First Cup of Coffee - September 8, 2022

I'm sharing the incredibly gorgeous covers from the Czech translation of the Chronicles of Dasnaria trilogy, and also talking about covers in general, how self-publishing helps being savvy about them. Some spoilers for this trilogy and for Forgotten Empires.

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Transcript

00:04.19
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I'm here with my first cup of coffee.

00:15.76
jeffekennedy
Um, delicious today is Thursday September Eighth ah getting back into my groove from all the traveling. Um.

00:30.68
jeffekennedy
There's a a pre-order alert went out today from bookbub for Shadow Wizard. So that's nice coming up I am closing in on the ending yesterday was a little bit of a disrupted day. Um. For really no good reason I might be slowing down a little bit towards the end here as I am wont to do so? Um yeah I think I've got about well let's see I'm a little shy of 75000 words and have about. 14000 to go. So um, theoretically I could write all of that in a couple of epic writing days I've done it before so and I know how it's going to end so I don't know why it's going slow at this point some of it's just like. Getting my focus back I had a lot of other stuff in my head and I need to clear it out and focus I do want to show you all something really cool. Um, so my series Chronicles of Dasnaria some of you have read it. Some of you have not I know some of you deliberately chose not to read it because the first book has so much. Um, awful abuse stuff in it which totally fair, totally fair. Um Prisoner of the Crown. So if you haven't read it or not familiar.

02:03.61
jeffekennedy
Um, prisoner of the crown is it takes place in the twelve kingdoms world and it's about um, Harlan's sister who we only hear about in from Harlan in the books ah in the Talon of the hawk. And in ah dragons of summer and and there are a few other mentions of her here and there but she's part of Harlan's backstory and so Chronicles of Dasnaria take place. um I think twenty years before the events of talon of the hawk and um I think that's right, yeah, that's about right? and when Harlan was only 14 and his sister Jenna was 18 and essentially sold into a royal marriage. Ah, because in Dasnaria women have like practically no rights so I was always very interested in the idea of a woman raised in isolation basically with other women she knows her brothers because the boys live in the seraglio. Um I don't know how hard to make that g seraglio. Ah the boys live there until they're about 12 years old and then they go to live with the men separated from their mothers so to be hardened off. Ah so and then the women don't leave the seraglio.

03:38.30
jeffekennedy
So Jenna has essentially never met a man until she ah emerges for her betrothal and wedding and um, the man she's married to is incredibly abusive takes out his fury against the emperor against her. So even though she is a princess and incredibly refined. She's ah she's also molded to be you know a decorative plaything and so so yes, there is difficult stuff. At the beginning of prisoner of the crown. It does have a happy ending because I don't believe in soul crushing. Well it's just a little soul bruising on the way to eventual happiness. So um, what more did I want to say about. Jenna I don't want to give it away anyway, the series. The trilogy was um, done by Kensington by their rebel base imprint which they kept telling me was going to be this awesome imprint and ended up being not so awesome I don't know if they're still doing it or not but the cover sucked. Um, if you've been listening to the podcast for a long time. You probably heard me complain about it then was it that if I was doing the podcast then good question. Um, anyway, it was um, they used really cheap clip art on it and my editor.

05:13.67
jeffekennedy
there, who replaced the editor who had acquired me to begin with ah she um, she tried to convince me. It was really expensive art and and this is one of the advantages of self publishing. I'm starting to get sun coming in but I guess it's just in my hair right now. Ah when you self- publishlish you you have to learn cover art design and I did not want to it was actually 1 reason I did not want to self-publishlish my bestie Grace Draven. Said that she um, you know she loves that part. She loves controlling the cover art to the point of like she approaches people in public and um to model for her book covers up. She thinks they look like our characters I am not as comprehensive as Grace. But I have learned to love controlling my cover design because the covers that I get that I have designed for myself for my own books are so much better than what publishers are giving me these days. Ah St Martins gave me pretty covers. Although I did not love them the way that I'd hoped to but um, yeah, the rebel base covers were just um, oh you should have seen the original versions. The current versions are sucky.

06:42.37
jeffekennedy
But the original versions were like it looked like a kid it done them and and they're like oh the art department spent all this time I was like I could have done this in 5 minutes yeah and I don't really know photoshop all that. Well so. Um, anyway, this is probably all beside the point but that's very on brand here at first cup of coffee right? Anyway, their trilogy was sold and translated into Czech and they did the covers. That I always always wanted for these books. Oh I'm wondering um all right? Well I was getting a little nervous thinking that maybe this sounds' not recording but I'm going to have to hope that it is. I recalled this happened before where it wasn't showing me the sound wave. Ah I have been messing with technology a little bit because I got this new webcam for meetings that I plug in when I'm inside and on the monitor I mentioned that and. When I was doing a meeting a couple days ago for SFWA they said that they couldn't hear me that my mic sounded too far away and I realized I did change the mic to be the mic on the webcam because I now have the laptop farther away from me so I was a little worried that maybe.

08:11.96
jeffekennedy
Was trying to use that mic and not this one because switching between like Discord and Zoom it that it misses up like the settings are different from 1 place to another even from like 1 Discord channel to another. So. Let's cross our fingers because I'll be really annoyed if I have to rerecord this of course if I do you won't know no who are we kidding you will know because I'll bitch about it anyway, the point and I did have 1 is that Chronicles of Dasnaria were translated into Czech and. Did these gorgeous gorgeous covers and I pinged them on Instagram and asked where I was seeing these covers and I asked if I could buy a set of the paper copies from them for my library for the because this is one of those things about trad publishing too is they do not automatically send you. Copies of your foreign editions. Um you you have to ask usually if you ask they're really nice about it. Ah, but you know the Czech publisher I was like can I buy some copies. Don't know how we do this and they said let me check and then came back and said um we would love to send you copies for free that suite of them. So they sent me 2 copies of each book and I got it like sometime in the ah chaos of the last few weeks. So today I get to share so I'm going to show these two if you're on video. Sorry if you're not ah, but look at that isn't that beautiful. So this one is a prisoner of the crown.

09:43.81
jeffekennedy
I really don't know. Um I don't know check it all. But this is her dance that she does at the beginning. Um I'll hold it up and then I'll try to describe so. The cover is gorgeous. It's all in ivories and whites which is very consistent with the story when I told them how much I love these stories. They said oh well, you know and our artist read all 3 books and really loved them. Ah and you could tell that the artist actually read the books which doesn't normally happen. So um, after Jenna emerges from the seraglio to be betrothed. She does this dance. That's a traditional dance. Um, where she balances pearls on her palms and then presents them to her fiancee bridegroom and this is something this is like you know what do you do when you're stuck in the seraglio your your entire life. You know I mean she's taught all sorts of um. Things that she needs to know in order to be a pleasing female and one of them is dancing so she's a very strong dancer which comes in handy for her later. So she's dressed entirely in diamonds and pearls which matches her coloring because she's very very pale has never seen the sun. And she has white blond hair and so so yeah, you could see on this cover if you are looking that it's really beautifully done. They have ah this you know platinum blonde woman pale skinned dressed in white ah with golden pearls hovering.

11:17.80
jeffekennedy
Ah, by her palms and then she sort of framed in a ah was almost like a mirror or a frame of diamonds and she's dancing and it's just it's like they plucked the image out of my head It's so perfect. So there's prisoner of the crown. I'm not even going to try to say it in check because yeah, so then the second book exile of the seas here's what they did um and so now we might get into spoilery territory. So if you want to know nothing nothing at all. Um I'll try to be careful about what I say but um, the cover gives it away a little bit because this is what happens to her is okay, spoiler. She does get away and she is on a ship and she disguises herself and so now this cover it actually reflects the fact that she disguised herself. And she has um, she's dyed her hair black. It's very short. She cut it short. actually Harlan cut it for her another spoiler sorry ah and instead of the pearls now she has daggers because she meets a woman Kaja who is Jepp's mother if you've read Talon of the hawk or edge of the blade or any of those books. Um, and Kaja recognizes her as being this traumatized woman who needs help and she teaches Jenna who changes her name to Ivariel to help.

12:51.25
jeffekennedy
Conceal her identity as she's on the run and she teaches her how to transform what she knows of the dance into using the daggers to defend herself. So so on this cover. She's got the short black hair. She's now wearing kind of a version of fighting leathers. There's a big um I want to say steering wheel. You know, like the wheel on a sailing ship with a sense of ocean behind her There's like the net like on a sailing ship. So so cool and then the third book this is just so cool because it shows her transformation. Oh. And no I've got grape stuff on here. So I kept one set inside which will have to be pristine and I don't know what I'll do with these all right? So here's warrior of the world and now you see that Ivariel is growing out her hair. So she's um, got. The platinum blonde comes part way down and her hair is now shoulder length again and that the ends are black because she she goes back to letting her hair come out because she's found refuge in a place with elephants and this is really key to the story because elephants are this. Mythical creature that she had only heard about um because she also was not educated at least in anything besides like pleasing men in the seraglio and now she's found the elephants and there's an elephant on the cover. Ah, and it's it's just perfect and now she's wearing.

14:26.75
jeffekennedy
Like full kind of chainmail armor and she looks tough and she's got it like even more impressive dagger in her hand and she has become the warrior of the world. So I love what they did, um, it's Fantom print from Czechoslovakia. Um, if you read Czech which obviously I do not um, you could you could get them and read them. but but um you know when I first had my books translated into french because I I do. Kind of note french I mean I studied french and high school and college and I read um I read Sartre in french I read Les Jeux Sont Fait - transcripts gonna hate that. Um. I mean my french is rusty but I could probably get back to it so when my some of my books first came out in french I thought oh well I'll read them I'd be really fun to read. Reader: I did not get far but I thought that I'd be like able to piece it together I'm gonna have to scoot over. They're duly scooted and put these books in my lamp so that they're not on grape stuff the the laden grape vines are dropping grapes and so there's um, grape detritus all around this is something that happens every year we end up with like these little.

15:58.85
jeffekennedy
Empty wrinkly grape skins and I think it's from the birds coming in and sucking out all the juices and then leaving the grape skin behind. So um, what else do I have to say.

16:18.64
jeffekennedy
Ah, my mind is a blank. Um, so yeah, I've just been trying to put business stuff together. Um doing better on my resolve that I mentioned before conference. Um Megan Mulry's advice on. Um. To do lists trying to keep my to- do lists shorter having an ongoing list in a different place. This has been in kind of an intense SFWA week which is probably fair because I hadn't been doing much SFWA stuff in the past few weeks. Much, but you know ah so we had um meetings meetings on Tuesday I had 3 meetings in a row on Tuesday and yesterday we had a finance meeting and then today we have a board meeting. So I mean I guess at least we're getting it all done right.

17:15.55
jeffekennedy
Hello Hummingbird no hummingbird has come to see me and yeah I'm just trying to get like the household stuff caught up and so forth. Um, finishing this book finishing shadow wizard.

17:32.32
jeffekennedy
I do think I'm going to end up going right through to the end I'm toying with an ending that it's the ending I really want to write and it would be I'm not sure what to tell you it would be more of a cliffhanger. Then I normally write is that terrible. It wouldn't really be a cliffhanger but I can't even talk about it because I can't spoiler it for you guys, right? Anyway I'm going to write the ending I want to write and send it to assistant Carien she wants to read the draft next week she really bless her I mean. She's she's just what would I do without her but I asked her if she wanted to read the draft or read it after I did a first revision pass on it and she said she wanted to read both so that way she could see what I change. Ah best best assistant ever. So I hope you all like this book. Um. I really love it all sorts of great There's great stuff in it. Um, some very strong emotional stuff in it and yeah, yeah, so I feel like I feel like this ending has been telegraphed. It's only the ending of the first book in the trilogy. So I think you all would trust me to to fix it again. I nearly ended.

19:05.84
jeffekennedy
And and this would not be the same any. So so don't don't freak but um, which book was in forgotten empires oh forgotten empires ok so The Fiery Crown. The way I really kind of wanted to end. It was with Lia dead and Con despondent. Um, enraged going off to um.

19:43.40
jeffekennedy
To kill the emperor and undoubtedly lose his life in the process because he no longer wanted to live I really wanted to ebd the book there. But my editor said well Jeffe this is supposed to be a romance so but that was my idea was I was actually going to. Have the third book reconcile all of that. Um I think that would have been a great ending but I could see her point too I'd be interested to know what you all think those of you who have read the forgotten empires trilogy. Um I think you I don't know. Let me know what you think? Ah, I think I've mentioned this before a long time readers will or listeners will ah probably remember that Melinda Snodgrass when she interviewed me for it. She read the book and she told me that she thought um that I should have ended on Lia's death and that she had said that she had the. Ah, image in her mind of how they because she's a screenwriter she thinks and visuals right? of um, you know the camera lingering on the the severed hand with the the orchid ring and ending there which I could see her point. It would be a very strong ending.

21:01.37
jeffekennedy
So and I think I didn't tell you all I got the best fan letter from this random guy. Ah he tagged me on Twitter and I feel like lately It seems like more and more men have been discovering my books which is. Really cool I don't generally consider men to be my primary audience but this guy said that he loved forgotten empires and he loved the Sorcerous Moons series because he really likes the way I write my my heroic men and isn't that cool. All right? So on that note I need to go write about my heroic man in this book and actually Jadren's kind of an antihero isn't he certainly reluctant unfit we shall find out I hope you all have a fabulous thursday. And yeah, I'll talk to you all tomorrow y'all take care bye bye.