RITA ® Award-Winning Author of Fantasy Romance
//A peek at my “map scrap” for NEVER THE ROSES, updates on ARCs, and endorsement quotes as another new-to-me term. Also, not taking other people so seriously and the internet as a weapon against loneliness.
//Guess who’s been ravaging my garden now and are too cute for words? I’m doing a spoilery deep dive on The Idea of You (the book) regarding women’s happiness and pleasure and the social expectations for martyrdom.
//THE STORM PRINCESS AND THE RAVEN KING is out today!!! FINALLY! I’m talking about that, my busy and productive weekend – including a tour of the secret garden – plus special appearance by Jackson.
(Apologies for the failure to stop at the end…)
Transcript
00:00.97
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee.
00:39.45
jeffekennedy
So today is Monday June thirteenth and very exciting day. It is the release day for THE STORM PRINCESS AND THE RAVEN KING!! I feel like we need extra – Let’s do an extra ringing of the chimes for that. Because a long time coming right? I originally planned this book to come out in like freaking I don’t know November what was my first I bet I could tell you what was my first plan my. Sadly benighted plan that got completely derailed. What was the one that I had to cancel I know if I must have it on here somewhere. Okay. I know this is boring but I’m I’m going to look sorry surely I kept it recorded somewhere. Yeah well now I’m just hitting the wrong buttons a new. Well it doesn’t matter. It was something like. November but didn’t exactly work out. Jackson is out here with me this morning. He’s been being a good kitty. Um, we’ve been letting him out in the secret garden with us without harness and he’s been not going over the wall. Was very funny when my friend Megan Mulry first moved to Santa Fe and she house sat for us and I tried to teach how to use the harness how to put it on him and she even called me and I was trying to walk her through it and she couldn’t get the harness figured out and I said um. I’m noticing. Somebody’s been digging one of my plants I know this because I cleaned everything up yesterday. It’s a little disconcerting have to put rocks in these plants to keep the rodents like to the mice like to dig into them and bury themselves. It’s for their sleeping spot. Anyway, um, so I asked her we were like in Tucson for Thanksgiving I think it was and I asked her if she’d gotten it figured out and she said oh I realized that I could just put him out in the back garden because it has walls. It was like um, you might see if he’s still there and she’s like why can he go over the walls and it’s like someone who has not been around cats. It’s like yeah there are not walls who can keep a cat and all right hold on.
06:13.41
jeffekennedy
Now right? I put some rocks it. It was a different plant than what I thought but um I poked and no mouse came jumping out which is what they do sometimes which can be alarming at least temporarily and by put some rocks in. I feel better film anyway, release day for storm princess on the Raven King um I even queued up my photo to show you guys and I’ll put on the show notes. But um, oh and of course we have. This is the problem with using phones because then it’s all fingerprinting over the image and cleaning off my screen and then we’ll probably get glare anyway. But. Ah, ah, ah, all right? So I’m very excited. Um I don’t love the cover model. We ended up out and with this one and it took a lot of work to find the right cover model and he’s twice. He’s on this one and then on long night of the crystalline moon because they’re the. Sort of bracketing couple and I ended up putting up a picture of to Monte Charlemagne instead that’s what ah Ryan looks like so so yeah. Great to have this out great to have that series finished um plans for today are to do release day things. So I feel like I don’t have many to do and then um work on rogue’s pond. If I can get that revision done today. I’ve got a lot to do since I leave early in the morning. Um I did ask the person involved about the yeah sorry I started looking at my email to see if they had replied and they had not. And then um, yeah Karine sent um a question so that got involved with looking at that? sorry. Must be a little scattered this morning I actually feel great. It’s good to have that book out. Um I’m heading off to do this fun thing tomorrow. Oh that’s why I started to tell you was that they said they were going to craft a social media policy because I asked I said you know what can I say on social media about this because I feel like.
11:45.71
jeffekennedy
Part of why I’m doing this is because they want to spread word of mouth and yet there are other aspects that I know are preferred to be kept confidential. So anyway I have not yet gotten that social media policy so we will see I don’t know if all podcasts for the rest of the week it’s um I think I could say this bunch is that it’s a writer’s retreat and it’s kind of an experimental thing and it’s um, right now by invitation only so look how snazy I am ah no, it’s it’s a friend. Um, and yeah, so it’s gonna be great and I think that. Ah, one of the people hosting it also as a podcast so I might ask them if they would like to do a podcast with me have a cup of coffee and chat so we’ll see otherwise I think I might try to embrace the writers retreat thing and um. Actually retreat and just do that. Ah, ah yeah I don’t know I’m fussing with my hair this morning I probably do this a lot on the if you’re on video. Um, so yesterday I I ended up taking a shower last night and I did wash my hair. But. Just let it dry naturally and it’s kind of my today I should’ve done some with it. So that’s why fucking around with it. Ah I had um had a great weekend. It was really nice. We had a board meeting on Saturday that was very quick. That was really great and then um, then David and I went to a party that Emily Moth through I got to meet some of her family and we ran a few errands and that was nice to get done and then we um. Yeah, had a very quiet evening. It was really beautiful weather hot but still and um, wonderful and then I yesterday did massive cleanup in the secret garden.
16:07.49
jeffekennedy
I’m hearing suspicious wrestling noises and I’m going to jackson let me go see what he’s doing this is like the old days right? with the the cat wrangling if you’ve been listening to the podcast for a long time when I like actually walked. Jack’s during the podcast. Okay hold on false alarm. He’s just being a good kitty lying in the tall plants when the shade I thought that was the sound of him going over the wall. So um. Oh so hair in my mouth. What’s going on here pace all right? So anyway I did this big cleanup of the secret garden and I’ll do a little pan about for those of you on video. If you can see but actually I’ll do like a little walk through for those of you who are good people being on video so well, it’s not good I really don’t judge I don’t care if you’re on video or just audio but see I trimmed back this Lilac Bush a whole bunch. And I trimped back the grapevine so it’s all cleaned up and there’s now an easy way to walk through and now you could see it from coming the other direction. See how nice it looks I’m really happy. It was a lot of work. It took me all freaking day but much better. Sorry for the sun blast there. So yeah, that was my ah big project yesterday and it was um. Hot and my hair was like I sweated so much I had my hair on a ponytail and I sweated so much that my hair was actually stiff with salt you do and then I start doing this thing trying to. Fix David’s computer he got this laptop in like January and it was a cheap one and we thought well they’ll be fine because you know he doesn’t use it for that much stuff.
21:05.81
jeffekennedy
Sorry, all this possing this morning I just got a text message on something I’m trying to get tied up before I leave so it’s that kind of day isn’t it. so um so yeah I’m I’m really happy with the work I got done and. In two weeks my friends Kelly Robson and Alex Delamonica will be here. They’re going to house it from my friend Megan Moury so it’s like I’m losing Megan and Charlie as my playmates. But then I’ve imported other friends to be my playmates while they’re gone. Best of both worlds for me and we’re going to have a little party to introduce Kelly and Alex to the other local writers. So welcome to party central um, it finally looks like habitable for other human beings. So I have to clean up the front when I get back next Sunday but that’s um, otherwise I think I’m in pretty good shape I’m hoping to get as I keep saying I know over and over that rogues pawn revision done today. Ah if i. Focus on trying to get it done today I want to put a reader letter at the front and I want to delete that scene and then do a quick read through to see if there’s any ramifications from deleting that scene and I feel like there’s something that I want the. Male lead trying to say male lead instead of hero the male lead to acknowledge to the female lead at some point in the book and it could be that he does more than I think he did but um. Yeah I don’t know so I want to look for that so we’ll see if I can get all that done today. But I’m hoping having the restricted timeline will encourage me not to go into the weeds on this revision I have the preorders set up for all 3 covenant of thorns books I shouldn’t hold up 4 fingers. Why I just have pull None um, and it’s um I did that on Friday boy you know what setting up pre-orders for 3 books at one time and I had to write new backc cover copy for all 3 was a little much but it just took a long time. It took a long freaking time doing all the different platforms and I I sometimes am snarky. Mildly snarky to other authors who say oh well that they use something like drafted digital or they hire someone to upload because they don’t want to have to up to load to all of the different platforms and I’m like oh it’s not that hard. Well when you’re doing 3 books and filling it out for all the different platforms because I upload to.
26:47.53
jeffekennedy
I set it up on Amazon kobo barnes and noble and smash wordss. So for sites. They all ask for information different order had to grab my isbms for all of them betting white’s done um, and then after all of the ah. W Ringling I got the blueberry pie recipe to Karine on time and she forgot to put it in the newsletter because there was like a mini crisis with the website so that’ll be in the next one. It’ll be in the release newsletter coming in a ah day or 2 oh so I was talking about yesterday. Um. Once I got really hot I’d finished everything but I still my great big brush pile you know of leavings outside the the gate and I thought well I’m going to wait for it to cool down a little bit before I can do that because it was like 4 and the hottest point in the day so I went inside and. Tried to deal with this thing on David’s laptop this new laptop has never worked right. It’s just a funky little thing and by funky I am thinking of many other f you words which I know I don’t normally scruple to say but I’m just yeah. Um I ended up being on chat customer support chat for like 2 hours trying to fix this fucking thing. It won’t take the microsoft 3 65 subscription which I have. And I have the family version so I can share with like 5 people and I only share with David and it worked fine on his previous laptop. It will not take it’s just um, it’s so weird it does these. It’s almost like it gets caught in these loops and then it can’t get out of it I suspect the thing’s a limit because the customer support person was doing the remote control in everything and she finally she said have you tried taking this back to the store where you got it? Well unfortunately he got it at Walmart. Which I don’t shop at Walmart but he likes to go there and I think he paid cash and did not keep the receipt. This is what we get for me not doing it just saying so I think we’re just gonna buy him a new laptop. He’s gonna try. Reformatting the hard drive and see what happens? Um, but it’s um, it’s funky. It also has this thing where you cannot delete Microsoft Edge it will not let you delete it. It says that it’s um, critical to the operation on the computer which I thought.
32:18.79
jeffekennedy
Microsoft was not allowed to do that anymore. It used to be. You know they tried to make you know back in the day it was Microsoft explorer they tried to make you that you had to use that for your web browser and I thought they weren’t allowed to do it anymore. But they’re so doing not on this. So anyway, it was like later after it was like 6 – six thirty david even brought my dinner into me and then we finally signed off and the customer service gal even said, um, she said I don’t often get to to say this but it’s been a rare pleasure trying to help you. She was really sweet. Um I was. I was being good and not using profanity. But I was referring to the fing computer e f f I n g so I said I’m gonna go drink wine now and she said have some for me too. But ah so then you know we sat in 8 and. Started watching um one for the money with catherine hegel is she hegel or hegel. Ah from the jenna ivanovvi book I don’t know why that movie got so hugely panned it. It was funny. We we enjoyed watching it so we watched it for a little bit and I they’re like dirty and. Wet stiff hair and all of this to paint an image for you and I um I said and david was getting a little snoozy anyway which he often does right? after he eats. So I said well I’m gonna go deal with this brush pile and so that could be done and I clean the cat boxes too and then I could take a shower and be done for the night and so he came out and helped me move that brush pile that was really nice and yeah, so then I took a shower and it was a quick shower and my hair was so sweat soaked did I mention and snarled that I um put a whole bunch of conditioner in it. So all of this is a very long way of saying that I feel like my hair looks a little. Over conditions today but I had to be able to get a fricking comb throughout That’s the other thing about working on the grapevine is that you like gets your hair up in it and stuff. So anyway, everything looks really great I’m feeling accomplished. A lot to do today packing all of this my flight leaves at like six thirty in the morning so got to be up and adder ready to go but um, yeah, ah, release day for storm princess awesome and then. Hopefully starting tomorrow certainly later in the week I am going to be working on book 4 of bonds of magic I think we have decided that the new trilogy should have a new title for those of you who have been reading the books suggestions. Welcome I’m also looking for. Um.
37:57.69
jeffekennedy
Individual book titles. Ah should we call book one jet ah and it is going to be judgment and Sally for those of you wondering um, should we call book one sarcastic wizard spy wizard ah for those of you who may not have been listening for a long time. You know dark wizard was my working title. It was my working title excuse me from a long time back when it was just a concept when it was just a glimmer in my eye and I’d been thinking about this the dark wizard concept. Here comes Jackson you guys want to see Jackson prowling along there. He is. He’s so handsome Jackie Cat yeah are you a handsome boy yes you are are too. Yes, he knows he is what a good little. Posing kitty I was gonna call him a poser but that sounds wrong doesn’t it. He’s looking for lizards so um, yeah I I had just been calling it dark wizard and thinking I was gonna come up with a better title and Grace Draven was the one who said no you must call it this you I’m I’m ordering you to call it this and I said I cannot name a book dark wizard she said yes you can. So maybe I should ask Grace what should we call it. Spy wizard I kind of like spy wizard sarcastic wizard anyway, suggestions welcome feed them along please feel free to share. On storm princess and Raven King I’m hopeful that now that the series is complete that more people will pick it up I hope that you guys I’m trying not to say you guys anymore. We could talk about that I hope that you all enjoy it I hope that it’s um. Delivers on the promise I think I got it there. so so yeah enjoy and I will um I don’t know if I don’t podcast the rest of this week then you’ll hear from me next Monday you all take care. Bye bye.
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I finished THE FIERY CITADEL, book two in my Forgotten Empires trilogy with St. Martins Press, sequel to THE ORCHID THRONE. Yeah, it doesn’t come out until 2020 – maybe summer? we don’t know – but I completed the first draft and sent it in to Editor Jennie. There will be more work to come, but that’s the big milestone to pass.
I promised myself this time that I’d take some time off before heading into the next project. More than the weekend. As a full-time author, I write five days a week, going for 3,000 – 3,500 words per day. It takes me an average of 3 – 4 hours to get that, with an overall elapsed time of about 6 hours, including breaks. I usually have a pretty tightly packed schedule, so finishing one book has meant diving right into the next. But I track my productivity pretty carefully – I can’t control my creative process, but I can learn all there is to know about it and plan accordingly (which is part of owning your process) – and I’ve discovered that the week after I finish writing a book draft tends to be unproductive.
Even when I schedule myself for my usual work week, the writing tends to feel like pulling teeth. My word counts are low, I screw around a lot, and I don’t really refill the well.
So this week I’ve been not writing. Yesterday I tackled the garage. We have this one corner with a built in workbench and set of shelves. When we moved in (lo, these ten years ago – sheesh), we stuffed a lot of stuff back in those shelves, especially the lower ones, and back in the deep corner where they form an L. The original plan was one side of the L (the long one) would be for David’s tools and the short side would be my garden bench. My husband, however, while possessing many sterling qualities, is almost pathologically incapable of organizing his stuff. So his workbench has been a mess since day one. In fact, it’s a more ancient mess than that, as he pretty much threw the existing mess of his workbench and garage stuff into bins when we moved and dumped it out here.
I keep a hammer and a few screwdrivers in my office, just so I can find them when I need one.
Not only is his workbench a nightmare, when he has no place to put anything – which is always – he’d stack it on my garden bench. It got so I couldn’t even get to my gardening stuff. So I ceded the field of battle. I moved the baker’s rack from our front patio around to the secret garden and put everything there that can safely weather outside. I’ve also pulled most everything out of that space – discovering numerous rodent nests in the process – and now I’ll organize it for him. I kept a lower shelf for my garden stuff that needs to be out of the weather, but otherwise my garden bench is now for his fishing supplies. I’m kind of excited to do the thing where you hang up the tools and draw Sharpie marker outlines to designate where they go. We’ll see if it works and how long that lasts…
Anyway, it’s been good to disengage my brain and simply lift and organize. I’ve been rearranging the patio and garden, too, and things are looking pretty. Plus, I found some cool garden ornaments I shoved back in that corner and forgot I had! Watch for pics of those as I get them put out.
//
Order and chaos have been on my mind lately.
What, you too?
See, I’ve been thinking about writing methods, because last week on Word Whores was all about pre-plotting versus misting through a novel and this week is about writing rituals, or lack thereof.
What I’m discovering is that these things have a whole lot to do with how we set up the rest of our lives. This should be no surprise to me. I’m a fan of tesseract theory and how a small piece of one thing reflects the overall thing. I’ve talked before about how the structure of one day can be the pattern of your entire life. (This is an over-time concept, so don’t panic if you just had a nothing day.) So it makes sense that your overall life affects the pattern of a single day.
We all plan our lives differently. We have different amounts of pre-plotting or misting to our days. Some of us have structure thrust upon us in the form of jobs that require us to be behind our desks from x o’clock to y-thirty. Some jobs change daily and, though you might apply a tentative structure in the form of To-Do lists, this can change completely depending on phone calls and what hits the In-Box. I expect we find our way to jobs that suit us this way. I love my day job for an environmental consulting firm because all that matters is the quality of my work and that I meet deadlines. No one particularly cares what the clock says when my butt is in the chair, just so long as I get the work done and get it done well.
This suits me. I had one of those “be there from x o’clock to y-thirty” jobs before and hated it.
A friend of mine once told me she’d read a psych study that showed that people with very orderly internal lives have wild and disorderly gardens. Likewise, people with more chaotic internal lives tend to produce orderly gardens. She said this while looking at my untamed cottage garden. The photo above shows my usual gardening style, though we’d only been in that house a few years and I hadn’t had time to completely convert it to a jungle-tangle. If I were to show you a picture of my friend’s garden, you would see her neatly bordered rows, with bunches of plants set an exact distance apart. Very pleasing to the eye.
I was forever wanting to sneak over and plant a stray something in the wrong spot.
At any rate, I’ve discovered that, though I’m an orderly person in many ways: ritualistic about my days, methodical in scientific work and my love for spreadsheets is near legendary, there’s another side of me that loves to fling order to the winds and embrace chaos.
I may never plot simply because I love the wildness of an unplanned novel. Oh yeah, later I’ll go back and thin it out here and there, tweak the plantings for maximum effect.
But first I’m tossing my seeds into the wind. Just to see what I get.
//
No, it’s sunny and warm today. This pic is from a few days ago.
Sometime soon, this weekend maybe, I’m going to cut off those seed pods. The gillia need tending also. And the whole secret garden needs clearing out. Time to clear the way for the new.
So, yesterday, I held to my ritual and I did not turn on my phone until after I finished my wordcount. Then I turned on the Blackberry and watched the email messages stack up. And then, wow! A voice mail!
I confess I felt a thrill, dialing in waiting for the voice of RWA to tell me that I’m a special unique snowflake.
But no.
Staples.
Yes, the office supply place that has never, ever called me before, calling to warn me that my order had been delayed until 3/25. For those keeping track at home, yesterday was 3/25.
Just a little cruel jab from the universe, mocking my little dreams.
And apparently the universe couldn’t get enough of the joke: I received two more calls yesterday morning, both from numbers I didn’t recognize, one being a wrong number and the other being Staples, AGAIN. This from a cell phone that doesn’t ring for days.
The great lottery goes on. Allison didn’t final either, with the manuscript that just snagged her an agent and a three-book deal, so that gives you an idea of how well a contest like this predicts publishability. Amusingly, blogger doesn’t believe that’s a word.
An agent who has my manuscript Tweeted from the Bologna Book Fair that what’s “in” are angels, zombies and dystopias. None of which are in Obsidian. I envision that all across Twitterville, writers were brainstorming post-Apocalyptic landscapes with zombie angels.
Nothing new under the sun. Chasing after the wind. Don’t call me angel of the morning.
Staples called me one more time in the late afternoon, asking if my order had arrived. I said, why no, but I was in no hurry. He asked me what time it was for me and I said 4:09. He told me the driver had until 5 to deliver the package. Okay, I said, though did I mention I don’t care. He tells me that by law he’s required to make sure it gets delivered by 5.
I’m wondering if this is part of the Health Care Reform.
After all this? No, my printer ink never arrived. Not that I care, since I’m all set right now and was planning ahead for when the ink in the printer runs out. I imagine that, when I turn on my phone, I’ll have a voice mail from them.
I’m thinking about submitting my manuscript to Staples. At least I can be sure they’ll call.
//This is more remarkable than you might think, because it’s a grave risk here to plant annuals before Memorial Day. It’s not a fashion-risk thing; it’s a spring blizzard thing. Our official average frost-free date is something like June 6. Though no one can bear to wait that long, really. One year our spring came warm and early. I got cocky and planted out my annuals. A week later a snowstorm killed them all.
My hard and fast rule now is: no planting out until Memorial Day Weekend.
A rule I’m now breaking. Bending, really, since the pansies and violas can bear more chill than others. We leave Saturday for Victoria to go house-hunting and our Laramie realtor plans to show the wazoo out of our house while we’re gone. The perennials may be coming up, the purple-red stalks of the peonies reaching for the sun. The rhubarb is unfolding like alien pod-babies. The narcissus are charming, which is their job. But otherwise, the beds need freshening. So, I’m planting before we go. Sticking those violas in the ground and abandoning them for ten days. Not like me at all.
I bought them yesterday at Walmart – also a departure for me. I figured Walter World would have them plentiful and cheap. They’d be nicely forced into overbloom. A perfect way to create a particular image. The garden shop was oddly barren. Even the big-box distribution mavens have apparently finally figured out not to send tender plants our way in May. I pulled a dusty cart from the queue, tugging hard to break its lock with its nested neighbor. Then I bent down and tugged free three tumbleweeds from around the wheels. The wind retrieved them and sent them sailing across the road, back to the barren prairie.
My mother told me yesterday that she has euphoria in her front yard. Well, front courtyard, really. The “Cactus Guy” came to examine the cactus garden that came with their Tucson house. She wanted to know if they were taking care of the cacti correctly. Cactus Guy not only approved of the superb health of the garden, but waxed enthusiastic over the wonderful euphoria specimen.
“At least,” my mom said, “that’s what it sounded like he said.”
Euphoria in the desert. I just love that. Never mind that it turns out to be Euphorbia. (The ammak species, if you want precision.)
I’ll bend my rules and plant flowers only for show, that may not last. And my mom can have euphoria in the front yard.
