First Cup of Coffee with Jeffe Kennedy
First Cup of Coffee with Jeffe Kennedy
First Cup of Coffee - September 25, 2018
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Good morning everyone. It is September twenty-fifth, a Tuesday. And it is 818 in the morning. And I saved my first sip to share with you. Mm, that's good. I had a few days there with uh inferior soy milk. And it just didn't work at all. I wasn't happy. Um but you know, champagne problems, right? Although, as I say, they are still problems, so no need to dismiss them for that reason. Also, it was laziness problems because we hadn't been getting to Trader Joe's to get the Trader Joe's silly milk, which is for some reason I think superior to all other brands. I have a couple of backup brands and they still taste watery to me. So I don't know how Trader Joe's manages to have both an inexpensive brand, a non-sugary formula with low carbs, and it's Meteor. Because Trader Joe's is awesome in all things, clearly. So today is the release day of Phoenix Unbound by Grace Draven, which I shouldn't have to caveat. She's one of my besties, and I'm so happy for her. I I'm still not sure how it worked out that when she asked me if I would blurb it way back, and I said I would, but then she was gonna s I seriously I don't remember because I wanted to and I couldn't read it right that moment, and she was gonna send me another version and she was having other people read, then she was gonna send me like once she finished certain edits on it, and then she didn't, and I kept saying, Are you gonna send it to me? And she would say, Oh yeah, I'm gonna send you once I've done this bit, and then somehow, well, I did talk about this some before, didn't I? Because it was way past blurbing. And they had already pulled a blurb from me, like one I'd given her that was just a general Grace Draven is awesome kind of blurb and put it on the website. But now that's gone, so there's no sign of me on the book. I haven't read the whole thing. I bought it, it's turned up on my Kindle this morning, so I'm excited about that. Um and I know that it's gonna be fantastic because Grace is fantastic. Um, this is the first traditionally published book she's had in some time now. Uh Grace had started out with um oh, I think it was Amber Quill, who is now out of business. Um one of those many uh digital, first digital only publishers of the um what digital publishing boom, I guess it was, of the late 2000 I don't even know how you say that. The aughts, the 2000 aughts. Um you know, around 2010, 29. She and I were doing stuff at similar times. Um, and neither one of us seemed to be able to sell a book to dish traditional publishing, largely because I think we were both writing fantasy romance and they had no idea what to do with us. So I ended up publishing with Karina, which was Harlequin's digital imprint, and Grace ended up publishing with Master of Coes. I know she did a few books with them. She certainly did um did I sorry if I I was thinking and I don't always talk and think at the same time very well, apparently. She did Master of Crows with Amber Quill for sure, and I think she did a few other books. But I remember Master of Crows because they she told me they'd given it a truly heinous cover, and it really was a truly heinous cover. Oh my god, it was such a bad cover. And when she recovered it, that book is done very when she got the rights back, it's done very well self-publishing. And I think Master of Crows is still my favorite, though we'll see how uh how I feel after I read Phoenix Unbound. So anyway, happy, happy release day to Grace. Um I expect this book will do spectacularly well, and so I'm really excited for her. And if you haven't bought it, you should check it out. Um Grace really is uh writes just gorgeous stuff and with a fantastic blend of fantasy and romance to it. We have a lot of similar themes and yet very different at the same time. And she and I are going to be in an anthology together. I believe I've mentioned this before. You'll be hearing more and more about it, uh, scheduled to come out November 13th. The pre-order link is live on Amazon, right now only on Amazon. Uh so you I will put that on the blog post site for this. Um but seasons of sorcery. You can go look it up, and Grace is going to be in it. Also, Jennifer Estep, uh, whose fantasy romance Kill the Queen is coming out next Tuesday. And then My Arrows of the Heart is coming out the following Tuesday. So we're calling it the Fantasy Romance Trifecta. And if you are a fan of fantasy romance, I mean this is a fantastic lineup. You get a week to read each book, which I know most of you are f completely capable of doing. Um Kill the Queen is billed as epic fantasy, but it's really got a lovely slow burn romance. Just fantastic. Uh and then our fourth person in the anthology is Amanda Boucher, who did um Promise of Fire and the other books on that trilogy, more fantasy romance. So that should be great. Unfortunately, she doesn't get to be part of our qu trifecta, because she doesn't have a book coming out until um something like January. But that's just as well because I don't think that you can have like a quadfecta. Yeah, it just doesn't work. So anyway, fantasy romance trifecta starting today, Phoenix Unbound, next week, kill the queen, week after, arrows of the heart. Um I think I'm I think I'm gonna hit the deadline. My line editor kind of threw up her hands at me and said, It's very long, but I'll do my best, and her best is very good, so I think she'll she'll do it. We should be able to turn it around in time. No pre-order links up for that yet. Um if you want notice, you can um sign up for the newsletter, is one of the best ways. Uh also uh I have the private Facebook group, Jeffy's Closet, and I'll post links as they go live there and and elsewhere, but you know how Facebook is, it decides whether or not they want to show you things, and usually it's not. Um they're much more interested in showing you ads from Russians trying to interfere with the election. I did say Facebook had something go by the other day with like, come read this to see how we are tightening up security for uh during elections, and I was like, I just I don't even care, Facebook. I just have so much trouble. Um I'm not sure I will ever trust them. Sadly enough. So, on to happier things. This is why we read fantasy romance, right? Because we get all of the political intrigue with the guarantee that it will turn out fine. It's a little bit cloudy this morning. I am out in the Grape Arbor. I cleaned up the Grape Arbor extensively for my friend Margaret's visit. She was here Thursday, last Thursday through yesterday, so that's why I've been quiet. Um we talked about having her on the podcast, but she's um she used to write a lot and she hasn't been so much. She's sort of in a transitional place and um so far I haven't I've had only writers on the podcast with me and not other people. So I don't know, I might stick to that. We'll see. I kind of think that's a good line to draw. Um so anyway, I had this all cleaned up for her. We had a really great time. Um I picked her up at the airport on Thursday down in Albuquerque, and we drove the back route up to Abakue. Uh and Abbecue is where I talked about this some, I think, but uh Georgia O'Keefe had her summer home. And we got to do the studio tour and well her her studio was in her house, so they call it house and studio tour. But um she had a fantastic garden and she had this house and she set up um her studio right next to her bedroom. Um, especially in her later years, she would just sort of go back and forth between her bedroom and studio and lived in a fairly small space and a very minimalist space. The walls are very white. They've kept it the way it's been since she died when she when she died in eighty six. Um it's and you can see what she looked at every day every day. Uh and it's just it's amazing to me. I love going back to this place because it's so incredible to me to be in her house and see how she set up her life to make herself into a better artist. It was the most important thing to her. Becoming a better and better artist and she wanted to refine her vision and refine her ability to see, and I think that's partly how she came up with such amazing stuff. Yeah, so we d did the home and studio tour. We then went to uh had some early dinner at Abbey Inn, which is very nice, you can sit out on the patio. And then we went to Ghost Ranch, which is about a twenty minute drive up the road. And lit oh I'm sorry, I probably misspoke before. Abbecue the house and studio at Abbecue was her winter home, and then Ghost Ranch was her summer home. Uh and I had never been to Ghost Ranch before. For a while it was pretty exclusive whether or not you could be in there, and now they're opening that up more and more to tours. And we were we signed up for the um sunset horseback ride, which lasted about an hour and a half, and we rode out to see her house. And we didn't get to tour through the house. Um, you have to do that, it's expensive and you have to choose your times. Uh, but it was really neat to see the house, and then also just amazing to see uh just the landscape, and they took the time to show us some of her paintings, different parts of the landscape that she had painted. You know, both a photo of the landmark and also her painting. Uh and the sunset was spectacular. It was really just uh I put some on the SFF 7 blog post on Sunday, or I put one on there. Yeah, it was um so serene and quiet and just beautiful, beautiful landscape, an amazing light there. And I did get to ask, because you know, as I said, Ghost Ranch is just twenty minutes up the road from Abbecue, and so I asked why that was so hard for her to get in and out in the win in the winter, which is why she would have to go to Abbey. And they were saying, well, that it's largely because of the clay soil um gets incredibly slippery it with snow in the winter. And I've I having experienced this myself once when early on here when David and I went to collect firewood, um our car was all over the road, and so I could absolutely see that um yeah, at the end of the year you would have to relocate and not try to get in and out of there. So that was um yeah, super cool to see. And then the rest of the weekend we did fun things. We went to Ten Thousand Waymes, which is a Japanese spa, and we got massages and soaked, which was good to do after the horseback ride. Uh we had some lovely lunches, wonderful lunches with margaritas, and we got to hang out some with uh Megan Mulrie and the fabulous Charlie. Uh Megan and Margaret have been friends from way back, way back in the day. Uh before I was friends with either of them. I believe they were friends with each other, such as the size of our community. So it was um yeah, really fun to hang out with them. Uh we got to go to an open house and look at that. That's I always like going to see houses and see what's for sale on the market. And we went and sat outside at the bar at the compound and had probably the best onion rings I've ever had in my life. Those were amazing. Um and then and also margaritas, which Margaret has declared that the compound's margaritas have become the gold standard margarita for her. Um you know, and otherwise we did, you know, it was a very laid back, low-key, and we hung out and talked and I taught her the Kathy Kennedy mantra of going from soft spot to soft spot. The altitude got to her a little bit this time, so she was not up for intensive hiking or doing a whole lot more running around. So we uh yeah, especially on we did some shopping. And then, you know, on Sunday we would shop a little bit, walk around and look at things, and then go sit somewhere and have a cool drink in the shade. The sun was very intense for her this time. Um, but it's intense this time of year. Uh it's too bad that she wasn't here today because now the weather has shifted, and we're actually mostly overcast right now and uh predicted for rain later, and it's feeling moist and misty. Very quiet and pleasant. You could probably hear some of the birds calling, hear the Jays out there. So today I am going to dive back into, or not back into, dive into my story for Seasons of Sorcery, um, which I'm going to start writing from Harlan's point of view. For those of you who are Harlan fans, I enjoy seeing your comments when I mention this with the whole um it'll be interesting to write from Harlan's point of view. After having I guess for um The Snows of Windrove and for last year's holiday anthology, I wrote from Ash's point of view, and that had been from Tears of the Rose, the second book, and then Harlan shows up in The Talon of the Hawk, the third book. So that's definitely I was gonna say that Harlan's probably the character who's been around the longest that I've not written from his point of view, but that's probably not true. Um, or that I haven't, and I'm going to. I hope you followed that. That was a little convoluted. But um, yeah, I'm I hope I can do I hope I can get into Harlan's head. It's going to be interesting to hear his his internal voice. And I'm not exactly sure what the story is going to be. I think I know, but that's part of the what it's like to be me with my method. Uh today, I'm just I'm probably not even gonna shoot for major word count. I'm just gonna start start writing Harlan and see what he says and see what comes out. So that kind of is uh a leisurely way to do it. I have a few other businessy type things to take care of. So I will do those things. Um the mark of the tala has been on radish. If any of you use radish and enjoy that, uh it's a app on your phone where you read in pieces. I suspect that most of you listen I don't know. I was gonna say I think I suspect that most of you listening are not radish listeners, but that's could might not be true. Might uh indeed be a good place to talk about the radish stuff. So anyway, Mark of the Tala is on there. It's only partially unlocked so far, and then I need to finish the splits for Tears of the Rose, because that's going to go up soon, too. Uh and I don't know if Exile of the Sea I don't think Exile of the Seas is up on there yet, but it's going to be Prisoner of the Crown is. So uh I think it's um you know, certainly you can read parts of books for free on Radish and see if you like them. And then if you're hooked, you can keep going. And otherwise I'm just waiting for edits back on arrows. Um Orchid Throne has, I think I mentioned, gone out. Arcs have gone out to reviewers as well. So um oh no, wait. Yeah, you guys are sitting up in your chairs going, what? I take it back. Um Orchid Throne has only gone to other authors for review. Arrows of the Heart, um, arcs have gone out. So if you are a reviewer and you have not gotten, did not get the message from Corrine saying that ARCs are available, then give her a um a call. Um if you don't normally if you aren't normally in contact with her, the best way to do it is to use the email form through my website under contact, and she'll see those emails, and she will uh start a dialogue with you about um getting reviews, review copies. So I don't think I've seen any. Of course I've been offline a great deal, but I don't think I've seen anybody who's read arrows yet. Well, no, I take it back. Um Veronica Scott at uh Sci-Fi Encounters, who writes the column for the USA Today Happy Ever After blog. Uh she emailed me and she loved it. So yay! Um, I think she said that it might be her favorite so far. So that's fantastic. Alright, so I'm gonna go get to work. Um sorry that I've been offline so much. Oh, do you hear that little bird? Yeah, I'm not sure what that was. I only partially tiny little bird might be some kind of finch. Um a lot of birds are moving through right now, uh starting their journey south. Alright, so lovely to chat with you all. I will be on more often now that my life is settling into another phase of not hanging out with friends and drinking margaritas all the time. Uh but it was lovely to share my first cup of London fog with you again today. And I will um talk to you all again tomorrow. Hope you have a wonderful day. Bye bye.