First Cup of Coffee - March 22, 2019

Sitting outside this morning after rain, enjoying birdsong and my RITA® Award final! Reflecting on how I got no words yesterday, but that sometimes it's good to take time to celebrate. 

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Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy. Here with my first cup of coffee. I'm outside. My chair's a little damp, but I am outside. Yay. You can hear the birds going crazy. It's mostly the gross beaks up in the big cottonwood tree in the neighbor's house yard across the street. Everybody's very happy about that rain. We got a ton of rain last night. So the desert is going to be green, green, green if we ever get sunshine. So it goes, so it goes. Um I'm zipping up my sweater a little bit. It is cool. The sun's not quite shining. But it's um it's nice. Nice. Kind of a balmy feel to it. The moisture is nice if everything's just soaked. Standing water in the driveway, not something we get all that often. I might seem like it to you guys because I always mention it, but when I mention it, it's the only times we ever have it. We have a gravel driveway, you know. So standing water means that it's saturated. I wonder how long these cross beaks will stay around. That's unusual for them to be here. So if you listen to my yesterday's podcast and I was so distracted, I nearly said a couple of times, but I knew that the Rita final calls were going out yesterday. I tried not to know, but it's hard not to because I'll usually see one of my friends retweet it or say something about it. Uh sometimes editors will send around emails saying, be sure to let us know. It sent you here. Um so I knew they were going out yesterday morning, but not what time. And when actually, even the evening before, I had started getting an excited feeling, and I thought that I had maybe finaled. And I had a really good feeling about it yesterday morning. But I didn't want to jinx it by saying so. Uh so I kind of thought there was a chance that the call might come in while I was on the podcast, and I wasn't sure what I was going to do. Although I thought it might be fun to record the happy reaction. I also didn't want to put, it's one of the RWA board members who calls, and you know, they have their little script and things that they have to say, and I didn't want to be recording them, you know, without their permission. But no, the call came in just a little bit later as I was about to um post the podcast and it finished and I was about to post it online, and so that's why it got delayed going up because I got the phone call, and then of course, everything goes to hell in the most delightful of ways. And as soon as my phone rang, I was like, yes, yay! Because otherwise people don't call me because they know I have my phone off, right? It's like one of the rare times I have my phone on, and it was a number I didn't know. So I have heard from other people that there have been times that someone has called them while they were waiting for their Rita call. And like they get all excited and run for the phone, and then it's like their mother or something, and they're like, Mother, go away, leave me alone. Um or someone once told me they got a uh or they might have blogged about it, but they said that they got like a telephone solicitation, you know, so it was an unknown number, and they picked it up, yes, and they're all like, Would you like to buy? You know, have you gotten your health insurance? That's how they all talk. I don't know if you guys mean that. Uh and that particular person, you know, like hung up in a fury on the telephone solicitor and was so mad and disappointed and walked away and the phone rang again and they went back and picked it up and they're like, God damn it, I mean and and it was the read-of-call. So the board members say it's one of the most fun parts of their job getting to call the finalists, and they say people do everything scream and cry and all of that. I just started laughing. I was so happy. And I was surprised that the story that finaled was The Dragons of Summer. Um, I didn't expect it to be that one because I entered that in the novella category. And the novellas that typically final in previous years have all been ones, um, you know, they're usually like in the Harlequin Christmas anthologies. Um, you know, and I say that in a tone of disgust, and I don't mean it that way because, you know, those are lovely stories and and people enjoy them a whole bunch. I've written a a short Christmas story too, you know. They're really neat. Um, but they tend to be of a particular stamp, you know, and it's just funny how every year, because I've entered novellas before, and every year it's like, so not my novella. You know, it's like, no, this is not the category for what I'm writing. But this year it turned out really different, and uh I think all but one of the novellas that finaled is self-published, which says something. I think um there are a lot is a lot more uh self-publishing of novellas going on now. And in fact, one of the other finalists, Dana Martin, uh did her novella in an anthology with Grace Draven, just like mine was. So we've decided that Grace is our lucky charm. Keep your hands off my lucky charms. Uh there's one of the finalists is very clearly with a traditional publisher, and the other one has a publisher listed, but it's not one I've heard of. So that makes me wonder that it might be, you know, like when I self-publish stuff, I use Bright Links Publishing, and that's mostly for me to keep track of stuff. Um, and some people do that. They'll put it under uh you know a publishing house name. It also is better than like having on there, you know, like kit Amazon digital services or whatever else gets automatically thrown on there. So I but I was really happy that it was the Dragons of Summer. That was the one that was in the Seasons of Sorcery anthology with uh Grace Straben and Jennifer E. Steppen and Amanda Boucher. So I'm really happy for that anthology to get a little bump. Um and we're going to I'd funny, um I think I even mentioned yesterday that I'd just gotten the cover for my standalone of the Dragons of Summer the day before. Um, and we'd been planning to put that out in April or something, but we're just gonna go ahead and get that out in case people want to get it. So that people can get just that story if they want to. But you could still buy the whole anthology. I was gonna email the group and ask them if they want to put seasons on sale since it has that Rita final might be a good time too. So both will be upcoming. I'm only waiting on like one little thing, and then we'll have that. And yeah, so I was surprised it was the Dragons of Summer. I also entered um The Arrows of the Heart and Shooting Star. And Shooting Star I knew was going to be a long shot. That's my contemporary romance about my young and troubled rock star, which has never sold very well, so I was kind of hoping someone might recognize its genius in the Rita final and give it a little bump. But that book is just doesn't go over well with people for whatever reason. Maybe one day, maybe one day it will. It's might be just um I don't know if I wrote it wrong or if it's just needs the love. Sometimes books take a while to sync with the group mind, you know? To be where everybody else is thinking about things. And then the arrows of the heart, of course, the most recent Uncharted Realms book, uh, Karin and Zur. So care Corrine is all mad that arrows didn't final. She's on a little Why Don't They Love Zero rampage, I believe. I think she threatened to start her own contest so that she could just Yeah, that'd be great. When Corrine has her own contest where uh all her favorite books win the awards. I like it. You should do that, Corrine. You you could have um um a Mick Pearl. You could give uh your annual awards to your give have an actual uh trophy. A little pig holding a pearl. That'd be great. So yeah, I kept thinking maybe I was gonna write, but then I kept going back to social media and people were congratulating me and um sending me messages on other media, and you know, they're really all just so lovely, and finally I decided, you know, I'll just take the day to absorb the fun and enjoy it. Because you don't get that very often. It's kind of a reward. So now I'm a little bit behind on Fiery Citadel, but and and I have to tell you, I was thinking this morning, I was thinking I could increase my word count. So there I go. I could even if I increased it just by 30 to like 3150 words a day, that's not that much more than 30,000, and move it a little long a little faster. I'm tempted, I'm tempted, but I know I'm not supposed to. I'm gonna really not do it. I won't, I won't. I'm gonna stick to 3,000 and I could turn it into my editor just a teensy bit late. I can always send her most of it with the last couple of chapters. I have to. I have to send her the first chapter on Monday, along with my comments on the Orchid Throne first past pages, and because they're going to put the first chapter of Fiery Citadel at the end of Orchid Throne. So I think it's pretty good. I'm pretty pleased with it. We'll see if she is. And I have the option of sending her everything that I have so far, which is also tempting. I can't decide on that. There it can kind of go two ways because I know that there will be things that I will want to go back and weave in later, but I could always get her thoughts on what I need to weave in now. I might just send her everything that I have so far. We'll see. I'll probably go with the impulse of the moment. So it was very fun yesterday to see uh all of the people uh sharing their delight and their uh nominations and so forth. Always an exciting day. There are, of course, you know, always the the thing about this particular award is all of the books go to five judges and receive a ranking. And we didn't have again this year that many authors of color. Although uh Kring made a really good point that uh people were saying that there were no authors of color, uh, which was ignoring the fact that there are some authors of color, just no authors who are black, and that's it's not the same thing. I mean it would have been nice to have some of our black ladies in there too, or fellows, but we didn't hit any in the net this year. And it's a problem of you know, how do we try to get those books elevated um within the current contest parameters? I really do think that broadening the judge base is one of the ways to do it because as someone pointed out to me, uh, you know, the the most insidious aspect is when a white judge will read a book and say, Um, well, I just didn't connect with these characters, therefore I don't rank that book so high. And uh, you know, is it that it wasn't well written or because you didn't connect with the characters because they're a different race? You know, and arguably it's the latter. So, you know, having people who will connect, that's important. You know, it's it's um changing our society overall, which is a slow process. The other thing I've been thinking about is, you know, after our whole brew ha ha with the nebula awards, because there's the reverse problem there, because the nebula awards is entirely by nomination. And so groups of people can entirely influence which books are nominated. You know, you get enough people to nominate a book, so it's not the same kind of um send out to a certain number of judges who all read and rank. Uh, this is just the nebulas are all, you know, people saying, Well, I nominate this book, and if you get enough people to nominate it, then it will be. And I've been thinking about it that um, you know, I've I've suggested with the nebula awards that one fix is to have either you know to have a parallel award where people can submit their books to panels of judges to be read in the same way that the Rita is. Uh and it would be interesting if RWA did the reverse, if we created a parallel award that was done by a nomination process. Um because that would net a different uh group of people. It's um, you know, not easy to do because these things are always subject to influence. You know, like the Nobel laureates going through all of the Nobel panel going through all of that trouble last year. You know, you get a select group of people, and then there's always going to be some favoritism. But but I'm really happy that I got my read a final. I'm really happy for this story that my story got the final. I I need to be careful to say that. It's not me, it's a story. And I'll be interested to see the scores on the other books. We do get to see those, so it'll be interesting to see where uh shooting star and arrows fell out. I will probably share those on my blog again. I I have in years past, so we'll share those out again. And I was very excited that um another one of my Lyra sisters, Shelly Alexander, finaled for one of her self-published books, an erotic book. So I'm gonna snag that and read it. I already snagged Dana Martin's novella, which I missed seeing somehow. So I am very much looking forward to reading both those things and to celebrating with Shelley. Uh was a Minerva Spencer posted that Lyra is small but mighty. I think that's true. I never think of us as small, but I suppose we are. We have like 40 members, and usually about half of that come to any given meeting, which I think is pretty standard. So I am going to get to work. I'm going to get after this uh my 3,000 words, get those done. Maybe maybe I'll I'll cheat slightly, not adding words, no, no, no. But I may go back and just check a few things for sending this to Jenny on Monday. So I hope that you all have a wonderful weekend. I plan to. I hope to get outside and do a little yard work. And I think that's gonna be the whole of my weekend, is I have this vision that I will alternate reading pages, maybe in the sun, that would be nice, huh? And doing some yard work. That would make for a good balance. So I hope you all have some balance this weekend. I hope you all have some fun, and I hope that uh that you get everything you want.