Tag: Platinum

The Fairy Godmother of Good Sex

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

Jeffe Fairy CropOne of the questions I get on interviews, or at panels sometimes, is what has surprised me about being an author. I don’t always have a good answer, largely because I’ve been a published author for over fifteen years now. In many ways, I have the gig down.

But I didn’t expect this one.

I have become the Fairy Godmother of Good Sex.

And no – I did not give myself that title. (Not that I’m above that sort of thing.) One of my readers did. Sure, readers have contacted me over the years, to talk about something I’d written that touched them. Frankly, that’s one of the very best parts of being an author – when the circle of communication closes and readers reach out with their ideas.

Since I’ve been publishing sexy stories, however, I get different feedback. Especially from readers of SAPPHIRE and now from those reading PLATINUM, which comes out two weeks from yesterday.

~brief intermission to throw beads and Valentine candy~

I think because these are contemporary romances with relatively mild BDSM, they raise questions in my readers’ minds. Ideas about what they could add to their own sex lives. My heroines are pretty regular gals, too. Ambitious, career-oriented, strong in their hearts and minds – but also adventurous and willing to stretch their horizons. Turns out many readers are the same way (likely why they pick up these books).

And then they ask me about it.

Yeah, those of you who have known me for a long time are laughing and shaking your heads. But hey! It’s not THAT much of a stretch.

I’m pretty happy with this new job. Especially since it comes with a tiara and a magic wand. And wings! In all seriousness, I do believe that everyone should get to enjoy great sex in whatever way they want to go about it – with the ENORMOUS CAVEAT that it’s not destructive to someone else, physically, mentally or emotionally. That caveat aside, sex is one of the great gifts of our mortal lives, in my not-so humble opinion. It brings us both comfort and allows us to grow.

So go forth and enjoy yourselves sexy people!

~waves magic wand~

Another Reason Writing More Books is Better

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

1_10One of my Twitter friends mentioned how worked up she is about her new release. She asked if authors get used to it and how long the excitement lasts after release for more-established authors. A week? Two?

I replied to her and we had an interesting conversation about it. Then, yesterday, I saw on Goodreads that – overnight – over a hundred people had added Platinum to their “To Read” lists. This is a really fun thing to wake up and see. I Tweeted about it, wondering why the sudden surge. Several people suggested possibilities – very likely that it was cited on some high-traffic list – but I haven’t figured it out yet.

Then I went back to work on the Phantom book.

And this, I think, it what makes all the difference between authors of one books and authors of multiple books. The more books you have out there, the more books you’re writing, the less ability you have to obsess over one.

For example, with Goodreads, when I log on – and it’s one of my default pages for when I open Firefox – I have a sidebar that shows my stuff. At the top is my Author Dashboard, which shows my most recent publication. That’s Platinum right now, which is why I immediately notice the numbers. It shows me the cover, how many people have added it, how many rankings and how many reviews. To see more detail than that, or my other books, I have to click and go to the page. I rarely do this, because I think it’s putting my attention on the wrong things. (The main reason I have Goodreads on default is to remind me to update my status on whatever I’m currently reading – also in the sidebar.)

Now that Platinum pops up on that home page, I don’t see the Rogue’s Pawn ranking and review numbers anymore. It makes me move on, regardless of how well a book is performing.

The other thing I notice, now that I have seven fiction publications out there, is that different readers like different stories. We all go into this *knowing* that, but it’s difficult to keep in mind when a reader doesn’t like YOUR book. The perspective gets infinitely better when they don’t like this one, but do like that one.

So, all those times industry folks say the best thing you can do is write more stories? This is yet another reason why.

 

Why It’s Important to Separate Validation from Creation

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

Platinum_finalI’m sure you guys knew this already – I mean, what else do you have to keep track of?? – but Platinum is coming out February 25.
It’s up on Net Galley now, if you’re a reviewer type. So, because it is up for reviewers, I’m starting to get feedback on it – which is always fun. People seem to be enjoying the story in the ways I hoped they would. But it’s kind of difficult for me to get as totally revved as they are. It’s several stories ago for me now, so it’s kind of old news.

Which is a weird place to be.

It makes me think of this interview I saw with Barbara McClintock when she won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1983. She was 81 when she received the prize and I remember the interviewer was someone much younger and full of enthusiasm. The interviewer asked if Barbara wasn’t just SO EXCITED about the award. For Jumping Genes! (Transposable elements in DNA) Everyone was just *so* interested in this amazing discovery!

And Barbara looked at her kind of funny and said something along the lines of, “Well, it’s always nice to be recognized, but I did that work forty years ago and I was excited about it then. What I’m working on right now is what’s most interesting to me.”

Which deflated the interviewer a bit.

Interestingly, she had stopped publishing her work on the transposable elements in DNA back in 1953, because she encountered so much skepticism about it. I could really see how being awarded an unshared Nobel prize (the only woman to ever receive an unshared Nobel prize in that category) thirty years later might be a little…anti-climactic.

Not that the incipient release of Platinum compares in any way to the magnitude of McClintock’s discovery. I just think it’s important to remember that the joy of creation – or discovery – remains forever a separate thing from other people’s validation of it. Usually it comes much later and often after they gave you all kinds of shit for doing it in the first place.

Then, later, when they tell you how great this thing you’ve done is, they never remember that they were skeptical, just that they love it now.

Which is okay.

After all – enthusiasm is always to be treasured.

How to Play Marco Polo Day

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

1_4 freezing fog 2Did you know that today is Marco Polo Day??

Oh, come on. Yes, you did. You celebrate every year, don’t you?

So, fellow author Voirey Linger came up with a little game for today. Here’s the repost from her site:

January 9, 1324, Marco Polo slipped the bonds of this world and drifted into history. He explored Asia, established trade routes with China, and launched a summer game loved by millions.

To celebrate his life and his game, we are launching Marco Polo day on Twitter. The rules are simple. Follow the players listed below from your Twitter account. When one of them yells MARCO you hit reply and @ them with POLO. First to respond will win an ebook. If you’re not following, you can’t win.

You can see a list of participating authors here.

As for me, three times today I will yell out MARCO! on Twitter. First to reply with POLO gets a digital copy of any of my books – including PLATINUM, which isn’t on sale until February 25.

Sounds fun, yes?

Let’s Play!

Competing for Covers

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

The cover of Platinum. So much pretty.

(Just in case you missed the cover reveal on Sullivan’s blog over the weekend.)

Covers are a funny thing. They are often the faces of our books – the first impression and lasting image. From the marketing end, the cover is the keystone of all publicity. After all, there’s not that many other visual images to tie to a story, except maybe the author head shot. (And for a lot of us, no one wants to go there. 😉 ) For the readers, covers add to the book’s caché. I know readers who collect bookmarks or cover flats of digital books, just to have the cover to look at.

If you’re a writer working with a publisher, what the cover will be is pretty much out of your hands. Oh, we get input–Carina and Ellora’s Cave have us fill out art fact sheets describing the book, characters, mood, tone, genre and visual hooks. And the marketing teams show the draft cover to us and we can give feedback. They smile, nod and give us the cover they want to.

If you self-publish, the writer becomes her own marketing team. Even if she hires a cover designer, she still has to communicate her concept, what the models should look like, the fonts and colors. It can be grueling, as I recently watched my friend and CP, Carolyn Crane, go through. She wanted the cover for her new book, Mr. Real, to be exactly right and wonderful, going through many iterations to get there.

(I know this because I think I looked at EVERY ONE.)

At any rate, she finally decided on a cover that she loved. Everyone was joyful. Until she found out that another author had received a nearly identical cover from her press – and the book is in the same genre and releasing on the same day. You can read Carolyn’s truly hilarious take on the fiasco here.

What strikes me most about this whole adventure though, is how lovely everyone was about it – especially the other author. We hear a lot of tales about author jealousy, infighting, plagiarizing, attack-sockpuppeting and various other kinds of unpleasantness. People love to pass around those stories. I knew this guy once who loved to complain about how women compete with each other in jealous and mean ways. He’d say “if two guys show up to a party wearing the same clothes, they’ll be friends for life – if two women wear the same dress, they’ll be at each other’s throats.”

Yeah. He was an ass.

But whenever he’d say that, I’d remember something that happened to my mom. The first time she ever volunteered to help organize a charity event, it was the inaugural fundraising ball put on by the American Cancer Society in Denver. She killed herself helping to plan this ball. Tons of work. And she stressed about what to wear. We shopped in EVERY store in Denver for the perfect dress. She visited me in college in St. Louis and we shopped there. We visited my aunt in Chicago and shopped there, too. This was over the course of nearly a year. Finally she found the perfect dress (I think in Chicago) and all was right with the world.

She arrives at the ball early, along with the rest of the committee, to finish setting up and in walks her good friend and another committee member wearing the exact same dress. That she’d bought at an exclusive boutique. Myrtle Rose, my mom’s friend, broke out laughing – I mean, what were the odds? – and said she’d go home and change. My mom protested and MR said, no, she’d been torn between two black dresses and all her make-up and jewelry would stay the same – she’d just shuck on the other dress and be right back.

It was done with the same spirit of friendship and generosity as Carolyn showed – and as the other author, Julianna Stone, showed her. After all, Carolyn was out money and the time she’d already invested in showing off the cover. It was well done of her.

I love a happy ending.

Oh, and speaking of – If you’d like win a 3-chapter, synopsis and query critique from me, you can do it here!

Platinum Cover Reveal!!

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

Hee hee hee.

You have to visit Pearls Cast Before a McPig to see it. Voodoo Bride is a big fan and wanted the privilege.

Here’s the official description (which I forgot to give Sullivan-oops!):

Althea Grant is doing fine. Sure, her Charleston gallery is suffering from the bad economy, and her artistic aspirations have gone nowhere. But she’s happy enough. When rugged metal sculptor Steel rides up on his motorcycle looking to rent studio space, his infusion of cash is more than welcome. But his art is raw, visceral, sexual—and completely inappropriate for her pastel world of watercolor landscapes.

Steel, fascinated by Althea’s rare albino coloring, sees in her the key to his next piece: a metal satyr that can be used for bondage games. Moving into her gallery basement is the first step; seducing the coolly polite lady into modeling for him is the second.

As Steel peels away her careful manners and tasteful outfits, Althea begins to realize her life isn’t just fine at all—it’s as pale and washed-out as the watercolor paintings she’s failing to sell. Can she transform her life and accept her most secret desires?

Out February 25!

Ruby Will Be Coming Your Way!

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

I’m thrilled to announce that last night I received a contract offer for Ruby from the fabulous folks at Carina Press! Ruby will be the third book in the Facets of Passion series, following Sapphire (10/24/11) and Platinum (2/25/13). Ruby should be out sometime in the fall of 2013. 

So exciting!

This is a milestone for me, because it’s the first time I’ve sold a book I haven’t written yet. Fabulous Editor Deb asked me for a partial and synopsis on a book 3 after we finished work on Platinum. And they liked it!

I feel so grown up now.

Plus? I have a deadline. At least I got to pick it myself. (Yes – I totally used my spreadsheets to plan. Shut up.)

Happy Thursday, everyone!

Focusing a Murky Story

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

I really wanted to capture how these 4 o’clocks glow in the evening light – their luminosity – but then the focus isn’t crisp. It makes me wonder if it’s always a trade-off between the two.

I’ve been working up the third story in the newly christened Facets of Passion series, which started with Sapphire (last October), continues with Platinum (out in February) and will culminate with Ruby. Normally I wouldn’t have started on this third novella yet, keeping to my established rotation. (And because I need to work on RP2 for all of you bugging me for it!) But Editor Deb asked me to work up a polished partial and a synopsis for her, with an eye to bundling the three books. Very exciting! This is something you only get to do after you’ve proven yourself to your editor and your press.

She’s so funny, because she asked how long it would take me to do that and I said, it depends on the amount of partialness she’s looking for – and I assured her that is, indeed, a word. She told me she told me she needed 20-30 pages of extra sparkly partialness. I love her.

So, at any rate, I’ve been working up Ruby. Even though each story involves different characters, and different emotional arcs, they are intertwined for me, thematically. Ruby is a kind of culmination of the three. (Though I do have an idea for Book 4.) I know this is part of me being a character-driven writer, who doesn’t really plot ahead, but some stories just feel “murkier” than others. The characters in Ruby are more complex people in many ways, with layers of “psychological candy,” as CP Carolyn Crane just put it.

It took me longer than it should have, to work up these sparkly pages – maybe because I felt more pressure, knowing I couldn’t just spin along with the story to see what happened. I reworked the opening several times. The whole thing felt a little formless still. Out of focus But I sent it to the CPs for feedback, cringing, waiting for them to ask me WTF I’m doing.

And they say it’s working!!

Funny how, as a writers, sometimes you just can’t tell.

But Carolyn just told me she thought this is a super strong book shaping up. Which is so good to know. Laura said “very complex and fun stuff!” Marcella just wants more. This all reassured me that the luminosity is there, shining through – and the comments they gave me are helping me to focus it.

Maybe I *can* have both.

The In-person Interview: Priceless

Jeffe Kennedy / / Blog

Dashing off a post today, as I’m in Providence this morning and headed to day job meetings soon.

My weekend in Charleston was just perfect – and I got exactly what I needed. As regular readers might recall, I was feeling very blocked on revisions for Platinum and getting nowhere with phone calls to people. Networking that usually falls into place for me kept going absolutely nowhere. Finally David pointed out that there must be a reason I had to go in person and to trust that.

He’s a prince of a man.

So, I went over the weekend. And it all fell into place, from the first gallery I walked into, to the people that owner connected me to. Time after time, people offered me little jewels, exactly what I needed for this story.

I’d felt like I shouldn’t spend the money and it turned out to be the best money spent ever.

The take-home message? I guess there’s a couple:

1. Despite our very connected virtual world, nothing beats in-person conversation. People will show and give you in person what they never will on the phone.

2. Writing is an art and that means it comes from a place beyond us. Trusting what it’s trying to tell you is paramount.

3. I just love Charleston.

Shipping off my revisions tonight!