A bit more on the internet/cell data saga (fair warning), and then further ruminations on RPGs, Wizardry, my own experiences along with other female/enby/etc. folks in the community, and Frosé.
Transcript
00:00.81
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I’m here with my first cup of coffee. Very good. Um, today is say it with me Friday woohoo. Ah July fifteenth the ides of july.
00:34.35
jeffekennedy
Ah, beautiful here in Santa Fe this morning we went for a walk. It was very pleasant even more pleasant and exciting is the xfinities tech is supposed to come um between nine and eleven this morning. And it’s now none I’m running a little bit later today partly because we went for the walk and we went up to the store and then I had to like move shit around in my office so that they had all these instructions you know, make sure that. Technician we can get to the outlets of that. There’s nothing in the way. Um, so that has been It’s interesting to me how much of a contributor to my feelings of chaos to have my office disrupted. Oh. There’s my mother. I asked her how she was and she never replied up. She’s thinking more clearly she’s feeling better all right I will reply to mom when I am done doing the podcast I’d left my phone on in case, the Xfinity tech calls. Um, it’s funny cause they send these some text messages saying. You know reschedule and you know as all these you know press one to confirm and None to cancel and None to reschedule it. It’s like I was just terrified of hitting the wrong wrong button and so please come please please please come and fix our internet. Yes, ah. Ah, ongoing saga if you have been following. Um, my phone was not working right yesterday I tried to tried calling Megan because um, so so I’ve answered my question that I posed yesterday of why can’t I just run internet through my hotspot. Maybe if I hadn’t gotten the basic plan I could but you know I got like the most basic unlimited plan I could and uploading my podcast video to Youtube took a fucking hour hou hour hou hour you guys I couldn’t believe it and it was. I could barely do anything else on my laptop at the same time because it was like hijacking the signal from my mouse and my keyboard and everything was running very slowly and it was it was miserable I mean champagne problems right? but still it was miserable I didn’t even try to upload to instagram. Apparently instagram is changing like if you’re going from if you’ve had a business page and now they’re going to teams or something so that’s probably why I can’t upload the podcast video to internet or to instagram sorry um, so then.
03:18.53
jeffekennedy
After I finally got everything uploaded and I thought this just is not a tenable substitute and I need to do the s simple board meeting yesterday afternoon. So I called my friend Megan she had texted me and said did I want to go for frose – #perfectlyfine – Um, in the evening fros or Harry’s and our whole tradeoff balance there is is it raining or not because it’s monsoon season monsoon rains come in in the afternoon. Um, if it’s a sunny hot afternoon frose is the thing to do if the rain has come in. Because we’re high altitude desert. It gets cold right? So yeah, then it’s then it was Harry’s roadhouse and margaritas. So I was thinking about it that we were getting together anyway and so I tried to color because I didn’t feel like typing it all out. Um. Another minor inconvenience is that I’ve been using the the text app on my laptop to do a lot of my texting but I can only do that if we actually have internet because you have to have the phone and the laptop on the same internet but apparently having the laptop get internet from the phone is not the same thing. Don’t ask me so I tried to call her and my call would not go through would not go through would not go through then she tried to call me back and leaves me a voicemail saying hey I saw you tried to call me but it didn’t ring on my phone. Ah. So then I had to get on with chat with the verizon tech and it was one of those deals where the Verizon tech was taking like 5 minutes between replies and you know because they’re clearly helping I don’t know None different people at the same time. And eventually after 45 minutes I got to a place where they had me reset reset the network on my phone and now my phone is working fine and they’re like well I’m so glad that and maybe they are doing this because they said you are awesome. You made this work. And I was like yeah too bad it took 45 minutes to get to the solution. There was a point at which the person had said to me. Um, you know Well so I understand that you’re having trouble with your hotspot is that correct and I said no, that’s not correct. And they said well can you tell me what the problem is exactly and I said how about you reread the conversation. We’ve been having for the last half an hour during which I’ve explained what the problem is exactly multiple times and which I think they did because then they came back and said oh you’re having trouble making and receiving calls I was like.
06:06.24
jeffekennedy
Um, my gosh this week I tell you I’m just hoping that the xfinity appointment goes well that I’ve internet. So anyway, I finally got to have a voice conversation with Megan and I said can I come up to your office to radius and use your internet for this board meeting and then we can go for Drake’s you know. Me a quiet corner and I could do that and she said well even better. Why don’t you go to my house because ah, her husband is out of town I guess I could say husband now right? Husband is out of town doing San Diego comic con working and. They have the big dogs that prefer to have company and she’s like it would be a great favor to me if you would go over and sit at my house and do your board meeting there and use our internet I was like perfect and she said and then I could come home from work and we can go have drinks well then ah a wrench in the works as her daughter is having a medical crisis. And mean ended up being home. She said I’m just she so I’m gonna come home I’ve got to arrange everything and now she’s um, leaving this afternoon flying to to Arizona to be with her daughter and she’s gonna be there for the whole week because her daughter has to have surgery and all this kind of thing. So ah, she would so she spent her afternoon like finding house sitters and dog sitters and all of this and she had to run out and then she came back and so it was like none and I’d already started drinking her champagne as. She had told me to do my board meeting was done my other work was done and so she was like she still has cases of champagne leftover from the wedding she was like please drink some champagne so I was sitting out on her porch drinking champagne when she got back and she said okay so the house Sitter’s coming over at None and. I said well do we have time to go for Burgarita still and she’s like oh it’s gonna be a little tight and I said you know why don’t we just sit here and drink champagne and have food delivered and she was perfect so we had italian food delivered. We sat out there. We drank champagne we chatted and now she’s taking off again. So I may yet be going over to our house to use internet. We’ll see ah yeah, ah, such as life right? It’s amusing to me. Can’t recall if I reflected on this yesterday, but it’s amusing to me that ah it has wreaked so much havoc in our lives this week not having internet and having so difficult cell service for these 2 things that.
08:52.90
jeffekennedy
And I know I sound like an old lady at this point you know shit came like can you kids don’t know but you know that I before you know that there was a time in my life would those were things that we did not have we simply did not. Have it all and it’s like and now the loss of them makes it almost impossible for me to work. Um and yet I remember a time when I worked without those things was trying to find a way to embrace it. But it’s just um, it’s disruptive. So hopefully after this all will be back to normal. Um, follow up on um, excuse me the game stuff I talked at the beginning of the week about I guess on tuesday. Tuesday’s podcast I talked about um, doing the roleplaying games and I told you the story about a pith Jennifer Dieys and my high school boyfriend who was involved in that story did listen to the podcast I did not point it to it so I don’t know if you listen every day kev or if you saw the descriptor on that None but he replied to me on Twitter and he said actually let me tell you exactly what he said because he told okay I found his clarifying tweets. He said wizardry was the game. We sent your poor low- level character into a dungeon with a higher level crew. Even if Jennifer had survived the pit. She definitely would have been slain in the none encounter with enemies. She was set up to fail. Ah, and I kind of. Loved that he told me all of that and I don’t recall if we if he told me before that my character was set up to fail but it was very interesting having this conversation with Gregory Wilson and some other people another um. Female friend of mine who is an amazing fantasy author ah told me a story saying that she stopped playing games rpg games I guess that’s redundant isn’t it role-playing games when she was 19 when the boys that she was playing with decided to cast a sleep spell on her character and rape her and yes, it’s the fantasy of the game but it’s also a representation of yourself and we know that people take this.
11:32.16
jeffekennedy
Kind of things seriously right? You know it’s that it’s the avatar of yourself and I felt so bad for her and it was interesting sharing with them. Kev’s information about it being wizardry and ah Gregory Wilson said oh that he had this epic rant about wizardry and playing it in the eighty s. And how much he hated that game and I will link to his rant because it was an entertaining rant and it’s just like 9 minutes long so um those of you interested might enjoy hearing this rant Kev if you are listening ah you may enjoy hearing this rant. And um, but it was it was It’s been interesting to revisit that because I had never really connected that maybe a lot of my current aversion to. Role-playing games or lifelong aversion to role-playing games may have stemmed from that incident in which I was set up to fail ah in which my boyfriend and his friends mainly wanted to get rid of me and successfully did so um, you know and it’s like hardly a big thing. In the scheme of things but it is interesting. How we do learn aversion to stuff and and I mainly am still thinking about it because I know that this has been such a pervasive experience for women and. Non-binary non um, heteronormative people in the science fiction and fantasy community that that gaming particularly roleplaying gaming is such a big part of the um, kind of the group. Interaction right? The the fantasy of playing together and that there you know has been so much terrible, cruelty and abusiveness that’s flourished in that aspect of the community and a lot of people are doing much better work to to combat it. But. Um, yeah, it’s ah it’s just it’s too bad. That’s gone on for so long and I’m glad that people are battling it and I’m glad to have conversations with people like Gregory who are very welcoming and saying you’ll come back and play this game and and I think I’m gonna try I’m gonna. See about playing some of these games because maybe I would like it. ah good kev also clarified that ah the town I mentioned was gold hillll and it was till desk do party was the name of the production company doing the murder mysteries. He says None stars would recommend.
14:22.26
jeffekennedy
And he also said it’s possible. He had an unfair advantage in the game as well since he had attended many times before as I recall he was also the only person who wasn’t drinking so another unfair advantage. So um. Let’s see so there’s those things I’ve got rogues possession upload it ah ready to release soon. What did I say July Twenty Sixth something like that I should know I know that and it’s all upload. It. So. It’s nice to have these things where I’m not ah uploading under the wire rogueeson continues to sell very well I did see on um, good reads. My assistant was saying that it wasn’t on Goodreads and I found it for her. But now we have multiple versions so I have asked. The librarians on goodreits to consolidate the additions. But I couldn’t help noticing that there was like ah not great reviews on the new edition. Some of them could be trolls. Ah but there was one on there like the the top review. Um I didn’t read all of it I just started to. Read it but she was complaining that there should have been a trigger warning for exactly that section that I was thinking about deleting people I was like yeah but it was funny because she said um that that was an abusive relationship and that she dnfed at that point because. Should have been a trigger warning for abusive relationships and that she just couldn’t read that and it was like well that particular section is an abuse. It’s not supposed to be ah, a relationship. It’s it’s basically torture. It’s it’s It’s like it. No no, no, it’s not an abusive relationship. It’s being kept captive by hostels who torture you? Um, so maybe not a close reader. Ah maybe a troll I don’t know so anyway, if you have never reviewed. Ah, rogues pawn on good reads and you feel like saying something nice about it on either edit I assume they’ll blend together and so that will that will help I do think it’s funny because it’s like ah now I’m back to thinking maybe I should have deleted that scene. But It’s really important for her character. It’s important for shaping what happens later and so when I did look at deleting it and having it be like just flashback and all that it would have been really hard to disentangle at this point.
17:07.38
jeffekennedy
And I know that a lot of readers feel the same way and I don’t blame them a bit but for prisoner of the crown that prisoner of the crown starts out with um, her early life and how you know how she was basically set up to be a victim. And then how she’s victimized in her marriage and all of this is about how this changed ah changed her family and ultimately brings about the downfall of an empire because she was they picked the wrong girl to victimize um and. I understand people hesitating to read that first book. But yeah, it, It’s what shapes our character so funny and what else.
18:05.78
jeffekennedy
I’m I’m making good progress on shadow wizard I’m having a lot of fun writing jadron um I’m I’m liking Cellie too but Jadron in particular is in really interesting character isn’t he. Here’s one of those characters by the way if you have read the bonds of magic books when he appeared on the page in bright familiar. Basically when he stepped out of the carriage I did not know what was going to happen in that scene and when he stepped out of the carriage. It was like this character who had decided he wanted to be part of these books and. Total surprise to me and so I’m so I’m enjoying delving into exactly what his deal is and I’ve been listening to the audio book of bright familiar and then I’ll finish that then I’ll read that listen read the audio book of great magic. So. Getting those things done and hoping to get a lot of stuff cleared out of my office because oh as I started out and probably didn’t finish saying my office is utter chaos in part because like the modem and internet connection was all behind bookshelves so there’s like. Books everywhere and I also have to mail out a whole bunch of stuff for Sifwa and I have a whole bunch of stuff for a polycon. So I’m hoping this weekend to like put my office back into order and then I will feel like um, it makes a big difference for me. I I um I wouldn’t say I’m a scrupulously neat person but I am like a clean desk person and I am a non-cluttered organized office person and um, yeah, deep cleansing breaths right? on that note. I hope that you all have wonderful relaxing fabulous weekend and I will um, talk to you all on Monday possibly with internet how you all take care bye bye.