First Cup of Coffee - July 31, 2020

Musings on what middlegrade means, being admired, what happened to me yesterday and not passing judgment on my knees, and also a snippet from the super fun Dateable Podcast!

You can find the Dateable Podcast here (https://dateablepodcast.com/)

First Cup of Coffee is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at Frolic.media/podcasts!

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Delicious. I need it this morning. Oh, that's good. Today is Friday. Uh July 30th. 31st. 31st, right? Yes. Sorry. July 31st. Um I missed yesterday. Uh I kind of did and didn't. I so I apologize. That's part of why I was bobbling on the date. Even though the other day I said it was May, so you know this isn't my worst date transgression so far. A bunch of grapes fell down last night. What a huge east wind. Anyway, yesterday I went to writer coffee and I did do a commute podcast, but something was weird with the mic, and it was all staticky and spiky. And it kind of calmed down a little bit, but the beginning was really bad, and I could maybe figure out how to like filter that out, but I it was just easier not to post it. So there's extends to my commitment to getting the podcast out there. Um the other reason that I decided not to do it is because today I'm going to share with you uh some promo of clip from one of the other Frolic Media podcasts, Datable. I had been planning to do it this week and just kept putting it off. There's probably a theme here. Uh, you know, that's one of the things about when you prioritize getting the words down above everything else, is that means sometimes the other stuff slides. And it's um it's good for the writing and good for the work, but I think you have to be pretty copacetic with the idea that some of your side gigs or other projects are occasionally going to lapse. You all will be reassured to know that my mother always notices if I don't post a podcast and chastises me appropriately. She had a dinner party last night with some socially distanced friends. They're probably part of her friend pod. That's what you call it now, mom. Um, and I thought that she would just be so busy getting ready that she wouldn't even notice, but no luck there. Uh so anyway, I want to share with you the from the Datapol podcast at the end of the show, and I felt like, you know, here I'd been sort of waiting for the perfect podcast to share them, and I didn't want to put them on one with all that really terrible sound quality. But I say in there that I'm gonna share it, and then I and then I wasn't going to, so this was my whole thought process. So um, yeah, we went to Tea House yesterday, and uh Jim Zornson drove up from Albuquerque, and Emily Ma even came out and brought her sons with her. She said she's been single parenting the last couple weeks because her husband is going back into the office in Los Alamos. So she's been adjusting to that. She had been going back down into lockdown, and then she said she was having to reevaluate what she was doing and what things she prioritized. And you know, the thing is, is the outdoor transmission is is very low, the odds of it. So, you know, I do think eating outdoors at a restaurant is one of the lower risk things we can do. Of course, it's not zero risk, so I totally understand if somebody doesn't want to do it, and we were talking about that yesterday. That we're all thinking, you know, we were all saying, you know, that right now it's perfectly legitimate just to say I'm not comfortable doing that, and you don't need more reason than that. Ah so I am um a little droopy today because I messed up my freaking knee again. Only it's the other knee this time. Left knee is difficult knee. I don't like to call it bad knee because it tries, it tries really hard. But that's the surgery knee. It's the one that I blew out loathies many, many years ago. Coming up on 30 years ago, I guess. And but you know, I haven't been doing yoga class because I had my whole got developed my whole Zoom allergy, and my IT bands have gotten so tight, and I think I just um over-tightened and it pulled my right knee out of whack. And it was sore on Monday. And I'll tell you the other thing I started doing was, you know, I I do some lifting of free weights, and I had started doing some squats. And because I don't have um, I'm trying not to pass judgment on my knees, because my knees are not as strong and flexible as some. I don't do full squats, you know, I just kind of raise and lower. And I thought I was being really careful, but I did, I was upping the weight because overall my legs are very strong, and so I was really trying to strengthen, you know, sort of push my leg muscles, and I think I overdid. So beginning of this week, my right knee started feeling a little sore, and and my whole hips and upper legs and sides of my legs and lower back, not so much the back, but hips and pelvis and all of that, all the way down to my ankles, were just feeling really tight, and so I thought, okay, well, I need to do my own yoga. So I think it was Monday afternoon, Tuesday afternoon, what is time? Who am I? Anyway, I did some yoga, and as I was so it was whatever day I was talking about Wimbledon, because I finished watching Wimbledon, which I still think is a perfect romance. And we should talk about that in more depth. I just think the arc of that story is perfect, and and the the sacrifice for love parts is perfect. Anyway, so I was again, I thought being careful, but apparently it was just a little much for for everybody in my legs. And by yesterday, my right knee was really starting to hurt. I even had to stop walking as I wrote, which I know. I I do laugh at myself because it's like I I know I'm stubborn about things and or determined is another way to put it. But yeah, it's like really starting to hurt as I was walking, and I had to do my last half hour sitting, which I don't really like, but you know, I guess it was a smart thing to do. So then I asked David to do acupuncture on me, and so he did some acupuncture, and it felt much better, and it really did help. The acupuncture helped a whole lot, and I slept much better last night, thank goodness, because the night before I kept waking up with that knee hurting, and I, you know, one of those things where you can't find a comfortable position, and I could tell that some positions I was lying in were contributing to making it hurt more. Uh so I was kind of tired yesterday too, and that contributed to the podcast being a little bit more scattered even than usual. So I thought, okay, I'm just scrap that podcast. Yesterday was a little bit of a wash, except that I had a great conversation with the folks at Tea House and did finish my revision of Dark Wizard so far. So today I can dive straight in to drafting. I'll talk about that more in a moment. So, anyway, uh I slept much better last night and the knee didn't hurt me nearly so much, but it's um still giving me grief today. It's feeling a little unstable. So it's funny because you know, poor right leg is the one that's always taking care of left leg. And now I've got my the knee brace I normally wear on left knee to keep it stable and tracking right, is on right leg, and left leg is having to do more work. And I could tell it was funny because we went for our walk. I got it, you know, put some heat on it and then put some biofreeze on it, and got it so it's working pretty well. And partway through the walk, it does start feeling better, so that's the right thing to do, just sort of keep it moving. But uh, my left leg is all like, whoa, why am I having to do so much work? So I'm trying to be careful and not blow up the left knee with overwork. Aren't you glad I told you all of that? One of the take-home messages is, however, that I am going to have to um get back into yoga. And I've even been emailing with my yoga teacher, and she said very nice things to me. So she told me that I that I was someone that she admired, and she'd always admired me. Um, we were just talking about classes and what I could do and that sort of thing, and um, it's always I don't know, it was funny. I was like, really? You admire me? How nice. How surprising. So, Dark Wizard um is yeah, come along. I've got like 81 pages I finished revising so far, and now I will go into adding more words today, and then switch over to Promised Queen, my final revision of that next week. So I've been having a lot of fun sprinting with Dorinda. We're um we're getting a lot of work done. So I think that's that's really positive. Beautiful morning here, Santa Fe. Yeah, I'm supposed to this is my weekend to clean the house and do laundry, but I'm gonna see how this knee feels. I might just spend a lot of time sitting with it elevated and let it settle down. So one thing I was thinking about, I talked about this on the podcast yesterday, and I one thing about abandoning a podcast is it even mucks up further in my mind what I have said and what I haven't. But one thing that would be kind of exciting if this this deal with the um editor who might potentially be interested in the new shiny, it was kind of funny because she I was looking up her manuscript wish list, which is for those of you who don't know, it's the MSWL manuscript wish list hashtag on Twitter. And you can look up what things agents and editors are currently looking for. They'll get a thought and say, I would love a this or this, and throw it up there. And so you can kind of see what they're looking at. So I was looking up this new editor that was recommended and who might be interested in the new shiny, and she said that she was really looking to build her middle grade list. And so I went to verify what middle grade counts as these days. And I feel like these things are a moving target because Lord knows the uh YA thing is confusing, right? And so let's see if I I don't know why I have two of you open. I think they said it was 12 to 14. Let's see. Let me look again. Since I would just sort of googled middle grade fantasy books to see. Between the ages of eight and twelve. So it's this one's even younger. I always think it's funny to look at the more results on on Google, you know, like the things that people clearly frequently ask. Is Harry Potter middle grade or YA? It's not technically YA, is the answer. But that doesn't mean it didn't change the way YA is made and marketed. It's middle grade, meaning it's for children between the ages of 8 and 12. Um how long should a middle grade novel be? What do you guys think? This says, oh, mean word count was 53,000 words. Most middle grade novels are between 40,000 and 60,000. Okay, and then this one this caught my attention. It says, How much do middle grade authors make? The average middle grade author makes around $21,000 a year. Well this is a funny answer because, of course, it's somewhat taken out of context, but the full answer is the average middle grade author makes around $21,000 a year. But more importantly, it shows that the authors who spent more time on their books writing draft after draft received higher advances and get their books placed more quickly with editors. Okay, so there must have been a lot more to that discussion, since those two things seem not connected to me. So anyway, I was just thinking, well, you know, daydreaming as one does about the massively lucrative book deal. You never know. And I thought, oh, but if she really wants middle grade, and I thought, well, could that book be middle grade? Could she guide it towards middle grade? And and this book in particular, more than anything else I've written, is very directly inspired by Anne McCaffrey's Dragon Riders of Perm books. And see, I'm giving you guys a little more details all the time, dribs and drabs. And I was thinking, wouldn't it be cool if because Anne McCaffrey, especially um Dragon Song, Dragon Song and Dragon Flight were books that I read when I was like 10, right in that middle grade age range, and they were absolutely my gateway drugs to fantasy. And I thought, well, geez, how cool would it be if this book ended up being um open doors for someone like me at that age? Those happy daydream things. So let's see, what else was I gonna tell you guys? I'm hitting my my end of the week, empty brain, ready to sort of do some refilling of the well. I was considering I should if I should switch over to Promised Queen today instead, but I don't think I will. I think I'm gonna go finish um drafting dark wizard. If all this seems like a really bad reason, but I I wanted to have add some more words for July. Get my July word count up there. So if I could add another 3,000 words, I'd be really happy. And today's my last day to do it. But also I'm I'm still feeling Dark Wizard, and that was my plan all along. Next week I will um finish writing that epilogue scene on Promised Queen and make another pass and send her in. So, all right, I'm going to keep this short-ish because I do want to share that snippet from the Dateable Podcast, which is a really fun podcast, uh talking about real life love and dating in the modern world, which I'm sure is considerably complicated by the fact that you can't like actually go meet people in person. Stranger Danger. It takes on a whole new meaning, right? All right, so happy Friday. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I will talk to you on Monday. And I'll remind you that first cup of coffee is part of the Frolic Media Podcast Network. And you can find more podcasts you'll love at frolic at frolic.media slash podcasts. And stay tuned for the datable gals. You all take care. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Is monogamy dead? Are we expecting too much of Tinder? Do millennials even want to find love? The Datable Podcast, part of the Frolic Network, is an insider's look into modern dating that the Huffington Post calls one of the top 10 podcasts about love and sex. I'm your host, Yue Shu, former dating coach, turned dating sociologist. And you also hear from my co-host Julie Kraftchik. On each episode, we'll talk to real daters about everything, from sex parties to sex droughts, date fails to diaper fetishes, and first moves to first loves. Ever wondered why a first date didn't turn into a second date? Check out our episode called The Exit Interview, where we helped one of our listeners get answers by calling up five of his recent first dates. Some other notable episodes include The Science of Dating, which uncovers the why of certain behaviors, dating out of the friend zone, which is always a hot topic, and plenty of he said she said experiments with full on post date interviews. Tune in every Wednesday on your favorite podcast player as we explore this crazy dateable world.