First Cup of Coffee - August 5, 2024

How traditional publishing deadlines work - and how I'm balancing one of mine with a self-published project. Also, homonyms and how you really need a human being to catch those errors for you.

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Transcript

00:02.42
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy, author of Epic Fantasy Romance. I'm here with my first cup of coffee.

00:14.22
jeffekennedy
Fantastic. Today is Monday, August 5th, 5 24. So yeah, it's gonna be a busy couple of weeks for me. I'm going to really be head down intensely working on a couple of things. I am still revising Reluctant Wizard. I have made it through 130 pages out of 219 that I have written so far. Is that correct?

00:50.01
jeffekennedy
No, 262 that I've written so far. I was thinking that didn't sound right. So I'm halfway through the revision, but I think crossing fingers that it'll pick up speed now because it was mostly the beginning that needed work. And then I think I have just about 12,000 words to finish it. This one's gonna be a little shorter, but it's at 72,000 words right now, a little over that. And all indicators beats my projected word count is pointing to 84,000 to finish. And I'm kind of seeing the overall arc of the trilogy now, so that's great.

01:31.96
jeffekennedy
And yeah, so maybe with any luck, it's probably a lot to hope for that I would finish the revision today. 130 pages in one day is a lot even for me because I do, I know I go pretty fast. I could get to like 70 to 90 if it's pretty good. So I'll probably finish the revision tomorrow and then finish writing it by early next week. Because the other thing that I have in my lap now is ah copy and line edits for Never the Roses, which I glanced at, but I have not gone through exhaustively because I'm trying to keep my head in Poor Reluctant Wizard because I keep taking my attention off of this book.

02:21.45
jeffekennedy
So when I got the line in copy edits last week, ah my editor Dianna had asked if I could have them back by the 12th. And I had said, is it at all? you know like So this is the thing about traditional publishing, is it's not always easy to tell when the deadlines are real um and and allow me to to explain this. It's not that they're not real. It's that traditional publishing, people who work with writers, they know writers and they know that it's going to... um I'm trying to think of how to phrase this.

03:06.70
jeffekennedy
Dead writers don't always meet deadlines. it and they And this is in the nicest possible way. It's because you know creativity does not always follow a deadline. So they pad their deadlines. And like I have friends who regularly blow past deadlines by a lot, and i'm and they're quite sure that the deadlines get padded extra for them. ah So, you know, like sometimes I will, you know, ask for, you know, say, you know, how badly do you want this by, say, the first of December? Do you really, really want it by then? And an editor will say, well, I won't look at it before the first of the year. So if you want to have it on my desk by the time I come back from winter holiday break, then that'd be fine.

03:54.82
jeffekennedy
ah So it's always good to ask. In this case, I said, August 12th, how fungible is this? And I explained, I said, it's because I'm not wanting to switch off of another project. And is it possible for me to um turn this in? I can't remember what I asked for. I think I asked for something like August 27th, which was an ambitious ask. And she said, well, she would check with production because they really want this edited manuscript so that they can do print um advanced reader copies.

04:31.41
jeffekennedy
And so a production deadline is different because they have, especially if they're printing something, they've got, you know, like time reserved on like the few printing presses left. Why are there only a few printing presses in this year of our Lord, right? um The technology surely is there. ah We could build new ones. I don't know. Maybe someone will. ah Anyway,

05:00.87
jeffekennedy
ah So she gave me till August 16th. And I'd said, you know, we don't have to, I can just make it be of the 12th. And she's like, no, no, I'll take the 16th. So my plan, and I do have one, is to finish this revision this week and as much of the draft as I can. um And it is, it's doable. ah One of my friends was asking me about it and I told her my plan and she was eking on it. But even if I only write 2,000 words a day, I should be able to, and even if I still have to revise tomorrow, I should be done by the 13th and then hopefully line and copy edits won't take me more than three days. You know, it's really going through track changes. I might be able to get it done in one day, but I won't know until I dig in.

05:54.23
jeffekennedy
And I don't want to dig in until I, you know, I don't want to switch out my brain on this story. Cause I do think I know how the book will end at this point. I think I know what's going to happen and now I'm getting ideas. So anyway, um, everybody else in the known science fiction and fantasy world is either already in Scotland or will be in Scotland for Worldcon this week. And I am, glad that I decided a long time ago not to go. I'm not even having any FOMO. um I'm glad that I'm at home. It's such a beautiful time. A viewer here reveled. We're having this conversation about relishing versus reveling, ah ah relishing the last of the summer, reveling in the last of the summer. And

06:49.50
jeffekennedy
and also finishing both of these projects. So this is going to be, um it's interesting because I was looking at my calendar and I have like no appointments all this week. I have zero appointments. How did that happen? and But it's great. So I think I'm just going to kind of be at home and focusing on this stuff. um So wish me luck.

07:20.29
jeffekennedy
I did get a question from an early reader of Never the Roses who loved it. I love it when people love this book. She did ask me how, having read it now, how I could be writing book two about something entirely different. It's not entirely different. It's it's going to be braided in. It's going to be like if this, oh, I'm sorry, I'm doing visuals. It's like if one timeline is the story of Oneira, the book two is going to overlap with a longer arm. It's going to start well before and probably end after.

08:05.33
jeffekennedy
ah And i I think you'll be happy. I mean, you trust me. Trust me, I'll take care of you. ah Yeah, so, oh, the whole relishing, reveling. We were having a conversation about words because I was reading this self-published book that has done enormously well. It's very, very popular. And so I know it's like one of these things where I'm the only one who cares. Although I posted to like my small author group that I chat with on Discord, and I did say clearly I'm the only one who cares because this book has done so well. And other people were like, I care, no, I care. Homonyms. Homonyms will get people. And i know I know you don't want to have to hire an editor, and there's spell check and all of these things. But spell check does not catch Homonyms people.

09:01.25
jeffekennedy
and so like this book there is um and i almost put it on big social media but i said not to i thought i'll just put it here um there's she has uh the king the king's rein r e i n instead of r e i g n um there is a wry smile r y e rye uh instead W R Y a wry smile I'm picturing this guy with like rye bread stuck in his teeth from a sandwich so uh I don't know I wish people would pay for editors but clearly they're not going to um

09:53.66
jeffekennedy
Or sometimes people, when I bring this up, they'll say, well, so, they did pay an editor. And it's like, okay, then you need to pay a good editor because these are things that like the human mind can detect and knows the difference. And it doesn't always, machines can't always get it. I had to pop off for a bit of cat wrangling there. um So like other things that are going on, I mean really this is going to be an intensive work couple of weeks. I think I got all the finances handled yesterday, all of the royalties crunched, bills are paid, so always nice to get that done. Saw some friends on Saturday and that was really good.

10:40.44
jeffekennedy
well refilling time. And so now I've got a couple of big um financial projects I need to get done. I need to do taxes. um And I need to, I need to do a couple things. I need to finalize my 2023 taxes, which I'd already done in like draft form. I did it, was doing it like quarterly. ah That was my whole plan this year. is I was going to do my taxes quarterly and then ah that kind of got blown out of the water. So I've officially missed two quarters, but I'm going to try to get those catch, caught up, catched up. And then I also need to, um

11:19.98
jeffekennedy
put together stuff for our trusts. We need to do a bunch of living will stuff. ah And I'm going to start working on potentially getting a casita built on our property for my mom so she can at least come visit us in comfort. She's finally ready to do that. So that's a fun thing. I've got some expenses to get handled to wind up some stuff from SFWA. So, um, and I need to get up this GoFundMe for Darynda and some help from Melinda Snodgrass. All these things have been sliding, sliding down my list. Uh, so ah one thing about like finishing the book, working on the book is, you know, I can only get productive hours, you know, like a few hours every day. Um, so,

12:16.98
jeffekennedy
Yeah, it's weird. I don't have a whole lot to say today. I think today is just going to have to be a short podcast rather than the like spinning and spinning. Um, and my brain is really focusing on wanting to get these projects done. So I think that's what I'm going to do. So I'm sitting here babbling, I'm going to do that. So just short today. Sorry. Uh, if you have things you want me to talk about some of them to me, ah it's kind of funny because like with everybody gone to world con, there's not a lot of gossip right now. Um, Yeah, there we are then. All right. um I hope you all have a fantastic week if you're traveling or not. And I will talk to you all on Friday. You all take care. Bye bye.