RITA ® Award-Winning Author of Fantasy Romance
//A bit more on organizing large reader events and how scaling up gradually is super important for all small businesses. Also, how to tell if an agent is legit, or – if legit – the kind of agent you need.
//About the evolution of recognizing oneself as a writer, claiming the name, and other steps newbies can take to move from the furtive phase of writing to feeling confident in that skin. Also, it’s FaRoFeb!
//On writing the thing you believe in, how inspiration and survivorship bias play into the tales we share about doing this, along with thoughts on the Women Who Rock documentary (excellent!) and taking control of your own career.
Transcript
00:01.75
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee.
00:14.75
jeffekennedy
Delicious. Ah today is sit it with me Friday Woo Woo woo August Twelfth Eight Twelve Twenty Twenty Two so end of another week. Hello mosquito. Ha so here. We are I’ve I’ve had a good week. Um I am um within striking distance of oh I didn’t open it yet. Of my 10,000 words for the week which makes me happy because I’m happy. Um, yeah and I met a little shy of 54,000 words on the book. 8085 this week. So ah I have no wood to knock on does a great vine count? Um I think I should hit 10,000 for the week which is good because I’m traveling the next four weekends in a row. Which hopefully will not disrupt my productivity but we’ll see we’ll see she’ll be in good shape. Um I have committed to the release date did the cover reveal. For shadow wizard yesterday woo. So I’m putting it on the show notes today. It will be everywhere now I was experimenting with the Nine Square grid on Instagram and it looks really cool now that it’s all assembled. I did the gradual release like little bits at a time on Instagram and I think I don’t think that did anything ah very few likes throughout the day. Lots of likes overnight once the whole thing was assembled. So yeah. towhee agrees. Ah, you know, maybe you know like the bits and pieces are just not that interesting besides which Instagram only wants reals these days. So ah. I’m not sure I would do it that same way again. But I do like how the cover looks on the Nine Square grid it means that I have to be really careful. What I post to Instagram now because if I do one, it’ll like shift it and break it up so I have to do like three or nothing so that it stays.
03:04.68
jeffekennedy
Ah, the travails. But yeah, ah it was fun to see people immediately start pre-ordering. Thank you! Ah excited for you all to read this book. It’s all good and tomorrow morning we are. Flying to Las Vegas Nevada not driving an hour north to Las Vegas New Mexico and um we’re going to go see Celeste Barber very excited and going with good friends Megan and Charlie so it should be. Ah, good party. We should have a great time low party weekend so there will not be a podcast on Monday morning. Sorry mom because we’ll be flying back that morning I suppose I could do like a super sleepy. From the Las Vegas airport podcast but let’s face it. We know I’m not going to so the big challenge for me will be to see if I can get 2000 words on that Monday that’s my. Personal challenge I hope that I can I might try on the airplane to at least get it started maybe at the airport to sort of get it rolling I’m definitely noticing a pattern lately. You know I get most of my words in that third hour some days it’s pretty even the 3 hours but especially this week like my first hour will be pretty crappy and then the second hour a little better and then I’ll get like 1200 words in the third hour so so it goes but I’m I’m happy with the results of going for 2000 words a day instead of 3,000 words a day I am out I kicked my legs up and sort of hit the under circle in the table. Ouch who? ah. When I was doing 3,000 words a day I would definitely notice the mental drain at the end of the day and I would or at the end of writing and I wouldn’t have bandwidth for much else. So 2000 words a day gives me reasonable bandwidth for.
05:34.85
jeffekennedy
Dealing with business dealing with ah SFWA stuff. We did our business meeting yesterday and it was I think it went well seemed to go well, it was funny because we’re doing it on Zoom and so the board is on chat with each other reminding each other of things and so forth and. Somebody pointed out that we have the eternal ah ah difference of whether people say sifwa or sefwa I tended to be more of a sefwa person until someone commented on it I said I thought that’s what it was supposed to be but we can’t agree and I said well at least it’s not an argument like Gif versus Gif which of course then immediately started. The I cannot believe that there are people out there who want to pronounce it Gif and director at large Monica Valentinelli said. Well did you know that the creator came out and said it’s supposed to be pronounced chiff and I said yes, but he’s wrong which she was like well what do you mean? I’m like he’s just wrong. It’s it’s not it’s graphics interchange format. You don’t suddenly change the graph part to jiff. Very rarely is a leading g pronounced with a ju sound instead of a good sound so and besides Jif is already a peanut butter but executive director Kate Baker says that she is a jif kind of girl. I just can’t even so I was thinking about something ah amazingly enough I’ve just finished reading a book by Brigid Kemmerer. Think she says Brigid with a hard g we’re going to go with that since theme of this episode and she could be bridgegitte. But I think it’s Brigid Kemmerer. Ah, and I read her book a curse so dark and lonely which is ah why a fantasy romance kind. There’s not a lot of romance and it’s the one that I alluded to yesterday when I was saying that you don’t have to have hot sex. Um, in fact, there’s no sex on or off page in this book. Um, the closest it gets is a kiss and ah. Yeah, so which normally is kind of a deal breaker for me twilight was an exception because there was so much sexual tension there while it was perfectly chased and I really enjoyed that about it. Um, this one.
08:22.63
jeffekennedy
I just really enjoyed the book I thought it was um, a really interesting take on beauty and the beast and I totally enjoyed the story. So and I read it because ah Brigand was at Apollycon and a few tables down for me. And she was a ticketed author because she had so many people wanting to get their books signed. Ah so she had pretty much you know nonstop line and I didn’t get to meet her that was one thing. Several people asked me about Apollycon. If. We um, you know like if I talked to such and so were meant so such and so on I was like you know we didn’t really have opportunities to mingle. Ah, when the authors were all present in a place we were doing the signings and you. Really couldn’t leave your table for long because there were so many people wanting to come which was great. Ah, and then there weren’t any events that were just for the authors which I am going to suggest that they add I hope that they will. Yeah I was just thinking that David asked for our feedback for but they may not want our feedback I might just um, have to message. So. Ah I also think that they’re not getting some of my emails because I send from that http://jeffiekennedy.com email which tends to go to spam. It’s one of the things about having your own domain. That’s a spammo spmoific. So I was just thinking about I should give them my super secret email address. For people I actually want to hear from anyway. Ah so yeah, I was you know like oh I’ve never heard of Brigid Kemmerer and Jennifer Estep next to me said because we would chat during our lulls our rare lulls. She said how can you have not heard of her she was like Kensington at the same time we were and I was like oh know and she said well that she’d really like this book a curse so dark and lonely and it it was great. It was really good. So um, and I’m now reading the sequel a heart so fierce and broken. Interested to see how that goes there was a love triangle in the first book and it’s kind of being carried into the next book and I’m I’m actually good with this one I don’t usually like love triangles. But I like this one anyway in the acknowledgements Brigid says. Ah.
11:01.88
jeffekennedy
That she wrote this book because her husband said to her. It was a real dark point in her life. She’d been depressed and her husband asked her when was the last time that she wrote something um that was just for her that she enjoyed and. And she and you know that she wasn’t under contract to write and and she realized it been a long time so she wrote this book just for her and then it’s really has been the thing that launched her this has made her famous. Which great for her and it’s interesting because of course Apollycon is belongs to Jennifer L Armentrout oh here comes Isabelle affectionately known as JLA which is much easier and. She did this you know fantasy romance series recently? Um, which I always forget the name because now there’s so many Knockoffs but you know heart of blood and ash or whatever it is um, you all know right vampires and werewolves ah that traditional publishing wouldn’t take then. Said that they didn’t see at a point to it and now she’s done it with um the girls who do 1001 dark nights. So it’s sort of like a little startup press. Ah, it’s like one step different from self-publishing which is interesting. You know that we’ve got all these sort of. Phases of you know it’s no longer just traditional publishing or vanity press. There’s all of these different um levels of publishing self publishing and assisted publishing. Um, so um.
12:57.93
jeffekennedy
Jennifer has spoken a number of times about how she really wanted to write this series and traditional publishing didn’t want it and she wanted to write it anyway. So she did and how much it meant her and now it’s been phenomenally successful. So. And these are interesting stories to tell ourselves and it’s funny I’d already written down a note to talk about this when David told me a story just as I was making my coffee to come out here. He said that um this gal in a. Group that he follows that like does is into online gambling stuff and he said how that she woke up from a dream that she won a jackpot of $1000000 and so she got up and she went and played $40 on 1 of the online slots games. And so so there’s a correlation here right? We we love to tell these stories. Ah, you know she woke up from the dream that she won the jackpot she went and played $40 and she won the jackpot. Um. Brigid and JLA ah wrote the book of their heart. They wrote wrote the thing that they really wanted to write there was Isabella in the background rooting around oh and actually peeing sorry but she loves a little al fresco. Opportunity I’m glad she is at least discreetly shrouded by the vegetation Isabel fell. there’s ah there’s a lot of um, gritty reality here at first cup of coffee. So and and I feel like she’s ruined my my carefully assembled story right? Oh now she’s okay hold on it turned out. She was prepping her spot and so I spared you all the actual display. You’re welcome at least if you’re on video. So the thing is these are all examples of survivorship bias because we never tell the reverse story. Um, we do not tell the story. If the woman woke up in the middle of the night from a dream that she won a jackpot went and played her $40 and lost it all. She does not get online and told this story because it’s a non story right? same is true for writing that book.
15:44.57
jeffekennedy
That we long to write. That’s the book of our heart or that you know everybody says oh we don’t know what we’re going to do with it. We write that book. We love that book. We decide to self-publish it and it goes nowhere. It’s not a story. The exception being. The gal that I talked about yesterday who shared online how her self-publishing experience did not go well that she spent yeah $10000 and made about $750 and how that is. Ah, thing that happens so at that point it becomes a story but it’s not the story. We want to hear right? We love a story like Brigid Kemmerer or jla where they persevered wrote the thing that they wanted to write that. Well. Brigid soldiers to traditional publishing so that’s a different tale right? But you know and then it does really well and we love that we love that vindication. The triumph of the thing that no one wanted and then it does really really well and ah, it’s It’s a wonderful kind of story it and it inspires us and it keeps us going which is something that we need and do not get me wrong because I love hearing Jennifer talk about that story I’ve heard her give the speech a couple of different times. And it is it came for me at a time when I really needed to hear it. Um I don’t know why I’m a little horse this morning but a horse is a horse of course of course. Ah, um, yeah. The first time I heard it came at a time when I needed to hear that and and it helped me put dark wizard out there which definitely was a story for me that way where it was slightly different for those of you who haven’t heard me talk about it before. Dark wizard was a story that I had been mulling for a very long time. Um I mostly just hadn’t gotten around to writing it. However, because I was busy with other things and I also wasn’t sure how I was going to execute it when I told my agent about the idea she loved it. Ah, when I showed her initial pages. She loved it and then when I finished writing the book. She no longer loved it and she did not want to take it out on submission because she said she didn’t know any editor that would want to buy it.
18:27.73
jeffekennedy
And but the difference for me. There was is I had lots of other people who did love it everybody else who read it frickin love this book and including people you know who will tell me the truth. So. And then it did very well when I self-published it and it helped to hear Jennifer’s story and then I heard it again me because I asked her to give the same talk to my local Rw a chapter and and I enjoyed hearing it again then because it does. Help to hear these stories of people persevering of writing the thing that they want to write. It’s a difficult business if you’re not writing the thing you want to write. It’s perilously close to not being worth it. But. There are lots and lots of times that we write the thing we want to write and it does not do phenomenally well and that doesn’t make it any less worth it because we still have to write the thing we want to write that’s. Part of being creative. Um, and I’m getting low on time but I still want to touch on this. We watch this four part documentary on Amazon prime called women who rock highly Highly. Recommend. This documentary It’s incredibly well done. It really traces the history of women and rock as built starting from you know like Gospel and the girl bands of the 50 s and sixty s all the way up to present. And by the time they get to ah more recent times. There’s just way too many to touch on but they have interviews with lots of women some are throughout the whole thing like Nancy Wilson from heart Pat Benatar and they talk about how difficult it. Difficult it was in the beginning and there’s this. It’s wonderfully put together because there’s this chain of people reflecting on their influences so you have the people coming up and talking about listening to Nancy and Anne Wilson or listening to Pat Benatar and practicing the chords listening to those women and being inspired by them and then the older women talking about seeing the younger ones coming up and it’s wonderful with the connectedness and the women helping women and talking about how difficult it was in the industry show crow is in it.
21:15.19
jeffekennedy
Bunch of people are in Shania Twain Chakka Khan ah, other ones I was not familiar with Mavis just Mavis I can’t think of what her last name is from the old Gospel days. Um, and one theme that emerges. And David and I – I think I’ve mentioned before that watching stories about musicians is a great Venn diagram will overlap for both of us because he loves music and musicians and I love the creative aspects so we love it when we can find shows like this but I was pointing out to him and he was agreeing because I’m right. Over and over they would mention having to take control of their own careers having to that you can’t rely on anyone else to do this thing for you that you have to take control of your own career and make it be the thing you want. And I think that’s very true of all creative enterprises that as I often say nobody will ever love your book as much as you do and it’s um I think it’s probably true of of all creative enterprises that. You are the one who will care about it most and if you don’t care about it then it’s not worth it. So on that note I will leave you looking forward to seeing Celeste Barber Standup act tomorrow night and I will talk to you all on. Tuesday you all take care bye bye.
//
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.
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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.
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