00:00.76
jeffekennedy
Good morning. Everyone this is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I'm here with my first cup of coffee.
00:12.36
jeffekennedy
Ah, delightful today is Monday June Third welcome to June ah 6 3 24 here we are here we are then shout out to kev on that one.
00:30.76
jeffekennedy
So um, how are all of you I had a good weekend I finally finally got to like get the garden finished up but looks nice. Although I should I I need to get a picture of them but wait. There's been this hole in my garden. And I wasn't sure what was living in it. You know like gophers or moles or pe rats or what and the other day I was sitting out in the grape arbor enjoying it as one does and I saw something come out of the hole and do you know. What it is it is baby Rock squirrels. So here. We have these squirrels called rock squirrels that are unusual looking when we first saw them we were like well I never seen a squirrel like that before a very bushy tail. They're kind of a gray brown. There are 3 Baby rock squirrels that were born in this hole beneath my garden and they are so freaking cute people. They are so adorable and fearless and I'll be sitting there reading and they come out and they poke the little heads out. And they romp around and they make little whistling noises at each other and they're beyond adorable David got a video of them that he posted to Facebook but it won't let me share so I have to like get pictures from him but they're also eating my flowers I bought.
02:00.27
jeffekennedy
Ah, plant yesterday at low's a mounding bell flower that had all these really really pretty purple bell flowers on it I go back out there in the evening make sure it hasn't willted. Oh it hasn't wilted. It's doing fine except all of the flowers are gone just little green stems sticking up. This is why nature makes. Baby animals cute so that we don't do away with them I don't know what I'm gonna do I don't know they have also eaten bunches of my tunas I bought a a dalia too and they have not harvested the dahlia. So I might have to like start. Figuring out what is not salad for them so that I am not buying implanting salad for my rock squirrel family. Um, but it was good weekend I was productive I got quite a lot done I also relaxed a lot. So so that was great last night we did an online run through of the nebula awards ceremony which will be next Saturday night and that um it is so good. Oh it is so good people. It is is excellent. So um.
03:14.45
jeffekennedy
I I hope that you all enjoy it I found it really moving and the the theme is amazing. They really built on Susan Cooper and the dark is rising and you all will you'll all love it. It was fun. It was fun hanging out with my people online and seeing what they had come up with They're just such great volunteers this year um the staff has been amazing but also the volunteers who have been working on the ceremony are just um, just. They've done so much work and I've only been realizing lately. How much they have done. They're all taking such great care of me I I know like very little about what's going on like this whole award ceremony king is is a fairly large surprise I had approved various various things along the way. But. They have run with so much without needing to come to me and it's really been I kind of feel like a princess descending on the ah the rehearsal going. Okay, where are my lines then they got everything handled so that's great. Um i. Finished my revision of of reluctant wizard on Friday. So yeah, woohoo 30 little over 30000 words on it now I think I know where it's going so now I need to go back into drafting.
04:46.30
jeffekennedy
No reader I have not gotten I mean let's check email now. No I still have not gotten edits line edits on never the roses I hope they come before Allie's baby does but it's really hard when you're having when you're pregnant and trying to finish your work before you leave. For six months so um anyway ah yeah so I'm I'm feeling pretty good about things and I'm going to gets writing in the next couple days. Maybe get some writing done I actually need to look at my. Schedule for nebular comforts I don't even know where I'm supposed to be and when this is how tra la tra lay I am about the whole thing. Um I imagine someone will point me from I'm supposed to go ah I vague ideas. I should pin them now. So but I don't fly out till Wednesday morning. So I still have time. So um I want to talk about I finished reading the book. The idea of you by Robinne Lee and I want to totally spoiler the ending. So if you watch the movie the Netflix movie which I recommend I watched it twice I enjoyed it so much I will tell you that the ending of the book is slightly different. Um.
06:17.47
jeffekennedy
And I want to talk about some things that it brought up for me about social expectations of women and happy ever afters and so forth. So I definitely recommend the book. It's engagingly written. It is both. Um, frivolous in the best way with lots of you know, like going to the south of France and jetsetting and there's a lot more of the art world in the book. It really delves into Solene's business and a lot of that is just great. Um, you know meeting with clients and you know doing the show in Paris and doing all of these things and and what art means to her and what art means to Hayes. Um, and it's ah so it's It's frivolous in that way. But it's also very smart and it brought up a lot of things and it's very hot, very sexy, terrific romance. Um, highly recommend. Ah except I'm not in love with the ending. So now we're going to the spoilery part of the episode. I'll try not to say anything else. Interesting after this. But if you don't want to hear a fairly in-depth inemination of the ending of then go on your way and maybe I'll be here Friday who knows okay so um, the way that the book ends.
07:50.31
jeffekennedy
Is not far off of how the movie ends the movie ends with gi is pacing around hang on I have to go help him so in the movie. Um there's there's a couple of differences. In the movie they aged up the daughter isabel they made her be 17 and so over August moon and in the book. That's the band that Hayes in and in the book she is 13 and totally in love with the band and with Hayes. So. It's a sharper conflict and I this one of the things I want to talk about is like in the movie how they made it be like not so bad. What Solene is doing by having you know she's just in case you haven't seen either and are still listening. She's. So then is forty. She turns 40 in the book and Hayes is 20 he turns 21 in the book and so the ending of the movie. She breaks up with him to protect Isabelle because she's getting harassed at school. And then it. There's a you know she's like maybe in 5 years and five years later he turns up and that's our happy ending for the movie which is an interesting choice. Um, for the book. There is no five years later in the book.
09:20.74
jeffekennedy
She breaks up with him and she um, yeah, breaks his heart essentially breaks his heart. He begs her not to do this? um in the book she is in some ways one foot out the door the whole time because she's always like this is wrong I should be doing this.
09:40.12
jeffekennedy
Ah, and there is a lot of angst about being 40 there's a lot of stuff about women turning invisible as they get older and I sent a passage to Megan so it was kind of funny because like 2 of my closest friends Megan. Ah, flew to Las Vegas Saturday morning to see the grateful dead show at the sphere on Saturday night and she's sending me pictures of her lounging by the pool at the hotel and Kelly was in New York City for the weekend seeing a concert and sending me photos. And so it was like here I am at home working in my garden but I will be gone all this week so there is that anyway. So I send a screenshot to Megan about this because they're talking about an art installation that this woman artist does. That's like called invisible and showing how like women as they get older, get invisible and I've talked a little bit about this probably a lot about this movie before you know like how people got really annoyed saying that hand and Hathaway doesn't look 40 playing this soul in in the movie and everybody's like she's literally 42 this is and she looks. This is what it looks like um but I asked Megan well have you had this experience. Do you feel like you were not noticed and she said no in fact, she said um, let me look at the she said something really interesting about it and I'm going to bring up her.
11:11.33
jeffekennedy
Points um to to 2 she said the invisible invisibility thing has never been my issue mostly because I never felt seen in that way to be to begin with. I think I lack the pheromones or boobs or ass or sway that would have made me a source of construction worker cat calls. Um, and then she also added I think men are brutally brutishly stupid in that way and perhaps women are stupid to miss. What I view as attention that is reflection of that stupidity and I thought that was an interesting point. Um, and I don't know if people are talking about when women talk about this if they're only talking about like the cat calls in the book. There's a woman talking about it saying you know like how the doorman no longer say hello to her in New York city and and I think I feel the same way as Megan which is why why I asked her. You know we asked for the people who will confirm what we think right? Um I think that I never felt. Like I moved through the world looking for men to pay attention to me. In fact, David would always tease me that I didn't notice I always said that men didn't notice me and he's like no no, no, you don't notice them noticing you and so I wouldn't realize that there that that had.
12:39.60
jeffekennedy
Disappear right? I wouldn't realize that that was no longer part of my experience I think it has something to do with being dependent on your ah physical attractiveness for yourself self worth.
12:55.98
jeffekennedy
But this ties in with the book because Solene has a lot of angst about like her. You know her sagging body and this kind of thing. So Robinne Lee who wrote the book is an actress or has been an actress like I think her biggest thing where she was in hitch. With ah will Smith and so she's going to have a whole lot of that hollywood um, frankly obsessiveness about physical appearance and about aging right? ah.
13:33.22
jeffekennedy
So my little sight of exasperation was I've got like little fuzzies on my face I keep pausing to try to fix them. Ah yeah, so it's funny for me as a woman of 57 years
13:52.80
jeffekennedy
Um, turning 58 this summer to create a book where a woman who's just turned 40 is obsessing about age and her physical attractiveness and I I actually get it and I'm sure some of you out there are around that Age. Um, forty was a hard birthday for me I. I Really did um I was sad about it I was depressed about it. There's something about turning forty that yeah it makes you think about these things but by the time let me promise you ah my friends I was going to say ladies and I thought well that's not. Really fair to say ah but you know if you are worried about aging now by the time you get into your late 50 s It's like the angels come out and you just don't care anymore. It's um, it's like Screw the doormant I don't care if a doormans the load in me or not right? Um, and I know that I am fortunate to have good genes that I I look younger than I am and I'm I'm aware of that. But so so it was interesting that this was a huge part of the conflict of the story. And I found that it it was in the interesting romance. Um in that it was the conflict was not within the relationship so much. The conflict came a lot Externally it came from Isabel being upset. Um the Husband daniel.
15:28.28
jeffekennedy
Is very true to the part in the movie. Um, or the movie's true to the book that you know Daniel has married this much younger woman and she's having a baby and they're getting married actually in the movie. She the young wife is going to leave him or young girlfriend but which I kind of liked better. Ah, but other people are really hard on so then like her business partner is hard on her saying I know I thought this was just sex and you can't fall in love with this guy. You can't do this and and her husband is like you are going to ruin our daughter's life and she does. In the book touch on the idea of how unfair it is for him who has who was the one who fell in love with a younger woman and left her and divorced her and all of this that it's ironic that he's saying you're going to ruin our daughter's life. And yet the ending of the book totally confirms that that she makes this sacrifice. She breaks up with this. Um, you know 21 year old guy who loves her loves her loves her and she loves him because. She can't do this to her business partner anymore because people are calling the gallery and harassing them. Um, she can't take the social media pressure she it it just really annoyed me because um and I I still recommend the book.
16:56.56
jeffekennedy
But I would love to know what you all think because it confirms this idea of that a woman's greatest worth is as the Martyr she martyrs herself. Um for her daughter for her business for her social for the social expectations she gives up this happiness that she had. Ah, in order to please everybody else and I feel like this is the enduring story of women and I don't know if I've brought it up on here but in the movie late night with Mindy Callo and Emma Thompson very good movie if you haven't seen it. But. And I'm going to spoiler the ending to that too. But we're in like full spoiler territory you all listening still are spoiler lovers. Ah, but it comes out Emma Thompson is a fabulous woman who runs a late night talk show and it comes out that she has had an affair. Her husband is John Lithgow and has parkinson's disease and is homebound and you know no longer healthy and she has it comes out that she's had an affair with one of the writers on her show and at the end she she goes on the show and she apologizes. And and again it's this it. She's the Martyr I mean we accept it in the movie because she's not going to do it again because we want her to live this. We I'm putting that in air quotes. We want her to live this sexless unhappy life because.
18:31.91
jeffekennedy
It's much better if she is giving that up to support her husband and they mitigate it in the movie too by having John Lithgow have had an affair on her earlier on in their marriage and he's like well I suppose I deserve this and so it's these messages that we get in these books and movies. That um, you know that a woman must always pay for enjoying sex that she must publicly humiliate herself. She must give it up. She must be unhappy. Um, it's never entirely clear how she's in the book. Sorry going back to sallem. How she is ruining isabel's life. It's like well grow up. You know there's going to be social media pressure in people's lives. There's going to be publicity. There's going to be all these things. It's you know you you wrestle these things and you move on and I realize that we are. Talking about the difference between reality and fiction and and I'm a big proponent of fiction being the fantasy ah I did joke to Megan at 1 point while reading this book that actually what I found to be the most unrealistic thing of the idea of you ah in the whole book. What's how emotionally mature Hayes is you know that he's twenty years old and they make him be. You know, like very smart and he's the one who started the band and he's a songwriter. He's you know appreciates Hardy's you know really wonderful. But he's much more emotionally mature than so Len is and it's like well.
20:07.90
jeffekennedy
I I remember 20 year old men when I dated them and and I raised one and I know what 20 year old guys are like and maybe there's a few may I mean maybe it's possible that there's one like this out there. But um, yeah, you know like he was so he had such a. Ah, high emotional intelligence especially compared to so so I don't want to be overthinking this but I hate that this is our enduring message and so for writers out out there I would love for us to start changing this. Um, let's you know I would Love. A story where there is you know the woman like defies everybody and says no I'm I'm gonna be happy and probably all the readers are gonna hate it and say that she's unliable because we don't want women to do that All right? So I had made all these notes on that. Ah.
21:01.58
jeffekennedy
And ramped and um yeah I will maybe touch you all on Friday but who are we kidding probably not so they'll probably be next Monday ill take care bye bye.
