First Cup of Coffee - August 12, 2019

I'm getting ready to leave for #WorldCon2019 in Dublin, and talking about time off from writing and the Restless Stagnation (TM) that begins to rise when I need to write. Also, a bit more about L. Penelope's podcast and her episode on YA Fantasy here. 

Photo is Jackson sitting beside me on the patio, paws tucked into my hand. Yeah, it's hard to leave again so soon. 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy. And I'm here with my first cup of coffee. I could tell I'm gonna be draining this one fast. The coyotes were wild last night. But we'll get to that. Today is Monday, August 12th. And I am in the thick of getting ready to go to Ireland. Hard to believe it's actually gonna happen. Our flight leaves Santa Fe this afternoon around three. So I have a little bit of um house cleaning to finish this morning. Washing all the stuff for uh the house sitters. I remember to set the pillows upright last night, so at least my pillows are dry here in the Great Barber. But it's cool this morning. It's um well, it was 59 when I got up. I didn't notice if it had warmed up any. The sun has come up now, but a very cool breeze came in last night. We had our nightly thunder shower. Uh always cools things down nicely, getting such good rain. That's wonderful. But I um we went to bed. David went to bed before I did. And I stayed up and finished watching a movie. I watched um Just Like Heaven with Mark Ruffalo and Reese Witherspoon. That is just such a a great movie. I really loved that movie. Um, yeah. We watched another one before that that was okay, that was pretty forgettable. We started watching early because I was tired from cleaning and packing and all of that, and David made dinner kind of early, and it was raining by then, raining and thundering. So he put on one that he found that was a 2019 movie called The Way We Weren't, which was pretty cute. The secondary actors were not startlingly good, and but it was unusual and kind of funny. And then he went to take a bath and get ready for bed. And I was sort of trying to decide, did I want to read? I was feeling I'm in this funny place with reading because I have to finish reading my Lyra contest entries. I've read three of the five, but that takes a fair amount of paying attention so that I can give decent feedback on the stories and um judge them in a way that will be helpful to the writers, which I'm not sure I always succeed at, but I I really do try. So I've like I said, I've read three of the five, and I've got two to go, and I'm have several books that I want to read. Those are burning a hole in my Kindle, but I don't want to get too deep into reading them because I'll be tempted to do that instead of getting my contest entries done. And those are due the 26th, which is before we get back from Ireland. So I would really like to get those finished. I'm hoping I'll finish those um on the airplane, maybe on the way to Dallas, and then I can just get them sent from Dallas and be done. I also need to uh review a bunch of Radish splits for Agent Sarah. You know, Radish is that app on the phone that lets you um lets people read on the phone, but it's done in chunks. And the agency, Nancy Yo's Literary Agency, has an account with Radish and could put up a bunch of our self-published stuff on there. So Sarah recently had one of her interns do all of my stuff. And so I've got, I don't know how many books to go through, but I told Sarah I'd try to get that done before I left for Ireland, which isn't critical, but it would be nice if they could get on there and get earning for us. So I might try to do that from we have a significant layover in Dallas tonight. We we land there at about 6 p.m. And the plane for Dublin doesn't leave till 11 p.m. And I did that on purpose just in case there was um there's a couple more flights from Santa Fe between our 3 o'clock one and getting that would still get us there in time for the 11 o'clock flight to Dublin, because I didn't want to uh run the risk that we somehow would miss that flight to Dublin. So we'll have time to have dinner and then kind of hang out, and I can do some of that computer stuff. So, at any rate, all of that's a very long way of saying that I really didn't want to start reading this other book. I've got I really want to read Kristen Higgins' Life and Other Conve inconveniences. I think she's such a great writer. And then uh I've got several other things I want to read too. But I've got time on the plane, even though I'll be sleeping with that 11 o'clock departure, right? Hopefully we'll sleep a lot of the ninth of the flight on the way there. It's a nine-hour flight. So okay, so let's see. Oh, so that's what I was saying. So I thought, well, I'll just sort of flip through and see what's free on HBO right now and or what's on HBO. And there was just like heaven, and that was um just always charming and delightful. I really enjoy that movie. Uh I'd love to have a novel like that. I know I'm not really writing contemporary anymore because it just doesn't sell all that well for me, but I think it would be great to do uh I I love that idea of, you know, like that only he could see her and the sort of the intangible love affair, the love affair that is driven by something deeper than physical attraction. So I still was in bed by I think like 9.30 or 10. 9:30, I think, and then woke up about a quarter to one with those coyotes out there. Uh the storm had cleared, and there was a nearly full, if not full moon, shining in the bedroom window like a spotlight. And the coyote was out there trying to scare something out of the shrubbery. They do this um really annoying bark. It's it's nerve scraping, where they kind of I I don't know if I can even do it. They kind of go only really loud, and they keep doing it over and over again, and it's designed to be nerve scraping, and what they're trying to do is drive the some sort of prey out from under its shelter in the bush. So we've already talked about how incredibly sensitive I am, because the whole I'm just I lie there and worry about whatever creature they're trying to drive out from the bush. You know, I'm thinking, little quail chick, little bunny, just stay. Don't let them make you move. And I even try to think about how the coyote needs to eat too, and it's like, no, not this one. So I even yelled out the window. I felt like my mother. I was like, hey, coyote, go away. David was laughing at me because he was already awake. He had woken up and was up for a little while. He tried to get the kitties to come for their midnight feeding. Jackson wanted his, and Isabel wouldn't abandon her post by the window. She's such a good good guard cat. And David tried shining his flashlight out there. I got him to do that. And at first we didn't think it worked because it was already so very bright. But then the coyote ran off, so maybe he didn't like all of the ruckus around his hunting. Then I heard them howling later. But uh Yeah, you know, busyness with the coyotes around here lately. So, yeah, just all these things on my list get done this morning. Um I don't know where the time went this weekend, but I did get a lot done. Um I'm glad I didn't go to Lyra on Saturday because I don't know if I would have gotten everything done if I hadn't had that day. Garden's looking pretty. My sinus is a little itchy this morning. So I've I think I mentioned that I was listening to Leslie Penelope, who writes this L Penelope, her podcast. I listened to a couple more episodes. I listened to her her first one out of curiosity and heard that she gave me a shout-out and said that she was inspired by this podcast. So that was cool. But I feel like she's so much fancier than I am now. She has like her little intro music and her outro music, and she she's good about identifying herself in a way that I am not. I was like, oh, I guess I should do that. But I she's uh spot on with her branding, you know, saying, This is Leslie Penelope, fantasy author. And she has a great voice, too. You do have a relaxing voice, Leslie. So I think it's a funny thing because I remember once in Lyra we had this speaker who came in, and every once in a while there's a woman who just sort of takes an instant dislike to me. Maybe everybody has that. For me, it's a very market thing. There's every once in a while a woman that I'll meet, and I could just sort of see her back go up and her hackles raise, and I could tell that she just does not like me, does not like my look or presence. And for the most part, it doesn't bother me. It used to bother me a lot more when I was younger, but I'm kind of used to it now. David thinks it has to do with me having a certain level of confidence that makes it it's funny because I don't get the same thing from men, but like other women just really there's certain ones that really react to it. And if I could f if I knew a way to mitigate it, I would. But um I don't know that I can. David doesn't think I can anyway. But so anyway, the speaker came in, and it was uh it was a fun meeting, and I'd come in and was saying hello to everybody, you know, and then we went around the room as we always do with Lyra giving the uh huh, the strange clanking outside. Might have been somebody dragging their muffler or something, that wouldn't be good. But we do did our introductions, and then she launched into her talk, and I can't remember what it was about. It was it was something that I wasn't particularly interested in, which probably didn't help her like me, because even though I try to be good, sometimes my lack of interest shows. I'm not very good at faking liking something when I don't. But anyway, she was talking about something like long-term planning, which was something that I felt like I had handled. But she was talking about different personality types, and she was saying, you know, how she had noticed in our introductions, because what we do in Lyra is we go around and we introduce ourselves, we say what we write, and then we give um updates, you know, recent successes, what's been going on in our writing lives. And this was quite a few years ago, actually, for those Lyra lights listening. This is uh predates most of you. This is when we were still um back at the Presbyterian church meeting rooms. So anyway, it was right after Durinda won her rate up, so that'll help you pick the year. So that was what, like um 2014? No, no, maybe earlier than that. Oh well, it doesn't matter. Yeah, much earlier than that. Anyway, so she was going around, she was talking about different personality types, and she was saying that she was noticing during our introductions that people spoke about themselves in different ways, and she was all about like, you know, how we we need to learn to respect ourselves. You can tell I didn't like this woman the way I'm mimicking her. Um, you know, that we need to learn to respect ourselves and all of this, and and how some people are more self-effacing when they introduce themselves. And then she turns and she looks at me and gives me kind of like this um laser glare, and she said, and some people seem to feel they need no introduction at all. And I realized uh that I probably had forgotten to say my name. And you know, and it was funny because it was like, oh, well, maybe I did, that I I think I do often think that just saying my name, saying I'm Jeffy Kennedy, is introduction enough. Um, and I should probably be good like Leslie and say fantasy author. But, you know, maybe part of it comes from my feeling that, you know, that I am such a fence sitter, that there are so many things that I could list to describe myself. Like I don't feel like I could say just fantasy author or just fantasy romance author. There, you know, I've written so many different things, which is probably why. Well, I was gonna say that I have a branding problem, but I don't think I do have a branding problem. I I did early on, you know, I've talked about that, that I was not good about building myself up in a um, you know, a single genre to begin with. And many people now don't know that I write that I have any contemporary romance at all, or erotic romance, that that's kind of been uh it's it comes as a surprise to some people. But I do think, I mean, I correct myself on that, in that I do think that I have a very strong author brand, you know, and and people mention it as examples, you know, that because of the hats and because of my style of clothing and my style as a person, that uh my author brand or personal brand is distinctive. And and I do think that that's when you talk about author branding, that that is the most important thing to keep in mind is that you know, publishers are always trying to label books with the publishing imprint and get readers to identify with that. And some authors put a lot of effort into branding a particular series, which can be effective, you know, like that's where the whole cocky gate came from, was that chick, you know, really wanting to brand in terms of the cocky brothers. I hate to give her any promo since she was such a uh self-involved, selfish person. Because she tried to trademark that and tried to keep anyone else from using the word cocky in her titles, for those of you who don't know. But anyway, I think that what's important for authors to remember, especially as thinking as the long-term game and a career author, is that readers are going to identify with you, the author, more than anything else. So, you know, when people ask about, you know, who they love to read, they'll say things like, Oh, well, I love to read Margaret Atwood and A. S. By and McCaffrey. And that gives you a very, I mean, you identify with the author. Yeah, sorry about that. I think the rain is really causing us to have some uh amazing pollen bursts here. And I'm looking at these two emitters. I've got sorry, oh, I didn't even cover the microphone. Okay, there, I'm probably done. The drip system is kicked on it back here in the Great Barber, and I was just tucking. I've got two emitters that um they are not emitting. I'm gonna have to switch them out to something. I don't know why they I've got them on the uh like 0.5 gallon per minute because they're smaller pots, but I think it's like too much resistance for the water pressure or something. The lower pots drip just fine. So this is like with the cat ring, like oh, part of my personal brand that on the summer podcast. Oh, I can sneeze again. Sorry about that. Summer podcast, we have to have obsessive checking of the drip system with this house sitter when we went to Kurt Lane, who was, I don't know, she was kind of frazzled when she got here. I wrote out instructions, but she apparently paid little attention to those. But anyway, she let one of my front porch hanging plants die. When I got home, the emitter had popped out of it and had clearly popped out early in the week because the plant had just roasted. I couldn't even resurrect it. I tried. I had to go buy a new one. And I was a little irritated about it because I had left instructions. You know, I said, you know, everything's on the drip system, everything's pretty well modulated, but there are a few that um, you know, you if you see a plant wilt, it could be because the wind has come up and an emitter has popped out. So if you could check that. And I showed her. They said, these are the only two plants that are not on the drip system. So she had texted me and asked me how everything was, and I said, Well, you know, kitties were great, house was clean, appreciate everything. Only casualty was this one hanging plant on the porch. You know, and the emitter clearly popped out early in the week for it to have fried that deeply, especially with these thunderstorms. But it is under the shade of the portal, so you know, it wouldn't have gotten a lot of the rain, but still it shouldn't have gotten that hot. But she she texted me back days and days later. I don't know if she like stewed over it or what, but she said that she was very sorry that you know that it must have escaped her notice, but that she did water both patio gardens daily. I was like, okay, well, that explains why some of these pots were like and there was standing water in a lot of them. And I thought, well, maybe that was because of the uh the rains, but clearly it's because she was like watering the plants that didn't need to be watered. So so it goes. And that's probably all a diversion from what I was supposed to be saying. Let's see. Well, one thing I want to say about El Penelope, Leslie Penelope, um, what's her podcast called? My Imaginary Friends. Uh, she said that she was talking about the whole YA fantasy thing today. So I noticed that she that there was a pingback that I approved from her post. So I haven't listened to it yet, but I'll link to that in the podcast comments here. Uh I'm sure she has interesting things to say about it. We've had parallel experiences with the whole you know, readers wanting to call our books YA fantasy and so forth. So I'll be interested to hear what she has to say about that. Maybe I'll listen as I'm cleaning up. And yeah, so I'm I am gonna try to podcast from Ireland. We'll see how that goes. I'm I'm excited to go. I'm also a little bit conflicted because I haven't done, I did do work this week um revisions on the fiery crown. I think I mentioned that. But I'm starting to feel the writing Jones. I'm starting to feel the desire to get back to work because I haven't since July 18th. So we're coming up on a month now since I've like really been writing. And I know it's probably good for me to refill the well. But I am feeling that I recognize this sort of restlessness in myself. It's a kind of a weird thing. It's like a combination of restlessness and mild depression. And I hesitate to use the word depression because I have very happy chemistry and I'm not someone prone to depression, but it's a you know, the in Chinese medicine they refer to depression as being a kind of stagnation, and that's how it feels to me. It's it puts me in mind of this great quote by Mark Rutherford, which I refer to frequently, which is um, and I'm paraphrasing now, there isn't each of us a wellspring of creativity or whatever you want to call to it, whatever you want to call it. And if you don't cut a channel for it, it turns the ground around it into a bog. And so it's that image, that stagnation, the creativity not having a channel. I'm starting to feel that build up. Uh, I think Sarah is planning to send me some edits on the new Shiny so that we can go out on submission the first week of September. And I said that I could work on that in Ireland, and I think that uh that will be the thing to do. I want to work on that while I'm in Ireland. Uh David wants to do some fishing, so oh yeah, I mentioned that on Thursday when I was driving, right? The movie of my life. I'm going to be working at an sitting at a romantic Irish inn with a sweeping view of the Atlantic coast and enjoy which will face west. No, we'll which will face east, right? No, it faced west. Yeah, that's why it's it's the reverse of East Coast on the Atlantic, yeah. Uh so that'll be an interesting reversal, and I'm I'm hoping to do that. I may just have to start writing on something else if if I start feeling this uh this creeping sense of restless stagnation. Does that even make sense? Well, it's a thing now. So, well, there we are. I talked on a little long, I rambled. Um, but I hope that you all have a wonderful Monday. I uh hope that you can keep track, uh keep up with the Ireland travels and that I have interesting things to say. And I will talk to you all later. Take care. Bye bye.