First Cup of Coffee - April 15, 2024

A round-up of the wonderful weekend at the Jack Williamson Lectureship, including connecting with other authors, sharing advice and stories, and how all of that refills the creative well.

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Transcript

00:01.48
jeffekennedy
Good morning everyone this is Jeffe Kennedy romantasy author of epic fantasy romance I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Wonderful today is Monday April Fifteenth ah taxes due for a lot of people here in the us I know a couple people who were working on them over the weekend not me because I'm doing quarterly right? ha. But I am back home. Ah, very nearly did the podcast from the secret garden this morning. Ah. It's nice enough. It's actually a really nice morning. Spring may have arrived I don't want to jinx anything. Um, and so I went out there to check. But I haven't cleaned anything up yet I cannot believe it is mid-april and I've done zero yard cleanup so far this year

00:55.54
jeffekennedy
Ah, late cold spring. So um, we did record the podcast on Friday um down at eastern mexico university Jon Barr set this up. Great wonderful podcast. We do have video. But the video is from a and a not great angle. It's like the up under the chin angle and Kelly and I vetoed it this um, this video shall'll never see the light day. Sorry Jon I should have said something when I saw the angle of those cameras. Um.

01:33.29
jeffekennedy
Kelly and I Kelly Robson is visiting. She's visiting still but she's asleep this morning. We had a great conversation on the podcast Friday she and I have been having a great time together an ongoing conversation talking about things like vanity. And I showed her those clips of Emma Thompson that show up on Instagram from time to time where Emma Thompson is talking about body image and yeah, like not wasting our lives and our passion on what our bodies look like and. It became clear as I was searching you know like actually looking for the clips for Kelly and showing them to her that it was from a tour for a movie called good luck to you, Leo Grande and so we watched that movie last night and what a great movie I don't know why I'd never. I mean other than these little clips of Emma Thompson talking body image didn't hear anything about this movie and it was highly recommend. It was great. It was um, Emma Thompson plays a woman who is 63 years old and has only ever had. Sex with a guy once in her entire life and never had an orgasm and she hires this young man sex worker to to meet with her and there's 4 meetings and it's brilliant dialogue super well done such an interesting premise and um.

03:03.28
jeffekennedy
Our our young sex worker guy is to die for. He is so adorable. So highly recommend watching it brings up a lot of interesting questions about pleasure and what we can ask for and what we deserve and so forth.

03:24.24
jeffekennedy
So I'm recording this podcast today and I have not yet uploaded the 1 from friday there's Killian in the background you want to go out. He's in here with me hold on. So um. Maybe by Friday we'll have the ah podcast outside I thought it was funny. 1 thing that Jon Barr asked me when we did the recording there is that he asked how I did the wind chime sound and he found a wind chime on his phone for me to play so we do open. But for those of you not on video they are literal wind chimes I have them hanging here on my desk when I'm out in the secret garden I use the wind chimes there. It's probably and a useful thing to think about because. These things become part of the branding they become part of the recognizable sound of the thing but they don't have to be these huge production value things. Um, you know like I'm so recognized for wearing my hat. Ah, but that's something that I do anyway. The wind chimes are things that I like that are here anyway. So I think that's um, we could spend a whole lot of time talking about branding but I think it's um, the best way to think about it is that it's is the um.

04:55.33
jeffekennedy
Spruce step version of yourself. It's like the date night version of yourself. You don't have a ah first date where you tell someone? Hopefully you know like all of your health problems and other intimate details. But you you know you. Fix up, you wash your hair and you put on maybe a little scent and you wear your nice clothes. You don't wear your schleppy sweats with the holes in them. So so that's just ah, a random thought on author branding you. It's just you presenting your cleaned up self.

05:32.67
jeffekennedy
Ah, if you're going to huge links to add things to your author brand to make yourself beyond like unique and stand out. Ah you know it can get really difficult to sustain.

05:50.10
jeffekennedy
So just something to keep in mind. Yeah like I knew a girl wants who she wrote romances with weddings and she would wear big wedding dresses to signings and that's just that's difficult to sustain. So um I realized I like didn't finish talking about the recording we got it later on the day then we were busy doing lecture ship stuff same on Saturday doing lectureship stuff drove home and yesterday was recuperation day yesterday I had a tired. So I'm just gonna get them both up today. So you get a sort of like double issue podcast today. But from Friday it will be the audio only. So um, lectureship was great. It's been great. Having Kelly to visit I picked her up on Wednesday and we went to stay at this spa down and truth her consequences. The Ted Turner sierra grand resort and got to soak in the mineral waters and. Had ah an amazing breakfast. There. She had a great massage either mediocreish treatment but it was fun and then we took the long way around drove to portalis via ah white sands and rio doson and that was beautiful.

07:24.40
jeffekennedy
And Kelly hadn't seen that landscape before unfortunately in my 1996 jaguar the thermostat has not been working correctly and so even though the air conditioning works it like doesn't always know what temperature it's supposed to be It's like 1 of these. Like very very early model where you set the temperature devices and it's supposed to make you be that temperature and it doesn't and so we were we were having to drive with the windows down. It was very hot. Actually we were lucky that it was not super hot or it would have been unbearable. Ah, normally I would just put the top down under those circumstances and I had known that this was a problem like last fall and then totally forgot about it over the winter right? because I didn't need air conditioning and which just may I always put the top down but the son is a lot for Kelly so ah. It was interesting. It took us both back to our childhoods. You know going on road trips with the windows down and that highway sound and blowing and yeah it was kind of it was cool. It was kind of a nostalgic. As I said lectureship was great. It's such a terrific gathering of amazing people. So I got to see Dorida Jones for those of you who I think it's um, pretty open now that she is dealing with treatment for breast cancer. She's.

08:58.38
jeffekennedy
Got 5 more chemo treatments to go. she's doing well she's um she's getting there. So yeah, all good wishes and love to msjones. It was great to get to see her hung out with Kelly Robson Melinda Snodgrass was there the incredible Melinda Snodgrass and then Martha Wells was the guest of honor and she was great. It was so much fun to hang out talk to her really a lovely intelligent person. Connie Willis was there Arkady Martine. And her wife Vivian Shaw who is also a writer and has some books upcoming in Serena Ulabari ah Walter John Williams it was just a really terrific gathering and we had so much fun. Hanging together having in-depth conversations. Kelly loved it. She had great time. So yeah, it was really worthwhile Connie did an interesting workshop on foreshadowing and she always asks the. Author peanut gallery to chime in It's um, it's great to get. Everyone's perspectives on these things and to hear these stories that are told talking with writers at all these different stages of their careers.

10:29.31
jeffekennedy
Oh tough Tiffany Trent who's a listener she was there sorry Tiffany I'm trying to remember who all was there but it was ah a terrific gathering really just yeah, intense and you know I wish that um. I kind of wish more people would come to it more aspiring writers more students and so forth, but from what the organizer Dave sweeten was saying it's sounding like more and more authors are wanting to come to it because people like me and Kelly are like going around saying this is just. Terrific for well repeling and I guess that's something I talk about quite a lot right? You know how do you refill the creative will well this is one way you do it is by talking to people and Melinda was saying that she wished she could learn from connie more often because she had come home with ideas about what she's going to do. To um, put this book together that she's working on. It's really just um, yeah, it's I think part of the moralists is that we can always keep learning from each other. Ah.

11:43.22
jeffekennedy
And these kinds of conversations is one of the primary ways that we continue to refine our craft. How do you do? what? you do? What things? do you think about what things don't you think about? we had a panel on romanticy which was interesting to talk about. I was really the only person on the panel who fully writes romancy I guess um, it was you know it's funny when you pull these things together. It's like well which people are doing this kind of thing and. Kelly was on the panel even though she absolutely doesn't write romanticy but she does write about sex and relationships and so we kind of were.

12:34.63
jeffekennedy
Kind of froze there for a second. Um I don't know what I was going to say we kind of were it was an interesting conversation I felt like I talked a lot and I'm very careful about not talking too much on panels. But I also. Kind of had the most to say but 1 thing that I'm noticing you know, like here with the the rise of romantasy and the ah I don't know maybe the growing acceptance of it because 1 of the questions. The moderator asked was why now why is this so hot now. And it's kind of like a cumulative thing. But 1 thing that I've personally noticed is this is my third year coming to the Jack Williamson lectureship and it was interesting that with each progressive year I sell more books. The bookstore is there Twig from beastly books was there. Ah I sell more books and I have more people asking me to sign and it feels like it's becoming this thing that people at first I felt like a little bit of a pariah I sometimes do feel like a pariah at science fiction and fantasy conventions. Ah, and you all know this because I talk about it sometimes when people say things to me like well but you don't write fantasy. You write romance as if they are mutually exclusive and I think that this is changing. Um, it was interesting in the romanticy pal to have ah.

14:06.61
jeffekennedy
Gel right up front who had a tag so she was she might have been a librarian or she might have been some other kind of staff or faculty but she was talking about that she reads romantasy loves it and it's like yeah yeah, it's so cool just to be able to share these spaces and. Celebrate each other have these conversations we had kind of the ongoing conversation after Connie's workshop on Saturday we all went out to lunch and Connie was telling us stories from her very long. Career we were talking about people saying careless things people some snotty things people have said to Connie well is SFWA Grandmaster over the years people can be can be cruel can say things like to. To try to diminish other people and they stick with us for a long time and we had a very interesting conversation about that and then yesterday Kelly and I went out. We went over to melinis notres's house so I could help her a little bit more with getting her series up. She. Hit a snag and with ingram which is always annoying and then Kelly and mulin and I went out to dinner and melinda treated us and we had a great conversation over dinner too. So I am.

15:37.52
jeffekennedy
My well is getting filled I think that ah you know when we talk about ongoing education and finding crip partners finding beta readers. It's difficult right? You know there's like people are always looking for a mechanism to do this but the the real thing is this. Making those friendships you know making friends with your friends friends Kelly commented that she loves coming because I coming here because I introduce her to really great people and that's what it's about so I'm going to make today's a little bit short because Fridays was a little long. Gonna get the both uploaded and I will talk to you all on Friday you all take care bye bye.