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 as the chimes echo away. Delicious. Today is I have no idea Thursday April Twenty Eighth and I am looking at my plant that I potted the lobelia does not seem to be doing well whyness lobelia always seemed to not do well. Just dries out so quickly here have to pause you now that we are back outside. We have Jeffe obsessively checking her plants all part of the brand here at first cup of coffee. Ah I will endeavor not to do that. So um, hope you all are having a wonderful week. My Week’s going pretty well so far knock on wood dive. No wood well does great plain. Oh the arbor knock on wood. Helping get my 2500 words on Storm Princess and the Raven King
01:30.23
jeffekennedy
Feels like it’s going well um, yeah, so we’ll see if we can sustain that get that done in the next few weeks um been uploading the rebranded covers. For um, Sorcerous Moons. They are ah so far I’ve gotten the first 3 books up did my 4 matters getting me 1 per day so they’ll release starting tomorrow. So Friday Saturday Sunday. Ah yeah, so. 1 reader commented about the pretty covers being gone I mean they’re not gone. They’re immortalized in history but but yeah, um, I’m I’m trying to rebrand I’m trying to reach a new audience and so. I mean that’s always a balance right? You know you try to reach new readers but sometimes the old readers feel left behind old in a former sense. Not an aged sense. Ah, she commented that that these looked like mill. Fantasy which I thought was funny because I don’t think they look like male fantasy. Um there’s definitely more masculine element to it and lonen’s double bladed axe is front and center a consistent element for all the covers and. That’s not to emphasize Lonen necessarily one is it’s a striking image. Um, and for me partly symbolic of of Oria’s power as well. But yeah, she said oh well the horses were gone and. Female elements were gone and it was like but and dragons were gone but they’re not, they’re still there. They’re just more subtle elements. There’s the dragon’s tail and dragon wings. There’s the representation of the the horse silhouette in the background. It’s there if you look for it and oria’s hair and her magic which is really the one of the most essential parts of oriah so of but. That’s the thing is when you try to reach new readers. You know you’re trying I’m trying to reach people who who maybe haven’t read my books at all before that’s partly why I’m putting them in Kindle unlimited because there’s a lot of readers that only read on Kindle unlimited as I talk about on here.
04:19.67
jeffekennedy
Probably ad nauseum and yeah so I’m excited about it I’m I’m interested to see what happens it says an experiment.
04:35.17
jeffekennedy
Ah, sucking down the coffee this morning I am going to ride her coffee later this morning so that’ll be fun first time in a few weeks. She’ll be able to sit outside just like I’m sitting outside here this morning in the secret garden planning to do a lot of gardening this weekend I have a lot of cleanup. To get after here and it’ll finally be nice enough to do that I think we’re supposed to have wind again this afternoon and tomorrow but hopefully looking like the weekend should be pretty nice. So I watched the movie gifted. Um, with adorable Chris Evans and what’s the little girl’s name Mckenna Grace Octavia Spencer is in it to always want to call her Octavia Butler which I think is funny. Ah the actress not the writer. Maybe because I don’t know that many Octavia ah not that I know her anyway I watch this movie because it was brought up at the Jack Williamson lectureship I know I keep referencing that but we had so many great conversations there. And that movie had been recommended I think by Connie Willis and I had never seen it. Um, what was it 2013 movie I’ll link to it the show notes maybe not even that old. Well we won’t look it up right now. Anyway, it’s um, it’s it’s an amazing movie I I loved watching this movie. It’s about Chris Evans is this um uncle who. After the death of his sister is raising his niece who is 7 at the time of the movie and he is living in is it Florida or South Carolina I think they say it’s Florida um. Preparing boats for a living. The script is so great. It’s really well written within a few moments of of like the opening scene of his conversation with this little girl. Her character is Mary. You learn so much about them and they’re arguing about whether or not she has to go to school and she’s you could just tell by the way that she’s debating this that she is really super smart and and he replies to her. Ah.
07:26.67
jeffekennedy
There’s just a couple of different things he says but 1 thing is he says we’ve already discuss this ad nauseum and she says ah and she said what does as ad nauseam mean and he goes ah looks like somebody needs to go to school to learn some things. And then later when he’s having a conversation with her teacher who is identifying Mary as a math prodigy which she is and he says no, she’s just using the the trakteberg formula I think I have that correct to to do these multiplications. It’s not a big deal. Which he’s putting her off because he knows it’s a big deal and you you put together very quickly that he is also a genius but is very deliberately not using his intellect and we find out later that he had been teaching. Ah, had been a professor of philosophy at Boston University and had quit after his sister died and and it’s wonderful. How these things are revealed why he’s doing what he’s doing and his sister was a math prodigy and his mother is a math prodigy and you know they. Want to have them go and work on these important you know unsolvable math problems which I’ve read some interesting essays on how on these like supposedly unsolvable problems and and what they really mean, but it’s a great device for. For movies because otherwise it’s like there’s not a um, a tangible goal when you want to give like your genius character a tangible goal that they’re striving for a math problem makes a lot more sense to an audience then I don’t know what you know like. Writing the great novel or whatever it is whatever that means
09:25.41
jeffekennedy
I promise I won’t go on a rant about what it means to write a great novel so tempting though it may be so anyway. Ah a lot of it is about him wanting her. To grow up having a normal life. Um and not suffer what her mother suffered by being treated as by not getting to have a normal life and it really just it’s it’s a beautifully done movie. It poses a lot of very interesting questions about. If you have a talent um or a genius. Even what that what responsibility do you owe to it. Um, if any yeah so I enjoyed that very much. And ad nauseum I won’t rant addd nauseum I can’t remember what it was. There’s something else that he says that he uses some sort of um, word you know like a $5 word or or something I don’t recall what but very. They do a nice job of revealing character through just how he behaves and and how he speaks even though he is trying not to be this thing anymore. It’s like inherent and and in the same way it is in his niece I also tried to watch Spencer um about princess Diana Lady Spencer played by ah Kristen Stewart which I’ve been wanting to see for a long time and we ended up with this subscription to hulu. Which I want to say it was an accident you know is sort of like oops I stumbled and tripped and fell into a subscription to hulu I think it was because David wanted to watch the super bowl and we were trying to figure out a way for him to watch the super bowl so you know like we signed up for the month free and then got charged for it and then I was like how did I end up subscribed to hulu. Which is I know entirely their scheme so I canceled it. But I’d already been charged so we have it for like thirty more days and when I canceled it. You know they want to know my reasons for canceling and one of them on there said, um, one of the options was too many ads. And now I wish I could have checked too many ads because we’ve been watching some stuff on hulu while we you know since we paid for thirty more days of it and the reader there are too many ads it. Ah just I know this is I’ll probably just be saying this from now on my gen x thing.
12:13.64
jeffekennedy
But it really pisses me off to pay for something that then also has ads. It’s either you pay for it or you suffer through ads you shouldn’t have to do both and I’m um I’m very bitter that the world has changed this people.
12:32.27
jeffekennedy
Ah, anyway, so I started watching this on hulu because I was like oh yeah cause David was he was napping and we’d already eat and did or I was getting ready I was cooking dinner and stuff and I thought oh well I’ll watch this because I bet he won’t want to and and then if I think he will. You know I can always stop and start over and it was um, discordant what is up with that people. It’s like they wanted to use all of this discordant jazz to show her mental breakdown which was this necessary. And I even looked at the reviews to see if anyone else bitched about it and I didn’t see any. So maybe it’s me I thought Kristen Stewart did a great job I thought she although I thought she made Diana awfully diffident which apparently like her bodyguard said that. Stewart got her meant got Diana’s mannerismism is better than anyone else. But yeah I didn’t I didn’t care for her diffidence and I don’t know it was just so over the top I thought you know it. It takes place at Christmas at sandra noon sandingham palace and it’s right before the divorce and all of this and so of course things are going badly but I just I don’t know I didn’t care for it. I’m not going to keep watching it I didn’t like how much of the victim. She’s portrayed as maybe. Maybe she rallies later in the movie but you know I’m one of those people that you know diana always my princess I was always on her side against camilla and after watching this, it’s like ah I don’t know so There’s my inarticulate review of that movie. Ah maybe I could watch it muted with only closed captions. So I don’t have to listen to that I found the music so disturbing in a way that I didn’t want to be disturbed. And then the other thing we started watching also on hulu too many ants cashhtag too many ads was ah pam and tommy about tommy lee and pamela anderson and ah it is really a delight. It has a lot of the same irreverence and sort of storytelling gambits that they used in the dirt about motley crew I’m sure tommy lee consulted heavily on this series. Apparently pamela anderson had nothing to do with it.
15:18.92
jeffekennedy
Ah, so I’m sure he like used the same writers I didn’t look but he he borrowed heavily from what made the dirt a charming movie to watch which we’ve watched a couple times because we’ve really it’s really fun if you haven’t seen that. Um. But pam and Tommy was it Tommy and pam I think it’s Pam and tommy a link to it ah is she is played by Lily James who I just adore ever since I saw her in Cinderella. I adore her and Tommy Lee is played by Sebastian Stan and I now Stan Sebastian Stan I didn’t really before you know like the whole bucky thing winter soldier. Never really floated my boat. But I’m getting I’m getting the mystique now and it is wittily done and my my only objection man that’s probably a strong word I think Lily James is doing a great job playing Pamela Anderson but Lily James has this essential sweetness to her. She’s I don’t know she’s lisome and has this artlessness to her personality that I don’t know if it means that she’s not a great actress. But she doesn’t come across to me the same way. Pamela Anderson always did she doesn’t come on. She’s not as brazen and confident in a way even though she’s trying to seem like that. It’s just that Lily James has this. Yeah, this. Artless wholesomeness to her. But anyway, it’s a really interesting show and I’m enjoying that and then I’m still finishing this book I’m almost done now on ah Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning and you know it’s it’s extraordinary I don’t. Read that much historical stuff unless it’s historical romance and I kind of fell off of reading those but it’s extraordinary to read about people living in victorian times and maybe this is just extraordinary for me because i. Haven’t read tons of it. You know like Jane Austen stuff regency stuff. Um, anyway, this maybe it’s because it’s nonfiction. But the um the prevalence of disease is just extraordinary. How people are for.
18:08.89
jeffekennedy
Everyone getting sick and I’ve heard people reference this, you know and talking about like with the pandemic that with the pandemic talking about how they now understand why everyone in victorian times you know writes letters about their health. It’s um. It’s really interesting to to read this and you know like a child will get sick with gastric fever. Ah, and then be dead by evening and I looked up what gastric fever was and it was typhoid and and I guess I knew. Kind of distantly that you know of course antibiotics weren’t introduced yet but they had cholera and typhoid and tuberculosis I knew they had tuberculosis but I mean they were just. Um, you know, like with everything they ate and drank they were risking death. You know, no wonder the victorians had such a fascination with death because people could just die at the drop of a hat and of course Elizabeth’s Barett browning was not in great health for most of her life. And just the way she struggles with her health and at the end it’s sounding like probably a lot of depression just really is making me conscious of what a huge thing it is. For us to be liberated from the ravages of disease in you know, just ah, you know like 100 years that that changed so dramatically. Ah you know and now we have ah all the anti vaccine stuff. It’s such a luxury for people to you know, not want to get vaccines because we don’t have this thing where at any moment you could encounter the thing that kills you by nightfall definitely and. Interesting realignment of perspective for me. So um, on that note I’m going to go celebrate my good health get my words done. Um, hope you all have a wonderful Thursday and I will talk to you all tomorrow take care bye bye.