First Cup of Coffee - March 21, 2019

Saying goodbye today to my mom's cat, Sally. Plus a discussion of why authors shouldn't rant about their woes on the internet, even "in private." Also a random assortment of news, including the release of LONEN'S REIGN! 

And this is late going up because OH WOW! I got a phone call and THE DRAGONS OF SUMMER, my novella in SEASONS OF SORCERY finaled for a RITA Award. Hooray!!!

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy here with my first cup of coffee. And I forgot to put sweetener. I was a little distracted this morning. Okay, you guys are gonna have to suffer through me moving this heavy thing. So cover your ears. Sorry about that. I don't know why. I've had a slowish morning. Oh, let me say before I forget, since I'm clearly distracted, today is Thursday, March 21st. It's my stepdaughter Lauren's birthday today. Happy birthday, Lauren. She's in Cancun, Mexico, so we didn't call her. Normally we would call her and sing her the happy birthday song. But um not today. Alright, so I need to add some. I wonder if I should try blending it. Normally I do the blending in the you know, just of the soy milk, but I'm gonna do the tea and soy milk together because I know if I just dripple this in here, it won't work right. I'll get my stevia in there. And the bourbon vanilla. Not sure why I'm running behind schedule. I woke up at 5 30 and was looking out the window because I was having such a pretty good view of the sky out my window, and it was starting to lighten. And then I fell back to sleep until about a quarter to seven. I was out last night. I went out with uh my friend Minerva Spencer, and we talked about a book of hers that I read and general gossip. Her husband comes to town for uh a stamp collecting meeting. So we went to Del Charo. So that's twice this week I got to have fun times with friends. Oh, let's see how that does. So it won't be exactly the same. So much better though. So, anyway, because I rushed out of here, I did get my words yesterday. I got my 3,000 words, but then I kind of rushed out of here. I had to shower and then go meet her. And so this morning there were lots of dishes to be done. So I did the dishes, I slept white, I did the dishes, I had to make oatmeal. None of these are good reasons, so for some reason I'm just sort of off my usual stride this morning. It's a stormy morning. We have another storm coming in. What a surprise. All right, I'm sitting down again. I'm moving the thing, cover your ears. All right. So, um, what else is there to tell you guys? Well, so the other reason I'm just combobulated is uh well, I don't know if it's a reason, but my mom had to have her cat put to sleep yesterday afternoon. So that was very sad. Though I think it was the right decision to make. Definitely a sad decision to make. So I put a picture of Sally on the podcast there. She uh she was a sweet kitty. My mom rescued her. She got her from like the Pet Smart, but she had been rescued from a litter of feral kittens in Tucson. Or in that the vicinity. Um and so she was she never lost that wildness. Uh she loved my mom. She my mom picked her out because she said the kitty was just staring at her from between the bars, you know, and I maybe they had a a deep connection because um that kitty only ever loved my mom. And my mom had asked me, she's getting to the point in her life where she worries about whether her pets will outlive her, and she'd asked me if I would take Sally if she predeceased her, if Sally, if she if my mom predeceased Sally, and I'd said yes, of course, and I would have. Uh, but I didn't know how I was going to assimilate Sally into our house. I was I'd spent a fair amount of time, David and I had even discussed how we would get Sally into a carrier to bring her to our house, uh, because she's awfully good with those wicked claws. Um we figured we were probably going to have to sedate her and get her here and then assimilate her into the household. And I thought, well, at least that would give me something to focus on instead of grieving. And then I also figured, well, I would just uh cross that bridge, right? Cross that bridge when I came to it. So unfortunately, um last fall, last summer, uh Sally started showing signs of diabetes and they gave her the insulin, but um it only partially worked, and her behavior changed a lot. Um you know, she might have just never been, you know, that that early malnutrition can really affect an animal. And if her mother was uh on her own, you know, who knows what kind of nutrition she had, and then the kittens being feral. So that's a sad. She was um, I think eight or nine years old, so which isn't a bad life for a kitty that had that rough of a start. And she sure sure had a wonderful life with my mom. So we were all very sorry to say goodbye to Sally. Goodbye, Sally. It's one of the difficult things about having pets, isn't it? That they that their lifespans uh don't sync with ours, you know, that they uh live such a shorter time. But then also, you know, it's like with our children, they grow up and they go on, and we don't have to worry about what happens to them after we pass, because theoretically they should be able to go and do their own thing and raise their own children and uh with our pets, you know, it's you have to think about well who will take them after you're gone. I think about that sometimes, like if something happened to me and David on a trip, uh, who would take care of our cats? Except that I know um Veronica Scott would come and take Jackson at a heartbeat. And uh well, I'm sure there would be plenty of our friends who would take Isabel also. She's um a less gregarious cat, but I think she would adapt well to another household just given the opportunity. But we've been petting our kitties a lot and glad to have them here with us, and they're both in post-breakfast nap mode right now, hanging out in their spots. Isabel's on the furry blanket on the armchair, and Jackson's in on the bath mat. He loves sleeping on those bath mats. It might be the moisture in them. So I posted yesterday that uh Lonan's Rain has been released. Yay! Thank you all for purchasing. There were a lot more sales than there were for Aries Enchantment. I think you all um caught up. I didn't look to see if uh there were more sales on Orias Enchantment. Maybe some people bought both at once. But I've already been hearing back from people. Library addict uh commented on the blog post saying that she liked it. Said it was her favorite of the series, which I thought was interesting. I'd be interested to hear why it was the favorite. Maybe this one was just like all solid triumph. It was like, woo-hoo! Uh-huh. All the things, all the things come together. Yeah, and I I guess I could have done more. I should have had a a buttercup moment. I didn't really think of that. Yeah. There should have been something for Buttercup to show off his magnificence as a war horse. Oh perhaps we will have the further adventures of Buttercup. Buttercup and Chufta. So anyway, it's good to have that series done and out. I also finalized the cover for The Dragons of Summer, which will be the standalone novella for um that was in Seasons of Sorcery. So I think we finally got the cover handled. Um it's out there. We'll see what you think. Uh, we'll do uh I think what did we decide, Corinne? I think that one will come out, we'll release that as a standalone in like April or something. Give uh Lone and Reign some time to to rain, as it were, and then we'll put out Dragons of Summary. And what was the other thing that I was oh, and the website. I have seen the website. We should have the unveil uh very soon. I need to talk to the website designer about something today. I ran out of time yesterday. And um Fiery Citadel is coming along just fine. I think I'm at well, I just finished scene three, climax, and now I am uh closing in on the midpoint. I'm in somewhere in the upper 30,000. So that's good. I have to I think I didn't ever say I didn't end up um doing the Orchid Throne uh first pass pages. The I would call them galley proofs, but St. Martin's calls them first past pages. I didn't finish reading them uh last weekend because I got busy with all those other things, finishing taxes and doing the job application. So I asked if I could send it Monday instead of Friday. And Jenny, of course, said yes because she's lovely. And so I'm going to write do work on those this weekend. I don't know if we're gonna have maybe we'll have some nice weather this weekend. Um we're supposed to have rain all day and then maybe snow tonight and rainy again tomorrow. Well, maybe it'll clear out and we'll see. It's uh just a late and cold spring. Which in many ways is preferable to the kind that we often have, which is when the spring warms up very early, like in February and March, and everything starts to bloom, and then we get the cold come back again, and it like will kill the lilacs. So maybe we'll have a beautiful lilac year. I did see on uh Facebook for all of its annoyances, Facebook um does do a nice job of telling you, reminding you of anniversaries of things. And Facebook showed me a picture from March 17th, 2017, where I had posted pictures saying that it was my first uh standalone paddleboard excursion of the summer. I think that was Santa Rosa. But um, my allergies are kind of going today. Um so you know it's it's just sort of um reassuring to know that yes, by this time last year I was getting out and getting on the lake and being in the sunshine, and so my uh restlessness is justified. But spring will come, it will, right? Right? We have to keep saying it. And of course I'm excessively spoiled now because when we lived in Laramie, Wyoming, we didn't get spring until May. And we could keep we could count on getting snow all the way through well, sometimes in June. So I've gotten very spoiled by early springs living here in wonderful Santa Fe. And let's see, what else do I have to tell you all? Maybe not a lot. Um, um I don't think I even made some notes. You know, may some of it maybe have been um talk having drinks of dinner with Megan on Monday and Minerva last night. I'm like, all talked out. But it's definitely fun to get together and uh talk about things in the business. One thing that Minerva and I were talking about last night, and I can't name names, but we were gossiping about a couple of authors who are having trouble in their careers, and we know about it entirely because they've posted rants online. Um, in theoretically private groups, like a private Facebook group here or like a private email loop there. But, you know, it's like nothing is private on the internet. I don't know why people don't quite get that. But you know, people will go on and post these rants about how terrible their agent is, or how terrible their editor is, and how their book hasn't sold any copies. And and we get interested in it and we'll kind of dissect it and say, Well, why do you think her book failed? It's like, oh, well, you know, it had a pretty cover, but then you know, these things happen. And did you read the sample and we'll break it out on our phones and we'll read the first pages and analyze it and be like, oh, well, you know, it's not a very good opening and all this kind of thing. And the whole reason our attention is there in the first place is because the person posted the rant. And when they post a rant talking about how awful their agent is, or how their editor screwed them over, or how their publishing house screwed them over, um, you know, those things will get back to your agent and your publisher. It's it's just um, oh, I I want to say it's completely irresponsible to think that it's not going to get back to them. And maybe that's part of why they do it. Maybe they partly secretly hope that um in a passive-aggressive way that these people will see the their complaints because perhaps they feel powerless to uh affect their fate otherwise. But and it and I was telling Minerva a story of a friend of mine from long ago who was very upset with her editor, um, who she felt like had screwed her over. And she was at a conference, and it was later in the conference, and she she'd been spending the entire conference complaining about her situation to the point where like no one wanted to sit with her in the bar anymore because we're all like, okay, let's talk about somebody else. Um, but she got in the elevator and she was bitching to someone, you know, her sort of her continuation of her days-long monologue of how badly she'd been treated, and she referred to her uh C-word of an editor. And the executive editor of the publishing house was also in the elevator, right? And the person that she had said it to knew this, you know, and it's just sort of like, oh my god, you know, and you know, and and our friend just sort of kept going on and on, you know, oh, that C-word of an editor and all this. It's like, yeah, you know how to make really sure that no one wants to work with you again? That's a good way. You know, and don't go online and tell people how badly your career is going. I'm, you know, it's uh about your books failing and so forth. I mean, I know that I've been honest here that the money I'm making is likely not enough at this time to support two people. Uh but it and and that's uh our current lifestyle, we could certainly downgrade and probably do all right. But I'm resisting doing that. And we don't have a really elaborate lifestyle, so there we are. But you know, I also know that um that's a a high level of success compared to many. Um, you know, if it were just me, I could do it. So, you know, there there's being honest, and nobody wants you to not be honest, but really think about your motivations for for slamming people online, you know, or for bemoaning how badly fate has tried treated you, especially when you have, you know, like a book published with a big house, people are gonna have a hard time dredging up a lot of sympathy for you because a lot of people never get that far. And it's like, well, you know, because the world has failed to recognize your genius is um, well, you know, one of the oldest and most cliche and boring complaints in the world, right? So there we are. Uh I thought of things to say after all. So I hope you all have a fabulous Thursday. A wonderful March 21st. Um, we have passed spring solstice and beautiful full moon last night. If you guys saw it, it was incredible when I was driving home. So, yeah, good times moving forward. I will talk to you all tomorrow. Bye bye.