First Cup of Coffee - November 23, 2020

Recognizing the role of serendipity in our successes and giving gratitude for that, along with thoughts on phenoms and what we really deserve.

The blog post I mention is here (https://blog.jeffekennedy.com/2020/11/22/the-simplest-and-most-profound-expression-of-gratitude/).

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 with romance and all of the places that they intersect. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Which is strong. I'm I'm still experimenting with these other Nespresso flavors and I suppose that's those are the wages of experimentation. Now we have to finish using all of those. Um I now have a shipment coming on uh the 26th. I'm sure you'll all be relieved to hear uh that with all of the our new favorites. So the experimentation well, we'll still have to drink up all this other stuff. Uh let's see, today is Monday, November 23rd, Thanksgiving week here in the US. A weird Thanksgiving week, of course, but we're doing our best to be giving thanks and so forth. Um I think I've mentioned that we were gonna go see my family for Thanksgiving in Tucson, and I was going to be the one to cook, and that's not gonna happen. We're gonna stay home, so I'm still gonna cook, but it's gonna be for me and David. We did buy a turkey, but it's a 14-pounder, so we'll live off of the uh leftovers for a while. So let's see. I'm trying to think of what's going on. It I've been busy, it's been a busy uh last week, and this week is going to be busy. I always feel like my schedule is more crowded, like I have less time when I have a lot of things scheduled in a day. And and it's not necessarily true, it's a weird psychological fact. Um, Dorinda and I were talking about that, that it's because both of us will schedule things like interviews and podcasts for uh later in the afternoon so that we can get the writing done first. Well, I think she's doing that now because that is what I'm teaching her, the ways of prioritizing the writing. And I got distracted because I was realizing I didn't mention that's overcast today. If it looks darker, that's why it's a little bit stormy here in Santa Fe today. But anyway, even if you're prioritizing getting the writing done and you have these things that are scheduled later in the afternoon when for me at least, I would be done working anyway. I would be shifting over to working on stuff like um, you know, emails or written interviews or crunching royalties, finances, that kind of thing. But knowing that there is this deadline, that there is this time that I have to switch over really affects me. I don't know why it does, but it's um, yeah, it it's a weird psychological thing, and I feel like I have to combat it. If I were a much more scheduled person, like if I still had a day job, if I still had um, you know, like kids to pick up from school, or uh if I were enslaved to other people's schedules in the way that many people are, like if you have a day job or you work with other people, that kind of thing, I think I would become more accustomed to this and it would have the same psychological weight. But once you start like being totally on your own schedule and sort of living in this alternate realm, uh having these anchors back to reality can be a little disconcerting and it feels like pressure. So, anyway, I have several appointments in the afternoon for the next few days, all virtual, you know, all online. I've I've been cautioned against that we're that we shouldn't say virtual when we're talking online, because it isn't really virtual, it's still real, it's on the internet. We're not actually moving into a virtual reality, which I think is an interesting distinction. So, anyway, I've had a fair amount of that last week and a fair amount this week. Some of it is because I've been accelerating the uh author, coaching, and mastermind stuff, and so I've been having appointments and interviews with people, uh, consulting with them. So on Saturday I had um uh an appointment, a consultation with someone at like 1:15, and we talked for like an hour, 15 minutes, and then I did this podcast called Drinking with Authors, which was very fun, but it was two hours. It started at three and went to five, and I dutifully drank my champagne as I was talking, and and of course, then I was worthless. I am not someone who gets anything done after I've started, especially day drinking. If I've had a glass of wine or or three or whatever, uh no, I'm not gonna get anything productive done after that. And besides, it was a Saturday, and so David and I kicked back and watched some shows and stuff. Um and then I've had I had an appointment Friday afternoon, so it I mean it's great. I'm really excited to be doing these consultations and coaching with people. It's just starting to feel like my schedule is full, which I knew going into this. It's just a matter of adjusting to actually having a schedule, I suppose. So I have a couple things this afternoon. I have another consultation appointment and then an interview with Nalini Singer, and I will post her to the podcast tomorrow morning. So I won't do an Instagram live tomorrow morning, uh, but I will put up Nalini's post. I might just schedule it today and free up some of my morning tomorrow. And then I have to have um a couple more calls tomorrow afternoon. What about health insurance doing the uh Affordable Care Act? I'm using the uh concierge provided by Cepha and RWA. All the writers always went in together, so I could come at it from either direction. I think I went into Cepha though. I doubt it matters, but um, I think uh we did initial consultation, and now today David and I will get on the phone and talk. But I think that this is probably going to save us in the neighborhood of it's sounding like $1,500 a month less on health insurance, which is unreal. So that will be good. And then I have a call with Agent Sarah tomorrow to talk some strategy. And on Wednesday, oh, I have another podcast interview on Wednesday. For some reason, lately there has been kind of an onslaught of interviews, um, interview requests, and so forth. And it could be entirely because I was complaining about not being invited to do things, and so now the universe is punishing me by sending me an avalanche of things. I think also people are resigned to the fact that nobody's going to be doing anything for the next couple of months as far as public gatherings. So a lot more libraries and bookstores are really committing to online events and asking people to participate in those. So I've been really wanting to post this thing to social media, but I I do follow the rule of that if you hesitate to post something to social media, that means that you should not. So instead, I'm gonna blab it on my podcast. But I I keep wanting to put up a thing that says something like uh me watching a another author getting to do a cool panel or podcast gig. You know, how come nobody ever invites me to do a podcast or invites me to do those things? And then also me when I have a panel or podcast scheduled, why did I agree to do these things? I know it's not funny. Uh it it's sad, it is sad. Anyway, the drinking with author gals were great because they kept saying that I was a big deal, and it's just always nice when somebody says that you're a big deal because a lot of times when you're just uh sort of in the midst of dealing with your own stuff, it's easy to lose sight of the ways in which you have been successful. And I did a blog post for the SFF 7 yesterday. We were asked to do our our favorite quote on gratitude, and I talked about how my professor in college taught me, because I I did religious studies in college, comparative religious studies, and biology double major, I did my right-left brain thing. And my professor said something that really struck me. For those of you who I mean, you could go read the blog too, but uh we're we're going for all the modalities here. But he said that people, when misfortune strikes, when things go badly in our lives, that the first thing we do is we we ask why me? We look up to the heavens and say, Why? Why is this misfortune being visited upon me? Why is you know my family, why is my mother the one who had to die young? Or why did I get cancer? Why did these things happen? You know, what what did I do wrong? And he said, and we could debate, you know, religious philosophers debate that question, but what's more important is to consider why what good things happen in our lives when we are showered with blessings, or even just have normal good health, we don't ask why. We don't say, why me? Why am I so healthy? Uh, why did I get this success? And some of this loops back to that thing I was talking about a while back about deserving, you know, deserving success. And maybe that's one reason why I'm a little, I have a complicated relationship with that phrase, with that concept of deserving, you deserve this, because I know people mean it well when they say it, and they're they're saying, I want you to have this. I I agree that you should be enjoying this award or these readers or or what have you. It's but it comes back to that why me. Why why did I get to have success where other authors I know who write wonderful books aren't? And it also connects to this thing that I complain about frequently: that many people, when they achieve success, they they fail to credit serendipity, they fail to credit the role of luck. And particularly in publishing uh with books, so much of it can just be the right book at the right time. It's just why do some books hit, you know, like why was Harry Potter such a phenomenon? Why was Fifty Shades of Grey a phenomenon? And people will attempt to dissect it in both directions. People will go through and complain about uh, you know, like that Fifty Shades of Grey is not well written. They'll complain that Twilight is not well well written. They'll say it's a bad book. And and I'll say, you know, people don't read 600 pages of bad books. You're you're applying a different filter there, you're applying a different set of qualifications, what you think is a bad book. Because clearly these books affected people in a particular way. So people will try to reverse engineer it in the other direction, too, and say, why? Why was this book the thing that people connected to, even though I think the prose is badly written? And you can come up with commonalities, and as people, we are always looking for those formulas. We're always looking to break down the magic formula, you know, like why was Sarah J. Moss's Throne of Glass so incredibly successful? Which, you know, it's it's been a phenomenon. And it's been a phenomena in ways like these other books have been phenomms, and it's like, well, why? And you can pick out certain common elements, and there's you know, wonderful things. Uh, Jennifer Barnes has done some great work on you know identifying which things affect our id and why these stories appeal to us. But is that really what where the magic was? I think that we never know where the magic was. So um, I think being grateful for those things that are beyond our control, being aware of our successes and blessings that come to us, whether we deserve them or not, um, whether we did something right. You know, a lot of times it's bad things don't happen because we did something wrong. Uh, and the same way, good things don't happen because we did something right. You can put in the work, sure, you know, and and that's what people will say to me when I say that I know I've been lucky in very many ways, and they'll say, Yeah, but you put in the work, you put yourself out there so that the luck could happen. And it's like, well, sure, yeah, that's that's absolutely true. You know, the luck doesn't come and dig us out from under our beds. But at the same time, appreciating the role of serendipity, of blessings and so forth in our lives, I think is really important. And it's always good for me to have that reminder when somebody says, Oh, but you're a big deal. And that's like, I don't feel like a big deal, but it's really um wonderful to hear that. It's good for me to be reminded that in someone else's eyes I might be a big deal. Ah, so let's see. So I'm doing a short week this week. I am taking Thanksgiving and Friday off, even though we're not traveling. We have been planning to travel tomorrow, so I would have taken four days off this week, and now I'm gonna take off two and you know, sort of give myself a little vacation. My boss has decided to give me a vacation. She normally doesn't, but she decided, well, I deserve one. There we are with deserve, right? And but things are going pretty well. I'm at 62,000 words on Golden Griffin and the Bear Prince. So clicking right along. I had originally hoped to be done with it entirely and turn it over to the copywriter, copywriter, copy editor, by Wednesday. That had been my original goal, and that is not going to happen. And in fact, I've decided with this, I should have realized, even though it's the same world that I've worked in before, with it being the first book in this new series, uh, there are some things I want to go back and layer in, and I want to have time to do that. So I've pushed the release date back to January. Sorry, you guys probably, when I said I was gonna have it out by December 21st, you guys were like, yeah, all right, Jeffy. It could have happened. Um instead, I'm going to have it out in January. I'm sending it to the copy editor on January 4th. So, and that's a very doable deadline. Cross knock up would cross my fingers. So uh that should that should go okay. And then some other developments in the works. We shall see what happens. I'll report on those things. Um, not yet, have to have this call with Agent Sarah tomorrow afternoon, and then we will make some decisions. And oh, and then Under a Winter Sky, I I did interviews with everybody except for Melissa Maher, who um you know was dealing with her kid being sick with COVID, and she just yeah, couldn't do. So that's fine. I don't know if we'll ever maybe someday we'll get Melissa on here. But uh thanks everyone for the amazing support on the anthology. The sales have been fantastic, the ranking continues to be high. Um wonderful reviews. It's it seems that we did deliver the um midwinter holiday magic that we were hoping to. So um I'm I'm just hearing great stuff about the book, and uh it's wonderful to have all those bestseller ribbons and everything. So um yeah, pretty awesome. And I I was gonna make a joke about that, and I wrote just remembered that uh Jim Sorensen, my buddy, hi Jim, if you're out there, uh had said to me when I was I posted that question in social media a while back when you uh when people ask you, have I heard of you? You know, like people say, Well, what do you do? And they say, Well, I'm a novelist, I'm an author. Usually I'll say I'm a writer, and then they'll ask me what I write, and I'll say I'm a novelist. And and um and we'll kind of drill down from there, you know, see what answer they really want. And but then a lot of times people will say, Well, have I heard of you? And it's a terrible question, invidious question, and I never know how to answer it. And Jim Sorensen suggested, and I forget where he said it came from, it might have been from um was it from Daredevil? Uh, I don't remember, but the line, um, well, not many people know this, but I'm kind of a big deal, which is a great line. Um, that inherent tautology, and uh it's awesome. So there we are with big deal again, right? Not many people know this, but I'm kind of a big deal. All right. Uh on that note, I shall go big D big deal my way into some actual big words, and I will um will be back with you with a recorded interview with Melini Singh, uh, posted tomorrow morning. And then I will probably do a podcast Wednesday morning, since I won't on Thursday or Friday. That's my plan. We'll see if I stick to it. And um there we are. So I'll remind you that first cup of coffee is part of the Frolic Media Podcast Network, and you will find more podcasts you love at frolic.media slash podcasts. And I will talk to you all soon. Take care. Bye bye.