First Cup of Coffee - January 31 2025

All about my Marketing & Publicity meeting with Tor/Bramble, my upcoming editorial meeting and how creative angst is just a fact of life and never goes away. Also, two more books/series out on submission and can I finish STRANGE FAMILIAR in time???

Visit JenniferKLambert.com

RELUCTANT WIZARD is out now and audiobook is live!! https://www.jeffekennedy.com/reluctant-wizard

You can preorder STRANGE FAMILIAR at https://www.jeffekennedy.com/strange-familiar and MAGIC REBORN at https://www.jeffekennedy.com/magic-reborn

The posture-correcting sports bra I love almost more than life itself is here https://forme.therave.co/37FY6Z5MTJAUKQGA

Join my Patreon and Discord for mentoring, coaching, and conversation with me! Find it at https://www.patreon.com/JeffesCloset

You can always buy print copies of my books from my local indie, Beastly Books! https://www.beastlybooks.com/

If you want to support me and the podcast, click on the little heart or follow this link (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/jeffekennedy).

Sign up for my newsletter here! (https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/r2y4b9)

You can watch this podcast on video via YouTube https://youtu.be/7Y1sSCRrPm8

Transcript

00:01.28
Jeffe Kennedy
Good morning, everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy, and I'm not registering any sound.

00:10.61
Jeffe Kennedy
Good morning, everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy, author of Epic Fantasy Romance. I'm here with my first cup of coffee.

00:21.81
Jeffe Kennedy
We kind of a double start there because, uh, wasn't registering any of my volume every once in a while. Windows like resets my, my input settings. It's really frustrating. Um, so anyway, uh, here we are today is say it with me people. It is Friday. Uh, January 31st, end of January.

00:50.42
Jeffe Kennedy
A lot of people people feel like it's been a long month here in the U.S. oh That's um yeah one month of many yet to come, right?

01:06.00
Jeffe Kennedy
So, we're just not going to go there. How are you? How are you this morning? um Let's see, so what do I have to report? ah I am going down to Portales this weekend. i'm Going to go visit my friend, the lovely and delightful Dorinda Jones. Looking forward to doing that. And yeah, it's been a busy week. Where am I at on Strange Familiar? I passed midpoint.

01:41.33
Jeffe Kennedy
um I sound a little resignedish, don't I? I'm at almost 44,000 words, so I am still on track, but I think I'm going to have to push out the release date. um At my current rate, at I'm still doing really well, ah improving my word count, um I'm going to have the, well it's already the best word count month that I've had since January. <unk>re We're gonna play this game again but I will pause you.

02:24.17
Jeffe Kennedy
Okay, so it's definitely the best month since October of 23. It's going to be my fourth highest month since January of 2022. So I've done really well. I'm trying to give myself credit for the fact that I have really increased my work out in productivity. However,

02:47.56
Jeffe Kennedy
If I look at my current average that I've been doing so far, I am not going to finish this draft until like the 4th of March. And since I'm supposed to release it on the 2nd of March, that's a problem. But I'm just going to wait and see. um See if I continue at my current rate. um See if I can maybe do a last minute push we'll find out um monday i have my meeting my editorial meeting on book two for tour so i'm trying to not freak about that um yeah yeah i mean

03:41.21
Jeffe Kennedy
I was trying to explain to a non-writer friend about this. um And she's someone who is dealing with a very recent cancer diagnosis.

03:56.84
Jeffe Kennedy
It's um very mild. It's not looking like a terrible thing. um Caught it very early, that sort of thing. But you know, it's angsty. But we were just talking about um you know, like getting together and plans and that sort of thing. And I was saying how on Monday I have this editorial meeting and how freaked out I am about it and trying to explain why, why, why am I so worried? You know, and

04:31.84
Jeffe Kennedy
it when we're having this same conversation, having this in context, the same conversation of like what tests she's going to have to do and decisions she's going to have to make and the things that she's worried about, you know, in this grand scheme, yes, it doesn't matter. Um, you know, and we, we kind of come back around to that, right? You know, like if we compare our problems to other people's problems,

05:03.41
Jeffe Kennedy
You know what I mean? But there's still problems. There's still things that concern us, still things that we are thinking about. And yeah, why am I so concerned? um I think some of it is just the standard creative angst. You know, like,

05:26.72
Jeffe Kennedy
Maybe, maybe it's partly comparisons, you know, like this first book was so incredibly special. Never the roses is so special. And like, um, so yesterday morning we had the big marketing and publicity meeting, which was great. There were like 10 people on the zoom call and all to do with me as celebration throughout Oz. Uh,

05:52.73
Jeffe Kennedy
which is wonderful and gratifying and I've never gotten to do that before. so So yes, it is exactly as fun as you would think it would be. My fellow authors out there, um it was great.

06:06.89
Jeffe Kennedy
Even the Monique Patterson, head of rebel imprint was on the call, even though she was marked as an optional attendee, she was there, which I just thought was great. And it's funny to talk to Monique because she, you know, they all went through and introduced themselves to me on the call. And they, um

06:29.29
Jeffe Kennedy
you know, delightful people, you know, that like, this is what I am doing for your book. And they were all saying such nice things about the book, which is wonderful. You know, like how it made them cry and, you know, say really great things about things that they're doing too. I mean, some of it you could tell was a little bit of them like reporting to the rest of the team too, you know, like they'd had to prepare for this call and You know, they're like, okay, so I've done this and this and this, and I've prepared this. And so, you know, because of course, money ahead of the imprints on the call. So they have to, you know, and it it was, it was delightful. I don't know if I can express it more than that, but you know, like they were, you know, just, you know, talking about their jobs and what they're doing for the book and so forth, partly for me and partly for the rest of the team and reporting to their boss. But, um,

07:23.07
Jeffe Kennedy
you know, Monique was acknowledging how we have been in this business together for a long time. Monique Patterson um has been in a couple different houses. She was over at St. Martin's and we have probably known each other in the romance circles for a couple of decades. And which is just kind of crazy at this point in time. And she was acknowledging that. Yeah, just funny when you've been in this business for a long time. And and I think I've, you know, I always talk about how I'm in this for the long game. And I look back to, you know, those that first

08:13.10
Jeffe Kennedy
you know, first RWA meeting I went to in like 2007. And it's like, yeah, coming up on 20 years.

08:25.53
Jeffe Kennedy
One of the other gals who tends to be more in charge of like the events for Bramble and for Tor, maybe I'll let make one. Um, Caro Perney, uh, we were talking about everybody had like, some people have really pretty bookshelves behind them, like really nicely done bookshelves. And I'm like, Oh, I've got my kind of trashy.

08:47.50
Jeffe Kennedy
TBR pile behind me and not not nearly so nice. And Carol was like, yeah, but what is that? Because you don't have room for your bookshelves because you've got trophies behind you. So if you're not on video, yeah, I've got my Rita award behind me. So I was showing them my Rita and we had a little moment of Agent Sarah said, rest in peace.

09:12.54
Jeffe Kennedy
r w a And I was like, yeah, that's sad, isn't it? Rest in peace, RWA. I'm glad that I was able to get my um RITO when I could, and I'm really sorry that that's not available still to people. ah ah All right, we won't talk more about RWA. Anyway, um so So it was great. It was great having this call. But it's sort of like every time someone talks about how much they love Never the Roses, I worry about book two. And I know it's not reasonable. So I'm sure it'll be fine. It'll it'll be fine. um

09:59.27
Jeffe Kennedy
<unk> like I think I've mentioned it on here before, but Agent Sarah, have when I said you know that I'm worried that they'll hate this second book, um because it's different. to And i I tried some things and Sarah said, well, I'm sure you'll work together to make it better, which I know is true. But I told her, I said, you're supposed to tell me it's going to be fine.

10:23.55
Jeffe Kennedy
oh

10:26.91
Jeffe Kennedy
Anyway, we'll see. ah So that's my big thing. ah Marketing and publicity meeting was great. They have wonderful plans. I'm super excited. They said that they are going to give me, oh, I should report back on this one thing. I am going to go to Apollycon 2026. We talked about that. And they also said that they're going to curate um event proposals for me to decide which things I want to go to.

10:56.63
Jeffe Kennedy
So um yeah, that's kind of cool, isn't it? Like curated list, event proposals. So we shall see. I will keep you all updated.

11:09.30
Jeffe Kennedy
Eel my blend of mix of blended mix. Guess that's a little redundant. You could edit it. Of readers and authors who listen.

11:20.73
Jeffe Kennedy
um Interestingly, Agent Sarah tagged me as I was driving into town the other day, um kind of out of the blue, and she said, so we're getting a lot of requests for feminist horror from, I know the transcript's gonna hate the way I said that, ah from editors that they're really looking for feminist horror revenge fantasies,

11:50.49
Jeffe Kennedy
ah Gosh, I wonder why. It's looking at that 19th Amendment getting revoked and losing all of our rights as women in the US s here, but other than that, everything's fine.

12:05.11
Jeffe Kennedy
ah So yeah, ah she, I don't know, longtime listeners may remember that I had a book several years ago called Among the Daughters, which is feminist horror revenge. And Sarah said, you know, I still think about that book. She said, I still want to get to the end because I only wrote like a hundred pages of it. um It died on submission. We couldn't figure out why. It was like it got a very weird meh response. Like none of the none of the feedback was even clear. They were just like, oh, well,

12:41.93
Jeffe Kennedy
it's It's not what I was hoping it would be. And it's like, well, what what did you want? it Like you hit all of the boxes of what you said you were looking for. So anyway, sometimes it just does that. I mean, it's just, you don't know why.

12:55.80
Jeffe Kennedy
ah So she asked if she could take that out on submission again. And of course, my first thought was, I said, I don't want to have, I'd said this very definitively. And longtime listeners will remember me saying, I am never going to write a full book again that isn't one that I really, really want to write. And that book was the reason because it was like, I like that book. I do want to finish writing that book.

13:24.49
Jeffe Kennedy
But I don't want to write it for free. And it would be difficult for me to take it out on indie publishing. In fact, oh I was talking to my my same friend who has the recent cancer diagnosis.

13:39.86
Jeffe Kennedy
ah

13:42.92
Jeffe Kennedy
And i was I was explaining this. I was on my way to to meet her. And I you was saying how Sarah had said that they were getting requests for feminist horror. And she said, she's like, you mean you've written some feminist horror? And I said, as a matter of fact, I have. And she said, so would this be a new pen name? And I was like, oh, God.

14:06.61
Jeffe Kennedy
I hope not. But we also went out on submission with Sex, Lies, and Lay Lines, which is a little bit different. And I don't know if that would be a ah Jeffe Kennedy. So I don't know. We'll just take things as they come, right? So exciting things are happening though. Wouldn't it be cool if both of those sold? oh So anyway, anyway, all of this wraps back around too.

14:35.46
Jeffe Kennedy
On Monday, I'll have that editorial meeting. I'll have a better feel for what kind of timeline they want on that revision. ah I really, really do not want to stop writing Strange Familiar unless unless they really that revision back soon. And I mean, we'll see. I think it's going to take me a little bit of revising. We will see if they hate it. um We'll see what they want from it. There are some things I have in my mind that I think I probably need to do to make it a better book.

15:13.88
Jeffe Kennedy
um to heighten some aspects of it. And I'm curious to see if that's what Allie will suggest. She did say that that's her favorite part of the job is doing this, working together on editorial feedback. So yeah,

15:32.63
Jeffe Kennedy
um I guess I am interested to hear what they say. I just am worried that they won't love it. boom

15:43.43
Jeffe Kennedy
ah Nothing ever is enough, right? ah so So yeah, those are all of the things. I've got um my annual check-in with Agent Sarah next week. Also, many meetings lately. I guess that's sort of the beginning of the year thing. um So yeah, ah we'll just see what comes out of that editorial meeting.

16:08.48
Jeffe Kennedy
And maybe I can figure out a way to just like really cram on Strange Familiar and get it done. Or I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. Always in motion is the future. ah Yeah. So let's see what else. Casita building is continuing apace. The people are out there working.

16:36.77
Jeffe Kennedy
They're about to pour the slab, so that'll be a big thing to get done. and

16:48.42
Jeffe Kennedy
I suppose it would be interesting to see if I could really cram on finishing a book. i I did it before and I burned myself out, but I did, like the edge of the blade, I wrote doing like 5,000 words a day.

17:06.45
Jeffe Kennedy
of So I don't know if I really kick in, if I really apply that pressure. I'm going to think about it. As I drive to Portales this weekend, I am going to listen to the audiobook of Reluctant Wizard. Oh, which by the way is coming out of exclusive on Audible. I'm putting that up everywhere. So that'll be available all over the place. So that that'll be happy making for many of you.

17:32.53
Jeffe Kennedy
So I'm going to listen to that and hopefully pick everything up. I'm happy with it. I'm i'm happy with how it's going. um I'm feeling like I'm doing a lot of summary, but maybe it's okay. I'll see how it reads when I come back over it.

17:50.86
Jeffe Kennedy
and Yeah. Um, tip in sheets. I'm still, i've I've done like four and a half inches worth. Did I tell you all, Oh, I finally did remeasure by, uh, by height instead of number of pages. And so I've got like 64 inches. It's, it's my height in tip in sheets. And I've made it through four and a half inches so far, but I haven't told mid March on that. However,

18:20.18
Jeffe Kennedy
because they were messed up. Did I tell you all that? Like, yeah, I did. That some of them got messed up. The boxes weren't very good. They're going to send me new boxes to ship them back in. ah But they're sending me 3000 more to cover the spoilage. It's like, 2000 more is a lot more.

18:38.26
Jeffe Kennedy
of But I need to get better about it. I was thinking I should like be signing them as I'm doing stuff like this, like the podcast. Anytime I'm in a meeting or something like that, I need to just sit there inside and sign these things. So yeah, that's me. That's all the things I have to do. I hope you all have a great weekend. If I know a couple of you listen from Portales, love to say hi. And yeah, I will Talk to you all on Monday. You all take care. Bye-bye.