First Cup of Coffee - September 23, 2022

I'm running on fumes a bit, but I'm nearly done with this book! Ruminating on choosing titles from earlier in the alphabet, picking Dedications when you've written a lot of books, and good news from Amazon!

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Preorder SHADOW WIZARD, Book One in Renegades of Magic, continuing the epic tale begun in DARK WIZARD. https://jeffekennedy.com/shadow-wizard

ROGUE'S PARADISE is out (https://jeffekennedy.com/rogue-s-paradise). Buy book 1, ROGUE'S PAWN, here! (https://jeffekennedy.com/rogue-s-pawn) and book 2, ROGUE'S POSSESSION, here! (https://jeffekennedy.com/rogue-s-possession).

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Transcript

00:02.80
jeffekennedy
Good morning, everyone! This is Jeffe Kennedy author of epic fantasy romance I'm here with my first cup of coffee.

00:19.48
jeffekennedy
Today is say it with me Friday ah September Twenty Third you would think that I would not have to look at the date because I'm very keenly aware of what the date is um. Progress update on where I'm at with shadow wizard I did complete the revision. Yeah that's good, um, completed my mini revision of the ah secondary plvs which. I talked about yesterday. So I won't recap if you want to know, go listen to yesterday and that worked um and so now I know I have learned a thing I sent it to Carien to read over. And she said it definitely flowed better. Um I'm hoping that that means that I caught all of the little plot threads. Um, yeah, no now I know it's possible. That I should write those separately and then put them together. You know I I write books beginning to end and in some ways it works in this particular case I'm not sure it did.

01:48.38
jeffekennedy
At any rate I have learned a thing I'll do better next time. So I have also commenced the out loud read as I was revising those chapters I thought well I might as well read them out loud as part of the revision. It. Means I went slowly. It was not a fast out loud proof on those but those chapters are all done so I have like 247 not like I have exactly 247 pages yet to proof which. If I go at about 30 pages an hour will take me eight and a half hours eight ish hours I may go faster than that. Please let it go faster than that at any rate I think I can get it done today unless I like completely face plant. Um, yeah I don't think I will I am a little tired a little tired at this point but not dreadful not dreadful I can feel I'm running a bit on fumes. But. But I can get this proofing done today. Um, get it sent off for formatting have a few things to do front and back matter. Um, setting up preorder for the next book for rogue familiar, you know I'm kind of waffling on this title people I I should ping Grace today. Um.

03:20.89
jeffekennedy
Do you think it's too much like the Covenant of Thorn's books because I already used you know it's Rogue's Pawn Rogue's Possession and Rogue's Paradise - is Rogue Familiar going to be too much like those I was thinking I could look up synonyms for rogue and see if I came up with something else. I I would do feral familiar. But I think it's a little much or wild familiar. Yeah I don't know I'm waffling. It's 1 thing I've become aware of at this point at having like my 60 published titles when I um. I know I know champagne problems right? It's a good thing that I have so many titles but schooling to an alphabetized list as I often end up doing like if I go to smashw words dash dashboard and I'm looking for a particular book. All of the books that I have that are like at the end of the alphabet because I have the I have all of the these somethings from 12 kingdoms and uncharted realms and then you know rogue and you know it's I actually kind of love that I have dark wizard which you know tech. Technically I have very little role in because Grace made me name it that I love that dark wizard is like up at the top of the alphabet and I started thinking h I should name more books with letters early in alphabet. So I don't have to frickin scroll all the way to the end.

04:52.23
jeffekennedy
Ah, so rogue familiar would not be a step in the right direction. So so yeah, um, got to get that pre-order set up before it goes to formatting front back matter. Shouldn't take very long Karine set it all up for me I just have to fill in acknowledgements and um, yeah, sorry I started thinking about composing acknowledgements.

05:24.19
jeffekennedy
I I do know who I'm dedicating it to so that's good I figured that out and made a note. Ah I of course I have a spreadsheet for all of my dedications at this point because I've you know I've kind of running out of people to dedicate to. Um I understand now why like Anne Rice just dedicated everything to Stan Rice I think I've mentioned that before but I think of it every time when I'm trying to decide who to dedicate a book to I might just stop. Um. I don't know anyway, I have to do those things and then I'm free. Um, having brunch tomorrow with a couple of writer friends looking forward to that if I have to I can finish proofing in the morning. If I just like completely tank um have to get the last little bit of our taxes done. It's gonna take me like an hour I just haven't had an hour last night hou hour last nigh hou hour (???) I dreamed about all of the SFWA stuff I wasn't handling um none of it actually real. But I was. Dreaming about like reading emails and people asking me well have you done this and what about this and there was this one person who was bugging me about well did you ever finish setting up this panel because it's today. So what is that like a little bit of guilt right?

06:58.83
jeffekennedy
And then on Sunday the man and I are going to go down to inn of the mountain gods. We're just going to go do a little overnight go down Sunday morning spend a little time in the sunshine he can do some fishing I'll probably just um.

07:15.26
jeffekennedy
Loll there mindlessly read my book or something and then we'll come back on Monday so it'll just be a quick turnround. But I think I will um actually take Monday off and just have that be a you know travel day and. Come back and get laundry done and probably a whole lot of so for business actually I think nobody is begrudging me this time. They're all just wonderful. Oh and I realized I made a mistake. It was probably yesterday when I was talking I was trying to give a shout out to people and I said um, our Cfo. It's Erin Hartshorn and I didn't realize until I saw the the transcript that I said Erin Murphy. Erin Murphy is not married to John Murphy she's married to Mr Hartshorn yeah so sorry about that Erin. I I don't know if anyone even knew that I gave them a shout out. But um, yeah I felt bad about that. But it shows you where my brain is at which is scrambled right.

08:29.19
jeffekennedy
I found something else that I did wrong just like a little casual thing but clearly my brains are preoccupied with certain things so it'll be good to free up that brain space again start on secret movie project. So my plan is is. Monday night ah we will watch that movie and um, well David doesn't have to but he liked it before so he may watch it with me and I'm gonna go through and I'm gonna write down the beats and then um, I'm actually going to do like an outline you guys. Where am I I don't know how much of an outline. It'll be. We'll see. But yeah, look at me multiple povs actually kind of outlining a book ahead of time. The drive will give me an opportunity to kind of. Brew on those characters. Ah not now sorry starting to go into that mode right? start thinking? Ah so um, yeah i. I know that I mentioned earlier I didn't do my blog post Wednesday and I might try to write one for this week since a lot of the SFF7 haven't been posting regularly I'll do another one but you know I mentioned my writing community and um, you know I really do become aware of how.

10:06.53
jeffekennedy
How many great people I have in my life who are very supportive and send me thoughtful notes and ask me how the revision is going and send me pictures that make me happy. Ah.

10:24.66
jeffekennedy
And I live in a beautiful place So I don't know what that's apropos of but just sort of trying to appreciate things and yeah, um.

10:43.96
jeffekennedy
Um, so oh gosh David said he heard something fall last night and I just saw that one of these trellises fell I just now noticed that I'm going to investigate.

11:00.47
jeffekennedy
Well, it wasn't anchored down I think um, some critter was back here and probably tried to use it to climb raccoon or something.

11:16.27
jeffekennedy
So let's see I'm trying to think of what else I have to tell you all and I don't have much sorry my brains are empty. Um, but Boom. Um.

11:31.82
jeffekennedy
I paused to see if I could think of anything. The only other thing I could think of is that the out loud proofing I really feel like it works. Well, um, even though it does add another step because if I were paying a proof reader I would have sent this off. I would have sent it off last night but I wouldn't still be working on it and there is an appeal to that. But I also would have to wait like five days for them to get through it instead of doing it myself in the day pluses and minuses on that one. But I just like I catch good things I catch wrong words I catch repetitive words I catch missing words. Um, when I was telling grace about it. She asked me if I would catch. Um, things like closing quotation marks and I do sometimes. Ah she said that's like her her bane that no matter how many times people proofread it that readers still sometimes catch the missing quotation marks and then they report it to Amazon which is you know? ah. I think you all are hearing this now but please don't do that even though Amazon encourages you to report errors please don't because then they they give us so much trouble about it. Um, so she's been trying to figure out a good way to check for that. So if any of my nose of a good test I was um.

13:06.40
jeffekennedy
Trying to think of it. There's probably you could come up with a a shoot the words gonna escape me you um, like a macro a macro in words you could probably do that I wonder if there's a canned one off to look for that for her. Um I bought her a gift out. World con which was now several weeks ago couple weeks ago have not yet sent that so that's on my list to do and what was I gonna say about that loud proofing. oh oh I know big news yesterday is that Amazon has the author's guild I'm I'm impressed. The author's guild talked with Amazon and got them to change their policy on ebook returns that if more than 10 percent of the ebook has been read. That it cannot be returned. Um, which is just really great news because there was this certain contingent after there was like a Tiktok video that was ah you know doing the life hack of here's how you can read books for free is you buy them. Read them and then return them and Amazon will refund you and so a lot of authors were being pretty hit pretty hard by this and and I wasn't hit super hard by it. But you could see it. You could see people working through.

14:40.63
jeffekennedy
Your series you know because you would have like a sale and then a minus and a sale and a minus you'll like and they read the whole thing and return the whole thing and get their money back. So yeah, now if you've read more than 10 percent of the book which Amazon can tell right? Whether or not, you've read it then. More returning for free apparently people can still go to customer service and request it. But then you have to provide rationale for why you want the return. So I think that's fair, that's and that's good. I have um, almost completed my read of ah Kushiel's Legacy think I'm within a few pages of being done with book three I didn't read them cover to cover this time I skipped some parts but really enjoyed rereading those and now I'm like. But am I going to read after this ah reading those books really helped keep ah keep the well full as I was finishing out this book. Um, that's pretty much all I've been doing is writing and reading.

15:49.95
jeffekennedy
Although last night we started watching fight club and I haven't watched fight club for a really long time and it's such an interesting movie and what's interesting about it is ah it's interesting on lots of levels I'll just keep using that word. Interesting. Ah. But I haven't watched it in so long but now it's like the twist in the movie which I will not spoil even now. Ah, it's all there from the very beginning and it's very very clear to the point where it's like how did I not catch this. The very first time it? Yeah so it's it's really fascinating to watch from a storytelling perspective as well. I keep thinking about um that line this part of why I wanted to watch it again. You know that line you know you've met me at a very strange time in my life marla. But. Yeah, all right I'm gonna go get to work with this out loud proofing. Thank you for all the candles for the well wishes checking in with me and I will talk to you all probably not Monday since I'm going to be on my mini break but we'll talk to you all on Tuesday I'll take care. Bye bye.