiful necklace as a celebratory celebratory gift and then we had a party at a bar afterwards. We didn’t. Like have the bar totally closed off but it was mostly us I don’t remember it was a week night and winter and we we catered in food and it was such a fun party. It was you know like all my writer friends and other friends from around town and it was a great time. But anyway I know that that was well before March maybe it was January I wonder if this photo says let me look well interesting. It looks like that signing was on March first two thousand and four so we did a little ahead of the release date but not as much as I thought but. Ah, tell you what you guys Laramie Wyoming March first might as well have been I mean that’s dead of winter still one of the reasons why I don’t miss living there. You’ll see in that photo though that I’m wearing a ah long gray cashmere dress.

11:07.71
jeffekennedy
Which was one that my mom gave me there used to be a store. Do you remember that mom. There was like a store that was like all cashmere stuff I don’t remember what it was called and it it was very expensive I loved that dress. Loved that dress. Um, it was way too hot. To wear in Santa Fe I remember wearing it all the time me and moved here. It was like it was way too hot and the thing about living here is we have mots and if you have something that is 100 % wool or something like that with no acrylic in it at all even a little bit acrylic will save it. But the mas will get to the wo and I’ve got like cedar things everywhere and they still get to it and they put holes in it. It broke my heart I have a couple other things that the moths got to and yeah, once once you get those gaping holes and stuff I don’t think there’s much you can do about it. So now. Let’s see what date. That was I mean day of the week I know I don’t have to tell you guys I’m pausing but I don’t know have it. Okay, it wasn’t monday did I say that already I think the photo properties even said that it was a Monday I just I didn’t register that properly. Yeah. Monday March First two thousand and four so um author birthday on that March Sixteenth being the official book release eighteen years and so yeah, they were joking about. Whether or not my writing career could drink it and they’re they’re really wonderful and it’s you know I get I get asked a lot how I celebrate things and it turns out I don’t celebrate things enough so it’s cool to celebrate that. Although I was noting that my very first publication was in 97 and I meant to look for the exact date of that so hold on. Oh it didn’t pass. Did you see that. But.

13:16.59
jeffekennedy
Make sure it unpaused since it was being I don’t know I think if I pause too many times it gets sticky. Um, so first publication wyoming magazine and it says winter 1998 but this is the weird thing about magazines is. Because I know it came out in 9097 because I have that written down what’s interesting and I did not remember this is that it the byline is Jennifer Kennedy which is my actual name I mean Jeffe everybody calls me Jeffe but there it is. Wyoming Trucks, True love, and the Weather Channel which I then it titled the essay collection after this. So this was the very first publication. So in that case it means it would probably be sometime late this fall probably November or December I don’t have an exact date for this one. Will be 25 years 25 years and then this was my first like more this North Carolina literary review this was in 1998 but I don’t have an exact date on it and this was um. And know as I share pages with Lee Smith that was pretty cool. Ah. Yeah, but this was I was looking for the exact story was um, inheritances and I don’t know what they put it under oral history in North Carolina because this was about oh there it is inheritances poetry and prose and this is Jeffe Kennedy I think that Jennifer Kennedy was a mistake I think maybe I sent stuff out under that name says it was my legal name and I think I learned my lesson. Just not even to offer them Jennifer because they would like go to that. Oh I even had it marked huh with my mom’s this is this is a blast from the past I won’t show it because identity theft type stuff but this is a card mom. Um, will take a photo of this and send it to you that says for Kathy and Leo Kennedy and their address and home phone number and ah an email address for both of them. My mom still has this email address and a.

15:47.20
jeffekennedy
Number that tells you something. Okay and so then there’s Inheritances and it seemed like I was going to show you guys 1 other thing. Oh I’ll I’ll show you one other thing since we’re doing show and tell. Okay, so this is the big milestone one two thousand when I had an essay in Redbook. Me and Faith Hill and so this was my story that was in there Ambushed by Love not my title they didn’t even clear that title with me but they paid me a dollar a word. $3000 for one essay I have books that have not made that much money. Those were the days. So. So yeah I have all of these magazines I have like a copy of like all of the stuff that I had my short work in. So. Author birthday dayss I guess that’s how I got off on that. It’s it’s not clear to me how to measure that and I guess that was why I picked the publication of the book because you know magazines you wouldn’t have an exact date that those came out but yeah 25 years since um. Got those first publications and decided that but it was longer ago than that that I decided that I didn’t want to be a scientist and wanted to be a writer so you know it’s interesting because the the girls were all being lovely and congratulating me and. Saying you know mad respect for a long career which I’ve come to appreciate is is an important thing because there are so many people now that I look back friends who were writers over these last twenty five years that fell away that did not stick with writing. It’s not easy to stick with. So so there’s that I didn’t finish talking about Jennifer L. Armentrout that was how I got started on this because I knew her forever ago and there was this whole thing for a while there because there was another Jennifer Armintrout who was published at the same time I think she was m I n. Um, ah Armintrout and she changed her name to Jenny Trout and she even had like this big essay that she put up about how like Jennifer L Armentrout stole her career because they were published at the same time and had the same name and and then she became Jenny Trout and I think Jenny Trout is out there still but I would remember when they were still Jennifer Armintrout I would remember them because Jennifer L Armentrout was love because she’s delightful person and every time I met her. She was wonderful to be around and.

18:37.46
jeffekennedy
So she came out with a book on Tuesday and her wildly wildly successful series that I forget it’s like I tell you what you guys I can’t keep these titles straight you know ashen something courts and blood and whatever. And I started to read the first book I didn’t really get into it. But you know I wish Jennifer? Well she is. She’s you know deserves every bit of success. But apparently there was a big pile on that people were readers were disappointed in some aspect and Jennifer. Holds them and this is all like third hand at this point I think because I heard it from other people who I think heard it from other people. Some might have heard it seen it happening but like in her fan groups and stuff people were complaining about. I don’t know like emotional infidelity between the characters and that they were upset by that which romance readers will get very upset about and she apparently said that they were reading it wrong which you just don’t get to say that as an author you can think it. And you can vent to your friends and you can be like how stupid are these people but because sometimes it is frustrating because readers will be like well obviously it was this this and this and it’s like no actually you read that wrong, but you don’t get to say it. Ah and. Is there such a thing as wrong. Arguably no I mean once you release that creation into the world. Ah you know readers take it in and transform it and make it and knock over their coffee cups I did not it was close. So. Still some coffee in there. Um, you know you kind of have to let go of it. But anyway, um, you know there’s a thing that happens when authors become very very successful where people somehow stop regarding them as being human beings and. Reader um, um, I’m not getting burlint I don’t know why it’s and but nobody stops being a human being nobody reaches a point of success where they no longer feel. The. The slings and arrows right? Um yes, you can be disappointed in a work totally prerogative as a reader certainly has happened to me like I said I didn’t get into this series I can think that Jennifer is a lovely person and not love this particular series.

21:20.72
jeffekennedy
But you know try to keep that in mind you guys that especially if you’re tagging authors on stuff or doing very high profile things. It can be this big pile on and everybody loves the attention clicks and all of that but remember that this is a human being. And think about whether you would actually sit there and say these things to her face and that she might cry because because we feel it you know that’s that’s part of being a creative. So on that note I’m gonna go be creative. Do my thing. Hope you all have a wonderful Thursday and I will talk to you all tomorrow take care bye bye.

Shoutout to Ravven, My Brilliant Cover Artist!

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

This week at the SFF Seven we’re giving a shoutout to our favorite book-adjacent creative! (Be it cover artist, free-lance editor, web designer, etc.) I’d be remiss if I didn’t shout to the heavens about the talents of Ravven, my cover artist.

I swear, sometimes I think I wouldn’t have an indie career without her! 

Ravven is just a hugely talented cover artist with the phenomenal ability to simultaneously nail genre, find exactly the image that’s in my mind, and create a brilliant work of art.

These are the two most recent covers she’s done for me, and they’re just fabulous. All the love to Ravven!