First Cup of Coffee - April 23, 2021

I'm talking about covers today, some do's and don'ts and why I kept Stella in a red gown on the cover of THE SORCERESS QUEEN AND THE PIRATE ROGUE. Also a panel today, the Paper and Vices podcast, and elephants!

Find THE SORCERESS QUEEN AND THE PIRATE ROGUE here (https://jeffekennedy.com/the-sorceress-queen-and-the-pirate-rogue). The Chronicles of Dasnaria books are here (https://jeffekennedy.com/series/the-chronicles-of-dasnaria). Dark Wizard is here (https://jeffekennedy.com/dark-wizard).

The Jack Williamson Lectureship (free and online!) is here (https://my.enmu.edu/web/jack-williamson-lectureship/2020-lectureship).

And the Paper and Vices podcast discussing Dark Wizard and Chronicles of Dasnaria is here (https://paperandvices.podbean.com/e/episode-17-the-road-to-hell-is-slicked-with-mineral-oil/).

You can watch the You Tube video of the podcast here (https://youtu.be/A5NIMkNb_Lc).

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 romantic fantasy. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Hmm. That's so good. Today is Friday. Yay! Um April 23rd. Oops. I'm getting a text. I forgot to silence my phone. Oh, it's my mother. And she even says it's Friday. Silenced now, so we won't have any more rude interruptions. Ah, so um let's see. A few like general housekeeping things. You will note that today's earrings are repeats, my most favorite ivory hummingbird earrings. That's because I'm wearing this cute new tank top, courtesy of said mother, another thing from my generous mommy. Isn't it cute? With the flowers, and it's kind of got the little bit of a it's white. For those of you who can't see, it's white, and it's got like poppies, and it's got um, I don't think it's legible, but like handwriting as if it's from a flower journal or something. It's also cool because it's reversible. That might be hard to see, but the opposite side is purple. Um, I am not in general a fan of rever rever babies because I can't say it. Reversible things. Because I think you almost never wear them in reverse. Certainly I don't. I don't know. Have you guys ever had a reversible thing that you actually wore reversibly? But this is actually well made, and I think I would potentially wear it reversibly. So, um, you know, it always seems such a like such a great idea for travel, you know, two outfits in one. But usually reversible things like the reverse side is kind of crappy. You never want to wear it on the reverse. So, but this, this I might. So I'm doing a panel this afternoon, an online panel for the Jack Williamson lectureship, um, which is ostensibly on space opera. And you might be saying to yourselves, you might be making a face, going, but Jeffy, you don't write space opera. Do you know anything about space opera? And I might say to you, actually, no. But for some odd reason, the description said, I mean, it was funny when they sent the panels and said, Here are our topics, you know, which ones would you like to do? And they were all like hardcore science fiction based. And I'm like, well, you know, really the only thing on there that I could have talked about intelligently was the diversity and inclusion panel. But as a sysat white girl, I'm not gonna ask to be on that panel. And but the description for Space Opera said something about dark fantasy romance, and of course, I was all I could talk about dark fantasy romance. So so we'll see. I think the title of the panel is something like Goodbye Space Opera. It is free if you guys want to chime in and hear me um explain why I shouldn't be on a space opera panel. I I can't imagine why you would want to, since you've already heard me explain it here. But uh there you are. I'll put the link in the show notes. Um, Friday, April 23rd. So anyway, I made an effort to look cute. And the earrings that I would have worn today uh did not match. The they were these big blue hearts, and so I'll wear those Monday. And and even any of the remaining earrings, none of them really struck me. But because the top has pretty spring flowers on it, I added my hummingbirds because um it amuses me to wear my hummingbird earrings with a floral print. I'm not sure anybody out gets it ever, but now you guys know that there actually is a code to what I wear. You know how in Forgotten Empires I uh, you know, talk about how there's a code to what Leah chooses to wear and how the curtiers spend a bunch of time analyzing what it means about her mood and so forth. Totally drawn from from my uh experience, except that uh nobody actually pays attention to what I wear. But if they did, there would be a pattern that could be discerned. I did have a professor in graduate school who would um who commented, I thought it was funny. He was the first person to ever say this to me in my life. And and when I tell this story, people occasionally think it sounds creepy. And you have to understand that it was totally not creepy. Um this guy did not have a creepy bone in his body. He was a um a very gentle man, um, very bookish, you know, very incredibly intelligent, um, you know, spent most of his time in the lab, but uh very thoughtful, interested person. And he told me that I wore costumes. And he said that I would he would always be interested to see what I was wearing on any given day because he said that it was um a costume that reflected my mood. And he would identify the various characters I was being. And it amused him to do it, and he was it, it kind of startled me. I mean, I was like 22 at the time, um, because it had never occurred to me that I was doing that, and yet he would be very correct in identifying like the character that matched my mood of the day. I remember one day he saw me coming down the hall and he goes, Oh, this one's too easy, it's Alice in Wonderland. And I was like, damn, I was feeling Alice in Wonderland uh pretty much for all of grad school, but that particular day, and not in a positive uh let's go lick those mushrooms way, but in a how the fuck did I get myself into this hellish landscape way? Uh, but he was he was a charming man, uh, a bright spot, bright spot in that hellish landscape. So um I did get a new poster. I'll show you guys. Well, I would show you hanging on my wall. I guess I could we could do that. Uh do do do do do do do do. Go all the way around, but it doesn't show up very well. I got a new poster for the Promised Queen, and it is um considerably smaller than the previous poster, but I guess at least we got one. I'll go get it. I need to rearrange the stuff on that wall. Right there, it doesn't look pretty, and it has no hanger on the back, so I'm gonna have to figure that out. I won't spend a bunch of time trying to adjust this back into place. There we go. It's a little bit warm. It's really breezy outside. We've got a sunny day, but um very spring wind. So so anyway, um Promised Queen comes out end of May, so I've got that poster so I can start doing events for that. I do need to get that positioned before the panel. I think I have like a poster hanger somewhere. But uh yeah, Fiery Crown poster has been retired. You know, and this one's got the black bars on the sides too, so it's like not even sized correctly. Uh this is how one knows that one is somewhat uh I wouldn't say persona non grata, but like persona les grata at your publisher. You'll like when the sizes of your posters decrease. Uh, third book in a series that they don't feel like is done as well as they wanted it to. That's what you get. I mean, it's also pandemic, so who knows on uh on that kind of thing. But I guess, you know, at least they made me a poster. I was reading something very interesting the other day about paper arcs and realizing that I have no paper arcs for uh Promised Queen, that they've all been digital. They are Net Gally. If you want one, ping me and let me know. Uh but they were talking about, oh, who is it? Jake Christoph, who is a white guy writing um like Japanese stuff, that he apparently said that he did his research by watching anime and eating sushi or something horrible like this. Anyway, people are irritated with him on multiple levels, but they made um like collectible arcs of his new book with four different covers. And they were talking about how um a lot of authors of color don't get paper arcs at all, and that it's unfair that the culturally appropriating white guy is getting four different arcs. And I was thinking, huh, I guess I didn't get paper arcs either. But I think it's because I am Persona Lasgrata. Um and also, I don't know, third book in a series. If if people aren't into it by now, are they going to be into it at this point? Hard to say. Um let's see. I was going to tell you guys something about a podcast I was listening to, but now I don't remember what they were saying about it. Uh I I was listening to the Paper Invices podcast, which I will also show the link to, because they talked about Dark Wizard and how much um, well, one of the gals did. There's two gals, and the one has read a lot of my books and the other has not. And I'm going to be on the podcast in May, where we'll talk about Promised Queen. But she was talking about Dark Wizard, how much she loved Dark Wizard, uh, which we love to hear. And also Chronicles of Desneria, uh, which is nice. I love it when people talk about the Chronicles of Desneria series, and she was talking about how, you know, the recovery from sexual trauma, which was really important to me to tell in that story, and how uplifting it was uh in the end and overall. And, you know, I think it's interesting because I know a lot of my regular readers have not read that trilogy because they didn't want to read the first book because they felt like it was going to be, you know, the the trilogy begins. Um the first book is Prisoner of the Crown, and in Prisoner of the Crown, my heroine is um basically sold into a terrible marriage, a very cruel and abusive marriage. And so there's a lot of people who tapped out on not wanting to read that part. Which I mean, I understand. I don't like reading sad stuff either, but at the same time, it kind of I don't know, is it fair to say it bummed me out? It's like, oh come on, you guys, trust me, trust me. You know, it's like I felt like it was really important to show uh how bad things could be before I could show her recovery from them. I mean, I understand nobody should read anything that they don't want to read, but at the same time, it's like, but you you could have glossed, you could have skimmed that part. And and it gets better. It gets better, right? I mean, isn't that the point? So I don't know. Uh but I loved hearing hearing Victoria Rhapsody's about Chronicles of Destinya. Uh and actually I noticed on my most, because that was try-published that once through Rebel Base. I noticed on one of my most on my most recent statement that I did it's an upsurge in sales, um, which was a surprise because you know I can't see those daily sales, so I just get the quarterly report. And that was from the fall quarter. That was like from October through December. So for whatever reason, um got a nice jump in those sales and readings. So um thank you all. If you've been reading those books and recommending them, there are elephants. How can you go wrong when there are elephants? I would give those, I mean, those have crappy covers because Rebel Base did incredibly cheap things. That's one. I don't know if you if I talked about it on here, you know, like sometimes I blab and sometimes I don't. But um, like the first cover they gave me was so so awful. It was abysmal. And and I was saying, giving them feedback and saying, you know, these are the things that are wrong. And my editor came back. My and this was the editor who um made it basically a career. I I assume she did it to other authors, but she would lie to my face. She blew so much sunshine up my skirt that I was like an inverted dandelion. Um she and she said, Well, you know, this is very expensive art. And I'm like, Yeah, and I have some swampland to sell you. Um, and it and I made it clear that I knew it was not very expensive art when I gave her detailed steps on what they could do to fix it, which like involved, I'm like, take off this wallpaper template you guys pulled out of fucking Canva. And oh, I don't know, it was bad. Um, the current covers are not wonderful. If I ever got the right backs rights back on them, I would put totally different covers on them. Uh but you know it's funny because for a long time I didn't want to have to design my own covers, and in fact, I considered that to be a plus of Trad Publishing, that they would do covers for me. But and and this is as opposed to like Grace, that one of her primary reasons initially for fleeing her initial, admittedly terrible experience with Trad Publishing was a a digital publisher, digital first publisher that didn't know what they were doing, uh, was that she could put her own covers on it. And that was because she had like my version of the Chronicles of Desneria covers. Only hers were worse. I mean, she showed me her original cover and and it was a misplex. I mean, it was like laughably bad. Uh, that was on Master of Crows, and so she was so excited to create her own cover, and the Master of Crows cover is is phenomenal, it's one of the best book covers there is. Um, and she taught me quite a bit about what to think about in designing a cover, and I try to share that knowledge too. Um, I should probably throw in some of those things now. Uh so cover needs to do three things. Um, needs to convey genre. I would say that that's almost the most important thing is that the cover needs to convey what genre it is. It needs to capture the eye and the reader's attention, and it needs to maybe it only needs to do two things. What was my third thing? It needs to convey genre. I don't know, it needs to, it needs to look professional, and I'm not sure if that counts as a full third thing. But so one thing that authors get really caught up in is going crazy about wanting the characters on the cover to look exactly like the characters in the book, and really it's more important to choose a visually appealing image than to be spot on with the characters in the book, and that's something that took me a while to understand. Um, and then you want the elements of the cover to convey the feel of the book, to convey the genre. So, you know, like if you're writing a science fiction romance, you want it to be have a science fiction feel. And there are conventions within the genre at any given time that people will, if I held up a series of books to you and showed you the covers, you would be able to tell me what the genre is. Um, other things that you need to do is choose a font that conveys genre. There's there are fonts that look more fantasy, there are fonts that look more science fiction. Um, and you want to have, you know, very people tend to want to make, you know, like the name, the author name, and the series title, and the tagline and the title, like all different fonts and colors, and you shouldn't do that. I've heard uh the rule that you shouldn't have more than three or maybe no more than two. I think you know, make two different colors and two different fonts, and then that's it. Call it good. And now I'm looking at my covers on the wall. Do they do that? Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. So, um, you know, and then I don't know, it's it's tempting to get into the weeds of details on things, and really those aren't important. So, like for the cover of the Sorceress Queen and the Pirate Rogue, um Stella is wearing a jeweled red gown that does not appear in the book, and there is a significant gown in the book at the end for those of you who have read it so far. Um, the ball at the end, where she wears the the dress that Jack can't resist. But it's white, it's like a platinum white, and I thought about trying to make her gown match that scene in the book, but that red gown on the cover is so striking and so beautiful that I opted not to, because it was more important for that cover to be striking, so so that's an example of how that goes. And look at this, I'm already out of time. Um, and I I need to get some stuff done so that I uh can do my panels and everything. Busy weekend of House Reno. So I will remind you all 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 on Monday. Have a fabulous weekend. Hope you either get things done or do all the lazing around and reading that you enjoy. You all take care. Bye bye.