First Cup of Coffee - November 9, 2020

A shoutout today to Rebekah Weatherspoon on the release of IF THE BOOT FITS, a modern Cinderella tale set on a Black-owned luxury dude ranch. Otherwise I'm mostly squeeing about the Biden/Harris win :D

More on Rebekah Weatherspoon and IF THE BOOT FITS here (http://www.rebekahweatherspoon.com/books/ifthebootfits/).

And here's the video of the podcast, if you want to see (https://youtu.be/ieCG0vUi7pg)

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

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy, author of Fantasy, Romance, and all of the wonderful places they intersect. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. I needed the coffee this morning. Today is Monday, November 9th. It's a good week. It's a good Monday. Fantastic weekend. The big news in our lives is that Joe Biden won the presidency, Biden and Harris ticket. I haven't been this excited for a presidential election. Well, probably not since Obama was elected. I remember when Clinton unseated W, and that was a big deal. And I was really thrilled when Obama won. But this was an election like no other. It was um absolutely incredible. Uh I I had resigned myself to not hearing anything over the weekend. The count seemed to have frozen on Friday night. I thought, well, everyone's taking the weekend off, and we won't, we won't know. And I we were out, David and I were out working uh doing our landscaping, working on those steps. And I came inside to check something, and I saw on Twitter that AP had reported the results of the election. And it was um I I took my phone out to David to show him, and we were just jumping up and down in the driveway shouting. And it was just really cool to see all of the reactions to you know, people were calling it glee scrolling as opposed to doom scrolling, as we had been. This is uh between administrations deciding on the governance of the United States and who gets to be a person and who isn't. And I just really don't understand people who voted for Trump a second time knowing what he did, knowing that he was destroying our institutions, rolling back environmental regulations, rolling back civil rights, uh lining the pockets of the wealthy. It was it's astonishing to me. I understand people voting for him the first time, but if you voted for him again, and then you're mad that he lost, I I just don't have a lot of sympathy. I um I had to block one reader on Twitter, which is something that I didn't want to do. Uh, she's been someone who's been very supportive and enthusiastic about my books, and I appreciate that. And that I've got the morning sun coming in here, it's really nice. Here comes the sun, right? So I um I knew that she was a Trump supporter because she has MAGA in her Twitter bio and stuff, and so I didn't follow her back on Twitter, even though she sometimes tweets me and she tweets other people to read my books, and I appreciate that. But I also know that she has a very controlling husband from things that she's told me, and so I thought, well, I'm cutting her some slack because I think it's hard if you have a controlling husband. And on Saturday, I was doing my gleeful tweeting, joyful tweeting, and she replied to me and sent me Trump's statement that he doesn't accept the outcome of the election and that they're going to be, you know, still going on about the fraudulent voting, which has been debunked. I mean, there there is no voter fraud. And anyone who is persisting with that, even though it has been debunked, you know, I just don't want that in my feature in my life. I don't want to hear about it from you. If you want to tell me that you feel like Trump should have won, then you can tell me that. That's fine. That's your opinion. If you want to tell me you voted for Trump and why you like Trump, that's fine. I'm probably not going to agree with you, but um, if you start sending me stuff about voter fraud, um, I'm gonna block your ass. And that's what I did. I blocked her. And I was sorry to do it. But you know, you just can't go out and spread that stuff around just because you are following some kind of emotional truth that has nothing to do with demonstrable facts. You know, the Rudy Giuliani and the like talking about how the press doesn't get to decide the outcome of the election. It's like, no, but the press does vote. The press does, sorry, I'm getting all worked up, the press does report on the outcome of the election, which is decided by voters, and they look at the numbers in states, and it's called math. We don't wait for somebody else to tell us the outcome of math. Rudy Giuliani said that the courts decide the outcome of elections. Uh, that's not true. Voters decide the outcome of elections, and you count them up, and the person who gets the votes wins. So, um, you know, and then the other place that I come from on this is that so many people say that they voted for Trump because of their taxes. And I'm sorry if what you pay on taxes is more important to you than having compassion for other human beings, then I also don't care. So that's that's where I'm at this morning. Um feeling joyful, optimistic, hopeful. It was great to see the uh response around the world uh ringing the bells in Paris, uh, world leaders sending messages of you know, let's let's work on fixing the planet and putting things back together. Uh, you know, enough with this white supremacy ship, people. All right, so with that said, um I'll move on and say that uh there's a featured book today on the podcast. Sponsored the podcast is sponsored by uh If the boot fits by Rebecca Weatherspoon. And rather uh what do I want to say serendipitously enough? Uh this is a black cowboy romance. And I don't think I've met Rebecca, but she sounds awesome. Uh she is a multi-award-winning romance author and creator of the women in color romance.com, which is an online rom resource for discovering romances written by women and non-binary people of color. She's also like got her BA and Shakespearean works and stuff. She sounds like totally kick-ass. So, anyway, if the boot fits, um, I am going to show you this awesome cover. Let's see, I was figuring out how to do this so that it was viewed. I kind of wanted to make it full screen. I know I did it once before. Might have been while I had the uh let's see here. It was probably when I had it hooked up to the monitor. Okay. Now let's do this. You're not gonna let me do this. Sometimes working with the tablet doesn't always um it's not always intuitive, you know? Let me see. Can I make you full screen? Okay, well, I was gonna make this full screen and that would have been cool, but let's see here. Okay, well, we'll show it this way. Put it up on the video.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Okay, there we go. If the boot fits, it's probably backwards, isn't it? Oh well.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Um, I'll put it on the show notes too. But anyway, it's a great cover. Um, very handsome black cowboy with his black hat. And I'm sure you guys want to know what it's about. Set on a black-owned luxury dude ranch with a fairy tale twist. We love that. The second Cowboys of California romance by award-winning author Rebecca Weatherspoon absolutely sizzles in this thoroughly modern take on the timeless tale of a struggling Cinderella. Sorry, Rebecca. Didn't mean to sneeze in the middle of your uh BCC there. Um I have to go back to it now. Let's see. A modern take on the timeless tale of a struggling Cinderella who finds her prince charming at the 11th hour. An Oscar-winning actor and aspiring screenwriter attempt to make a relationship work away from the Hollywood spotlight. Working as the personal assistant to one of Hollywood's coolest divas has left Amanda Queen more determined than ever to sell her screenplay and gain her independence. In the meantime, she'll settle for a temporary escape. When her employer is felled by the flu on Hollywood's biggest night of the year, Amanda gets her glam on, struts out the door, and parties with the glitterati. She never expects to come face to face and closer than close with one of the hottest stars in the game. Following up his first Oscar win with a steamy after hours rump with an enigmatic woman seems like the perfect way for actor Sam Pleasant to celebrate until she suddenly disappears. Worse, she's vanished with the wrong swag bag, the one containing his Oscar statue, leaving Sam even more intrigued about the beauty's identity and wondering if a repeat performance of their amazing night is in the stars. And when a second chance encounter happens, only a trip to Sam's family ranch. And revealing the not always glamorous truth about themselves will give them a chance to turn one magical night into forever. Yeah, so uh check out if the boot fits. First book in the series, A Cowboy to Remember. Oh, I'm sorry, the first book, as I didn't read this well. So much for reading comprehension this morning. Uh the first book in the series, uh, which is Cowboys of California, the first book is called A Cowboy to Remember, and it got fantastic reviews. And so now this is apparently the second book. Um, if the boot fits. So check that out. Uh, links will be in the show notes. And congratulations, Rebecca, on an amazing series. Happy to to get to celebrate um someone that many of the Trump supporters would not want to be celebrating this morning. Um, but you know, this is uh first cup of coffee is all about the what the real time chat. The it's not real time, is it? But the realistic chat. And if you were sitting here with me having coffee, I would be saying the same thing. So um where am I at with things? Things, things, things. Uh making good progress on actually, I made great progress on uh the Airs of Magic Book One, Golden Griffin and the Bear Prince. I am now at 39,000 words. I did great last week. I was really happy with myself. Um got 15,000 words on the book, and a little bit more than that since I count some other things that I write along the way. Um so I got this is the number you want to look at, Jeffy. Yes, um, almost 17,000 words last week. So I finally kicked into gear. I talked about that some on Friday, that I finally broke through whatever was holding me back and made amazing progress. So that's feeling good. Um this week I will pass for the year for 2020. I will have written more than I have in half the years since I've been tracking. Officially half. Um 2019, 2012, 2016, and 2018. Um I will have all I've written, I will have written more than those. After that jumps up. Um 2018 I wrote 438,470 words, and I'm only 3,600 words away from that right now, but then it jumps. Um, and in 2013 I wrote 497 words, so I am on track to probably I might top 2013 and possibly 2017, which was um 2017 I wrote almost 520,000 words. Uh, but I will not match either 2014 or 2015 because both of those 2014 I wrote 559 and 2015 I wrote 564, and I would have to write like 65,000 words in both November and December to match that, and I'm not gonna hit that. And I don't think that was a healthy amount for me to write anyway, because in 2014 was when I did 559, and 2015 was 564, and then 2016 was when I crashed. I crashed and burned big time and went down to I I got 436,000, which I know isn't terrible, but I could show you guys this graph since we have the let's see if my tablet will let me do this without scooching around. So there you can see my graph if you're looking at the video, which I will put on Instagram. But you can see I was climbing, climbing, climbing, and then boom, went down. And so I've been trying to figure out um always always working on ways to be more sustainable. Sustainability is key because it's good to to get the word count in, but then if you crash and can't do it for the next several years, then that's not any good. So so I'm happy with what I'm finding as far as my productivity and sustainability. And yeah, things are are looking up. Uh let's see. I'm just trying to think of where I'm at on things. Uh I got some painting done on the master bathroom over the weekend, and we did some of the landscaping stuff. Um, I did not get as much done on Saturday as I wanted to because uh I was just looking at the internet and looking at all the gleeful uh celebrating about Biden and Harris winning. And that night we did watch the um except not acceptance speeches, but sort of the kickoff speeches. And it was so funny because um, you know, I I never even wanted to watch Obama give speeches because I'm just not much for presidential speeches, but it was just so nice to listen to people being articulate and talking about concrete plans and talking about um calling out people and saying thank you, saying thank you to people for the work that they've done. Um it's just one of those things that's such a profound disconnect that I don't understand how anybody could listen to Trump speak and think that he had. I mean, it wasn't rational speech. Uh it was so puzzling to me. So I know I said I wouldn't keep ranting about this. So I'm going to uh wind it up here. It I finally decided that it was okay for all of the times that I have been anxious over the last four years and been seriously worried about our democracy. Um, been seriously worried for the lives of people I care about who don't fit into whatever boundaries that the Trump people think are acceptable. Um, I decided it was okay to enjoy the the joy of it. And we got fancy takeout Saturday night and watched the speeches, and it was good to celebrate and feel optimistic. So I'm I'm really looking forward to the day when we don't have to I think somebody else said this, but I'm I'm really looking forward to when I don't have to cringe, wondering what awful news is coming now. You know, maybe we can uh get back to trying to take care of the environment. And and um, you know what? If it takes paying taxes for us to have a decent society, I'm perfectly fine with paying taxes. So on that note, I am going to go get to work. I hope that you all have a wonderful week. I hope that you are finding things to celebrate, finding things to be optimistic about. And I will talk to you all tomorrow. Oh, when uh the lovely Leslie Penelope will be on the podcast. So I probably won't try to do a video then. So um yeah, Leslie will be on tomorrow. So you all take care. Bye bye.