First Cup of Coffee - September 6, 2019

A new salvo in the pack rat wars. I also talk about being a feminist, Snow White, and programmed racism and sexism. As one does. Also about how Agent Sarah helps me pre-plot. 

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy. And I am here with my first cup of coffee. I'm still like scooping out the foam from the frother and putting it in the cup. There we go. I love the foam. I know some people are like no foam people. That would be a good interview question instead of asking things like white chocolate versus dark chocolate, which I say all the time, you know, like is it foam or no foam? Calf or decaf. These are the critical questions. And I am going ahead and getting putting my frother in the dishwasher and getting the dishwasher started. I know that's fascinating, not really, Jeffy. But you know, it's funny. I have two of these milk cafe frothers, and I am not a person who runs the dishwasher off and I try not to. Very sorry. Sorry about that. I know, I know, that was super loud. That was an accident. I like pushed the wrong thing. Um I only run the dishwasher when it's full. And part of that's my um, you know, growing up in a water pour region habit. I really um my mom will run the dishwasher. I think she runs it every day sometimes more often. But I just I wait for it to be full. But I have two of these milk cafe frothers, which means that every two days they're both dirty, right? Yeah, we're all good at math, right? So it's just almost ridiculous how much that runs my life. I I'm kind of amused at myself at uh oops, I need to add rinse aid. And here we must have rinse aid because um our water is so hard. But you know, it's just amusing to me like which things dominate my life. And boy, this uh oh yes, I do love rinse aid, I guess. Uh you know, it's like this morning I got up and I I woke up about um 520, so that was good. David was still asleep, so I was sort of creeping around and did my running and all of that. But I was very irritated with myself to find that I apparently went to bed quite precipitously last night. I must have been more sleepy than I thought because I, you know, left the limes out for making margaritas. It's entirely possible that the margaritas contributed to uh my being sleepy last night. But yeah, I'd left the limes out, I'd left the lime juice out, and I had not served the dishwasher. And so both of my frothers were dirty. And you know, like this should not be a big deal. And I was whining about it, you know, going, oh Jeffy, Patch Jeffy. Oh, here we go through the passageway of doom. Why didn't you turn on the dishwasher last night? And David's like, well, can't you wash the uh frother by hand? And I'm like, yes. So it's like, no, I want to be able to dance out of my bed like Snow White in the morning and merrily prance my way to the kitchen and pull my clean frother. Oh my gosh, you guys, you would not believe. Alright, I'm taking a picture of the uh our pack rat has been busy, busy since yesterday. Oh my gosh, I might not be able to even deal with this right now. Okay. I'm giving you a picture. That'll be the picture on today's podcast. All of this stuff is since yesterday. What should I do? Should I yield the field for the day? Go out front. I think I'm going to. I'm not gonna because there's stuff lined up on the path, too. Uh Megan Mole actually maybe it's just for for two days worth, because yeah, because I went to writer coffee yesterday. Yeah, that's right. I didn't come out here yesterday. And Megan Mori came over back through the passageway of June. Sorry. Megan Mori came over on um whatever that is. What day? What day? Tuesday night? Yeah. Wednesday night? Tuesday night. So maybe this is a couple, yeah. Oh, because Wednesday we went fishing. All right, so that's like three days worth. Wednesday, yeah, a couple of nights worth anyway. Math RS. Um Megan came over Tuesday night and we sat out in the arbor and drank margaritas. There's a theme here. And I think that may have like tipped the pack rat's territorial little brain into overdrive. But I guess it's had three nights to get busy. But I guess at least it's all collected in one place, and today, later today, once I'm done working, I will go out and bag all that up. Remove the ammunition. Too funny. So what was I saying? Oh, I was pretending I was Snow White, right? Snow White never had to deal with pack rats and choyaburs being piled up in her private little arbor. Of course, Snow White didn't really have a private little arbor, did she? She was just like slaving away for the dwarves all the time. So that's probably not the best analogy, right? I don't want to be the uh the slaving away version of the Disney princesses. I want to be the prancing happy version who plucks her clean milk frother from the dishwasher. So anyway, I had to wash mine by hand this morning. Oh, the humanity. Now I'm having to sit out on my front porch instead of my grape barber. You guys, my life is so hard. Alright, alright, yes, I'll get a grip. So let's see, where are we at with things? I have approved the final cover for the fiery crown, and it's really beautiful. It's super beautiful. We went through a few iterations of it, and I didn't love the first iterations, and now this final cover, it it's breathtaking. It really is. So that's great. Um Leslie Penelope, who writes as L Penelope, uh tagged me on Twitter saying that oh, I'm not supposed to say anything, right? Because you're so compliant. Never mind, I won't say anything. Uh sorry, that was tantalizing, but I'll uh um Leslie is she talks about this on her podcast, which I think I've mentioned before I enjoy her podcast, that uh she has like in her personality test that she did, that she has high compliance, so she follows the rules on things. Um which I think is interesting because I'm sure I haven't taken that particular personality test, but I could tell you right now that I would be like super low compliance. I am like the don't tell me there are rules kind of person. Uh I when people tell me, oh, well, you have to do this this way or that way, oh my first response is almost always, well, who made up that rule? Which is really infuriating to the compliance people, because um they don't a lot of them, and I'm not saying anything about you directly, Leslie, because I don't know how you see things, but a lot of times they'll just see it as, well, that is the rule, you know, and I'm always the one who's challenging authority that I don't really believe much in higher authority at all. You know, and it's like, well, what what person put that into place and why do they get to tell me what to do? Um, I always want to know who the rule makers are. And I guess I just don't believe that there are any rules, that there are any ultimate rules. There are some moral codes that I obey, but otherwise I'm kind of like a no-rules kind of gal. Would be interesting to explore which ones. You know, I think I already my mind is leaping ahead. I was gonna say explore which rules I do think are set in stone. And then I was thinking, well, you know, really the main rule I follow is is trying to be good to other people, you know, trying to, I don't know, be a positive force in the world. That's probably the main thing, you know. That's um and and it's not even-handed either, because you know, if if there are people I don't like or people who I think are um destructive people, then I have no interest in being kind to them. Also, I'm certainly not a turn-the-ther-cheek person. But if I can be helpful to someone, I usually will be. So I don't know where that falls on the spectrum of rules. So um I did get notes from Agent Sarah yesterday on the new Shiny. Um, and also notes from her three new interns. I think this was one of their first projects, was going over um the my pages. There's about 86 pages of the new shiny that we're gonna go out on submission with. And Sarah asked them all to read it, and they she said this was a good batch of interns, and they are really insightful. They gave me great comments and some great ideas to tweak just a little bit. Sarah said she told them, you know, no major overhauls. We're only looking at tweaking, and they were very good about that. She did mention to me that there was um one uber feminist comment, and I haven't gotten to it yet. She told me it was later in the pages. I started in on it yesterday afternoon, but I didn't uh get all that fire. I only got about 30 pages. But um I know she put that in there because she knows that I'll probably be a little bit irritated, which I think is funny. I'm amused by that whole syndrome because um I think it's true that the younger women, the ones who are in their early 20s now, um, just coming out of college and so forth, have a very not very different, but they have a different lens on feminism than I do. And and it's funny because I've considered myself to be a feminist all my life, uh, born in the 60s and raised by a mother who considered herself liberated in the 70s, you know, who worked, you know, and not all the moms did. My mother always worked, and I was a latchkey kid. And my mom did all of the consciousness-raising stuff. She meditated and did book clubs and all of this kind of thing. I don't believe she ever burned her bra, but she did have breast implants, so maybe there's a little bit of um oh, I'm probably not supposed to say that. Sorry, mom. She's gonna be all mad at me now. I can't um I can't backtrack it. But I consider that to be an embracing yourself, embracing your womanhood kind of thing. Uh that was that was what I was going to say about uh me being the opposite of Leslie, is that I just blab about everything. Sorry, mom, but um, yeah, sorry. Hope you feel better. She has the flu, so it's probably really unfair of me that I've like given her the double whammy. But anyway, um, you know, and so then in the 80s, I, you know, did all of you know, going to college and I went to grad school and all these things, and I always believed um that women were equal and that I could do anything I wanted. So it's funny to me to be called out by younger women now as not being feminist enough, and it's I think similar to recognizing that when you grow up in a racist society that you have inherently racist attitudes and being aware of that programming that creates knee-jerk reactions to things and weeding them out of yourself, you know, becoming aware of your own privilege and becoming of your own inherent racism and sort of ruthlessly ferreting those things out and flensing them from your mind wherever possible. You know, growing up in an inherently sexist society does the same thing. So even though we thought we were so liberated back then, there were, I know I have a lot of inherently misogynistic attitudes and probably anti-feminist things. So, but I did reply to Sarah when she said that there was an uber feministy comment, which probably is not uber feministy to anyone else, but she knew that I would react to it that way. You and I replied, I said, I was a feminist before any of you girls were born. And I shakes cane, I shook my cane at her. You kids get off my feminist lawn. So, but I will look at it. And you know, and it's probably a really good point, especially if women of that age, younger women, read it and go, Oh, that's not feminist. That's anti-feminist. And it's like, well, you know, um, gotta fleense that stuff from my mind too, and from my books, because you know, I do want to do and be better. Though I might gripe about it some just a little bit, you know. It's uh I don't know, is my um wanting to be snow white and prance out and have my milk cafe be miraculously clean? Well it's probably not anti-feminist, but it's definitely privileged, right? At least I'm not cleaning up after seven dwarves. So the good news is that all three interns commented that they were totally hooked by the sample and wanted more. Everybody loves this, so I'm very hopeful, very hopeful for this new shiny that we will send out next week. And Sarah and I had a few conversations about um who we're going to send it to and order of things. I think it's going to be pretty awesome, our expectations for it. I am going to talk with her on Monday afternoon because she sent me comments on the proposal because she wanted me to give I'm already laughing. She wanted me to give little write-ups on books two and three. And so I tried. I did. But you guys know how how I am. I have no idea what the hell is going to happen in books two and three. I sort of this vague sense, and so she made a couple of comments saying, um, we need a better pitch for these books, and book three, you know, what is it going to do? And I was so I had to reply to her and all caps. I'm sure Sarah loves me.

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Right?

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You know, I shake my cane and tell her I was a feminist before she was born, and then I send her back a reply and all caps saying, I don't know, okay. So we're gonna talk on Monday afternoon and brainstorm a little bit. That is one thing. If I brainstorm with people, I can usually come up with stuff. It's just um it's the trying to do it on my own. I just seem to be incapable of doing it unless I'm actually typing out the words or writing out the words, and I don't feel like I can do it for books two and three without having finished book one. But Sarah's really good at it, and she's helped me do it before. With um Warrior of the World, the Chronicles of Desneria trilogy. Now that they're all done, I feel like I can talk about that. If you haven't read them yet, now's probably a good time to pop off. It's um pop off is probably the wrong phrase to use. Although you are welcome to do that too. Um, you know, just in the privacy of your own home. Um, but now would probably a good time be a good time to turn off the podcast. We're at 18 minutes anyway, so I probably won't talk about much more anyway. So, but I'm going to spoiler Chronicles of Desneria. So when I had written the first two books, I had an idea for what was going to happen in book three, but it was going to leap forward and sync up with the timeline in uh Uncharted Realms. But I had not yet finished writing the Arrows of the Heart at that point, and I wanted Jenna to show up in The Arrows of the Heart, but I wasn't exactly sure how that was going to play out. And then I was going to write Warrior of the World. And my editor just got at Kensington got insistent, insistent on me giving her a blurb for Warrior. She said she had to have it right then, and it made no sense to me because we'd already agreed on when I was turning that book in, and I'd said I was gonna send her the blurb in a couple of months, and she said that was fine, and then all of a sudden, no, she was like, production had to have it, they had to get it in their catalogs, and she was getting daily emails insisting that they had to have this. And I was aggravated, I was not happy about this because I feel like part of my editor's job is to shield me from those things, you know. That I I would have wanted her to handle that in-house and say, no, the author can't give this to you. And instead she brought it back to me and said, you know, can't you just give me a blurb? I know you haven't read the book yet, but but we really need to have this. And and I texted Sarah, because she was getting CC'd on all these things, and I texted her that I quit. I told you Sarah loves me, right? I send that in all caps too. And uh so Sarah calls me. She's she's like, I have time for a quick call. Actually, I called her. She texted back and she said, You can't quit. Let's talk. I have time for a quick call. So I got on the phone and I said, I I don't know how how I could sync this up. You know, if I haven't finished writing arrows yet, I don't know how it's gonna work, and I don't want to commit because I'm gonna screw up both books doing this. And Sarah said, Well, why don't you save that story? She said, Why don't you save that for your own stuff? Is there something else that can happen in Warrior of the World that's not that? Can you know, is there something else you could do to satisfy, to finish her internal arc? And and I said, Well, yeah, I know what her internal arc means. That's the easy part. I said, I just don't have an external plot. And she said, Well, let's think one up. And I I tell you what, you guys, like 10 minutes, maybe 15 minutes later, we had a plot for book three. Uh, so she's really miraculous that way. And she was writing it down as we talked, and then she said it to me, and she said, Okay, I don't know how to spell any of your weird names and words, but she said, so I just guessed. So it was kind of charming to read her phonetic renderings of my weird names. So, anyway, that's part of why Sarah is awesome and how I can brainstorm stories. And now look at that, I'm already up to like 21 minutes dabbling on today. So I'm going to go finish um work on New Shiny, get those edits done. I might work on it Sunday too if I need to, and then go back to um final edits on Fiery Crown. It's all very exciting. So I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Uh, I hope that it is filled with sunshine and flowers. It's it's still so beautiful here. Summer, late summer, so beautiful. And I will talk to you all again on Monday. Take care. Bye bye.