First Cup of Coffee - October 27, 2020

A bit more explanation today on why being told I deserve a success feels weird. Also thoughts on what the fantasy plot arc is - and isn't. Plus a reveal: I picked a name for Heirs of Magic #1!

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

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy, author of fantasy and romance, and all of the wonderful places they intersect. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Delicious, delicious. Uh today is Tuesday, October 27th. Last week of October. And here we are. Yes, here we are then. So first of all, I want to clarify. Um, I saw that library addict commented about defending saying that uh Leslie Penelope had deserved getting her book on that list. Um my podcast yesterday, I talked about people saying people as a way of congratulating, saying you deserve this. And I want to clarify that I was not thinking of anyone in particular when I was talking about this. Um, I didn't even notice that you had used that word, that word, uh, library addict. And I know that it is always well-intentioned. Um, and it's it's simply a way of congratulating people. I really um didn't mean to make anyone feel self-conscious if I did, because I do know that it is said with the best of intentions. Uh, it was just funny because my mentee had brought it up, um, independent of anything else. Let me clarify, um, that she had brought it up, saying how many people have been saying that she deserved this, her recent success, and how it had made her uncomfortable. And it reminded me of how I had felt the same way. Um, I don't know if I maybe I didn't adequately explain why it feels awkward. Um maybe it's I I don't know if it's entirely the implication that when people say, Oh, you deserve this, that right away I would think, well, does that mean someone else doesn't? I think it more to the heart of it is is that I would end up thinking, well, why? Why do I deserve this? Do I deserve this? Um it's yes, uh achieving success something in something is wonderful, and having someone like a book and enjoy it is wonderful. Um but there's just something odd about it being like you deserve this. It's um or the book deserves this. Maybe it's it's a little better when it says the book deserves this. I don't know. It's just a strange, there's almost a what's the word I'm looking for? I don't want to say like an obligatory component to it, which does seem to come out of the root word of of the word itself. And interestingly enough, um, it turns out word detective Evan Morris uh did pass away in 2017. I was very sorry to hear that. Um, but his wife saw the email, uh saw the podcast, sorry, by a Google alert and emailed me. And she retweeted, and that was really nice to get to hear from her. And it was a it was kind of funny because of nowhere. Um she mentioned that Evans uh book what it's like I breathe dust in or something. Sorry. I am inside today. We've got quite a bit of snow. So um, oh, that uh he was represented by Nancy Yost, which was kind of a cool, who is also my agency. Kind of a cool roundabout connection. Um Kev, if you're listening, who to thunk it, huh? So she is continuing the work on his behalf, and it was nice to to mention the the word detective column there. But so the interesting thing about deserve that does seem to be embedded in the meaning is that if you faithfully do the work, if you faithfully serve, then you will be rewarded in kind. And so I think that that's maybe why it feels funny when people say, Oh, you deserve this, well deserved. It's like um, here is your quid pro quo. I don't know. I mean, I know that's not how people intend it, but for some reason it's it's how I often hear it, and clearly I'm not the only one because my mentee had brought this up independent of anything. So there we are. There we are on those things. Um I mentioned Kev just now because he and I would both read, we're detective back in the early days of the internet, was on there since 95, his wife said, and um I think we were reading it from the very beginning. We used to get on Yahoo Messenger with each other. Remember that? It there's it says something when you're nostalgic about early days of the internet. Of course, you know, now that's more than 20 years ago, but it's kind of funny 25 years ago, huh? Yeah. Am I doing my math right? Yeah, 25 years ago. Um yeah. So um I thought this was fun. Um, I finished my final pass of Long Mood of the Crystalline Moon yesterday. I'm going to send it off to the proofreader today. I did some changes to the beginning again. I think I mentioned that from Emily Moss Viewpick. And then Dorinda read it for me last night. And I think she might have a few little in-text comments that I'll look at today. But I thought this was very funny because Dorinda sent me an email with the document last night, and she says, I loved it. I'll cap some many exclamation points. I cannot wait for more. Wow, I need to go back and reread what I've read and finish the 12 kingdoms. Ugh, I'm just so behind on everything, but your writing is stunning. She's always so sweet. She says, but this is the interesting part. She says, so I read some fantasy growing up. Is most of it, obviously that written by male writers, not even female, not as romance-based. I don't remember it being romance, or I would have liked it a lot more. LOL. I remember I liked what I read, but I didn't fall in love. It was more interesting than anything. I know if it had had more romance, I would have been completely hooked. Maybe I just read the wrong stories. Hmm. Anywho, I cannot, I legit cannot wait for more. I love this XOXOX. And I think that that's an interesting question, and certainly something that I've been pondering on here a lot. You know, is like, how much romance is, you know, it she asks the question, is most fantasy does it have this much romance? Is it this romance-based? And the answer is obviously no. And I do think it comes back around to what plot structure the book uses. That fantasy and science fiction are in many ways more about setting. They're more about ambiance and set dressing than plot. And I know I've talked about this some before, but I'm going to go into it a little bit here because it's it really was eye-opening to me. And I really do credit Mary Robinette Coal for having us on a panel at Nebula conference a year and a half ago now, where we discussed this. And the first question she asked us all was to define a fantasy or a science fiction plot. And you are all welcome to do this exercise, but I was sure I could answer this question and ultimately discovered that I could not. That there is no fantasy or science fiction plot as there is recognizably for many other genres. For mystery, there is a recognizable plot, right? The you know, you have you have a mystery that must be solved. Thriller, there's a recognizable plot. Uh you know, evading the killer, capturing the killer. Uh romance, there is a recognizable plot, right? So the romantic arc. We could do this for for some other kinds of genres, uh, for horror. Uh, someone makes a decision that then leads them through a cascade of consequences that may be increasingly horrific. An actual an adventure story has a particular kind of plot. But if you look at, and let's just cleave to fantasy for now, what is the plan the fantasy plot arc? Well, we can look at different kinds of fantasy, right? Um, you have the the Tolkien-esque, which many people consider to be classic fantasy, right? Classic epic fantasy, uh, which is um dealing with the magic artifact and defeating the big bad. And a lot of epic fantasy falls into that kind of uh scenario, that kind of plot arc. But then you have a lot of fantasy that does not. Um, Game of Thrones, for example, a song of ice and fire, is not about uh dealing with a magical artifact. It's not about the hero's journey, it's not about defeating the big bad, even, right? It's about the political sweep. It's about the machinations of people and the jockeying of various kingdoms for power. Um let's look at another kind of fantasy arc, which is essentially the fairy tale retelling. That's a classic kind of fantasy, which um, you know, like look at something like Naomi Novic. Naomi Novic in Spinning Silver. That's kind of a uh Rumpel Stiltskin type story. It's dealing with the Faye, it's about bargains. It doesn't have a Tolkienesque plot arc, it doesn't have a plot arc like a song of ice and fire. It's more of the fairy tale type story. Uh let's see, what other kinds of fantasy do we know and love? Uh Robin McKinley often does essentially a fairy tale type plot arc. Um I feel like I need to be looking at my shelves, and I'm in the wrong position to be looking at my fantasy shelves. Um Kenneth Lee. Kenneth Lee almost has more like a horror type um plot arc. Though it's clearly fantasy. Okay, I'm gonna pause and stand up. Okay, so let's see. I'm looking at all of my Robin McKinley books, and I would say that those are largely fairy tale retellings. Uh, yeah, we have Anne McCaffrey. Anne McCaffrey's books are generally, what would we say? She has a lot of kind of an action-adventure arc. Yeah, she's usually like combating, you know, like combating the thread, um, defeating the dinosaurs. Well, that's more science fiction, the dinosaur planet ones. Um yeah. I'm sort of looking at the ones that are here. Like the the Pern books, those are mostly about again, the epic political sweep. There's is a romance, but it's usually not the main arc. A lot of coming of age. She does a lot of coming of age, so does Robin McKinley, which tends to put them more towards YA. Coming of Age is a recognizable plot arc. Um, Mercedes Lackey, those are usually quest type books. Um, hero's journey. Often with some kind of romance. Uh, do we put Anne Rice in horror? Do we put her in fantasy? Maybe a little bit of both. Twilight, Twilight's coming of age, right? And romance. So the whole point is is that within fantasy, there are many different kinds of plot arcs, many different kinds of stories, and what makes it fantasy is the setting. It's the uh the magical elements, it's the alternate world, it's the fantastical creatures. Uh, you can do an epic political sweep in a science fiction story, right? A lot of people argue that Star Wars, though set in space and with technology, is actually more fantasy in many ways because it's the fighting of the big bad. Uh, but generally the way that I hear most people breaking it out these days is that fantasy is where magic is the power, and science fiction is where technology is the power. Star Wars blurs the line because there's both, right? You have both the force and spaceships. So you have to look at which one's the more powerful um driver of events, and in many ways it's it's about the force, it's about the Jedi Knights, right? Which is which is more on the magical end. So that's why a lot of people argue that Star Wars is actually fantasy. So when Dorinda asks me, is fantasy more romance-based than I thought, and it's like, well, it just depends on which fantasy you're reading. That there is a lot of fantasy that is extremely romance-based, like the kind I write, and that other people are writing. And of course, I've mentioned before that people have said to me that they forget, you know, like the one person saying to me that the fantasy was so good she forgot she was reading a romance. You know, people have a lot of preconceptions about what romance is. But, you know, my my favorite saying now, at least I've been saying it to myself, is that romance is not antimatter. The presence of romance does not cancel out the presence of fantasy. So, yeah, I might have to feed Jorinda some more good fantasy romance and romantic fantasy. But, you know, especially in boy-driven fantasy, forgive me for that, but you know, the the guys who write fantasy, it's tends to be much more action-adventure quest heroes arc and not uh a romance arc. They might have some romance in there, but and that's what a lot of people think of when they think fantasy, you know, the the big epic cycles. But that's not necessarily that doesn't define fantasy, it's one kind of fantasy. So um I still have notes of things I wanted to talk about, but both of those are topics that are longer than what I want to get into today. So I think that I will probably call it good for today. I'm at 18 minutes now. Well, don't do that. Yeah, there we go. Um, and I'll take a oh, so oh, I know what I wanted to tell you guys. Yeah. So I have a title for Eras of Magic number one. Woo woo woo woo, yay! Um, it's going to be called The Golden Griffin and the Bear Prince. So the novella has a slightly different structure in the title, being The Long Night of the Crystalline Moon. And then book one is The Golden Griffin and the Bear Prince, and I'm going to get that pre-order set up so that people, if they like long night, can clicky clicky and keep going. And I should have that out in December. So I'm pretty excited about that. Alrighty. Um, I am going to head out. I hope that you all are having a good day wherever you are, uh, keeping your eyes on your own work because Lord knows the news is ghastly. And but, you know, we control what we can. We control our our own lives and our own environment. So I hope that you have a way to make the world immediately around you a just, peaceful, and loving place. And I will talk to you all on Thursday. Take care. Bye bye.