First Cup of Coffee - March 5, 2019

Happy Mardis Gras! I started out quiet today, then ended up complaining about People Being Wrong on the Internet (and elsewhere), so...

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Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy here with my first cup of coffee. Happy Mardi Gras Really I should have like a bloody Mary or whiskey in my coffee too. In my London fog. Well whiskey and tea is good. But that would be only if I were partying all day. I know some of you down in New Orleans and so forth or have likely taken the day off to party. What a great tradition. Of course, then you're supposed to also go into Lent tomorrow and be penitent for six weeks, right? Will you do that too? No, I bet not. You know, I've never actually been to New Orleans on Mardi Gras. I've been there leading up, but I've never been there for the actual day. Very often it's cold and rainy, um, which I know they make the best of, but I haven't looked to see what the weather in New Orleans is today. It's fun because they have live chems on Bourbon Street and stuff, so you can watch some of the parades and you can watch people walking up and down and partying. When I had the day job, I would just put on the parade stuff and watch it go. Um, of course, with writing stuff, I like to close off as much other input as possible, so I don't do that. I almost sat outside today. It is um sunny, sunny and clear, which is nice, and it's up to like 40 degrees, so that's a big improvement. Um, but there's a pretty chill breeze blowing on the east side, unfortunately. So not going to do that. But it's warming up, it's getting there. March is becoming a lamb. I got good progress done on Orchid Throne yesterday. Or not Orchid Throne. Sorry, I've was looking at it and the covers on my uh monitor. So uh Fiery Citadel. That's what I got work done on. Uh I'm now through the first scene. I yesterday I went back and tightened up scene one, which is the first three chapters. Uh, and I think I've got everything layered in for that. So that's great. So I'm at about 12,000 words. Moving along at a nice pace. It'll come out around 90,000 words, I believe, by the time all is said and done. So we'll make some progress on that today. I got uh line edits back from Rebecca on Lonan's Rain, but I think I'll save those for the car ride. I um yeah. I I'm tempted when I get those, it's always tempting just to turn them around, but I've got plenty of time still to get that upload and everything. So I think um Thursday will be the that'll be the activity for the road trip. We'll see if I get my paper galleys before then too. I don't know if Jenny sent them already or not. She said they should be coming soon. So um all of that's very good. Coming along just fine. We did the cover reveal for Lone and Srain. I'll put it up on the blog tomorrow. Today I put up a picture of one of my masks in honor of Mardi Gras. Yeah, I don't know that I have all that much to say today. Mostly thinking about the story. I'm getting things to come together. Looking forward to our little getaway to Tucson. We've got some uh new birds coming in around the bird feeder now, so the birds are different birds are moving through. Always another a another sure sign of spring. That's funny, I must be just in a quiet mood today. I get like that, you know. I'm one of those people that I'm just as happy being quiet, not saying anything. Sometimes it feels like it's um you know, you just want to think your thoughts and not have to put words to them. Maybe that's part of it. Oh my words are going into the book at the moment. Oh my oatmeal is done, that's nice. Yeah. Um I'm trying to some of the things is some things I can't talk about. I yeah. That's always a the is the problem with the the podcasting thing is that most of the things I want to gossip about I can't. I can't tell you, you know, one of my things that I dislike where are my pet peeves? And I don't really like that people have pet peeves. But uh yesterday uh someone asked on Twitter, well, I I won't try to disguise it, uh Lindsay Barocker said that on the science fiction and fantasy marketing podcast tonight, that they are going to uh answer listener questions, which they do periodically. I think when they don't have a guest. So she was asking for listener questions. And I uh I had a question from a little while back, something that they'd mentioned on another podcast, and so I asked that question to her on Twitter, and a couple of people had to jump in and give me their answers. And I that it's a phenomenon of social media, I see that happen a lot where like you ask someone a specific question and somebody jumps in and explains. Although I've seen that happen in person too. I know once um we were having lunch with a client for the day job, and I was kind of trying to draw the client out and ask him questions about things that he was interested in, and I f found out that he gardens and composts, and I said, um, well, you know, I said, Well, how does composting work anyway? Just to get him to talk about it. And one of my other colleagues jumped in and went to this very long and detailed explanation of how composting worked. And I was really kind of irritated with her because it's like, I don't care about how composting works. I was trying to get our client to talk or feel comfortable about himself and everything. And it was funny because the client did want to talk about it, you know, and then he started saying more things about composting and we had a more relaxed conversation. But you know, it's that somebody's you know just gotta jump in and give me their answer. And that's like, no, if I had wanted to ask Twitter at large what they thought of this, I would have done that. But when somebody says, hey, we're taking listener questions on a podcast, what's something you'd like us to discuss? And I specifically said, can you talk about this? And then other people have to jump in and say, Well, that's what I think. It has to do with self-publishing too. And jeez, everybody just has to be an expert on self-publishing. I'm not quite sure what it is about that that brings out the men's splaining, which you don't have to be a man to do the splaining, but you do. It was my day for it yesterday because I also had a phone call with someone who I um was interviewing for a particular position to do something for Sephiroth. And uh, geez, first of all, the person called me Jeff, pronounce my name Jeff, which is not that big of a sin because it's a very common mistake. And actually lately I've been having a lot of phone calls with people I've never met before or met only via email. And the first thing we do, you know, they'll almost every single other person has said, um, is it Jeff or Jeffy? Or they'll clarify and they'll say, Hi, Jeffy, is that right? This guy called me Jeff and plowed on so fast that I couldn't even correct him. And he called me Jeff like twice more in the conversation, and I felt like I didn't have an opportunity to correct him. In fact, and he was someone who was telling me all of this stuff, and some of it was flat wrong. And I was like, you know, like he was talking about some stuff that had been going on in the publishing world and social media and so forth, and I was like kind of raising my finger on my end of the phone, going, uh, that's not exactly right. You have a misperception, but I don't think he even noticed because he was so busy telling me how everything was. It was really kind of a strange phone call, and ended up being on the phone much longer than I wanted to while he told me all of these things about which he was terribly knowledgeable, and I was uh yeah, a little taken aback. That's um when people don't pause, you know, people ask you a question, and then, you know, because he said, Well, you know, ask me about this thing, and he said, Well, you know, what about this? Because if it if it's this, I might have to step back, you know, that might be a deal breaker. And and so, and I'm like trying to explain to him, trying to give him the answer, right? But he doesn't pause that long. He goes on to explain to me yet again why that thing would be a deal breaker and why it's a problem. And I was like, well, I don't think it it actually it's not, but I couldn't get that far. So I've just it's like okay, maybe that's why I'm feeling quiet-ish today, because it's like, yeah, I don't I really don't like fighting to be heard because frankly, I don't have a big enough stake in it. Uh so yeah, if I end up at tables where somebody is dominating the conversation, I will frequently just let them dominate because I don't need to talk. If you want to know what I think, and then you can ask and you can wait for me to answer. But you know, if you don't care that much, then why should I? I suppose that's like another thing. Well, I'm since I'm complainering now, now you probably all wish I'd just stopped, right? You know, is the uh the syndrome where somebody says, Well, prove to me why I should do this. You know, it's like or sometimes people do it with books. They'll like I'll be at a signing and they'll come up and they'll say, tell me why I should read your book. You know, and I always want to reply, Well, let me tell you why I think you should go jump off of a short pier. It doesn't. This thing where people put the onus on you to prove to them why something is good. You know, people will do that. They'll say, Well, why should I join RWA? Why should I join Cepha? Why should I go to this conference? You know, and it's like, well, I don't care whether or not you go. Why are you asking me to put my energy into convincing you to do something? I don't I don't have any stake in it. I don't have any desire to convince you to read my book. Um, you know, it's uh read it or don't. You know, why should you read my book? You should read it if you think you might have fun. If you're going to enjoy it. But if you don't think you're going to enjoy it, no, I'm not going to uh invest in being concerned about whether or not you are interested in my book. I saw Mary Robinette Cole mentioning that maybe I was from Tucson Festival of Books, but she said she was on a panel last weekend where the moderator asked what she does to make her books appealing to men, which is, I've gotten that question more than once. And that to me that's an astonishing question. It's like, you know, because nobody ever asks male authors what they do to make their books appealing to women readers. You know, it's sort of this assumption that only, you know, if you know, if you're a female writer, that you must somehow entice the male readers into reading you. And of course, there's plenty of men, I see people talk about that all the time, that they, you know, oh, my uncle refuses to read any book written by a woman. And it's like, so somehow you're supposed to fight that, you're supposed to care whether or not this guy won't read your book. So it's a funny thing. It's a I think people really try to engage you in caring about what they think that that kind of gives them power if you say, if they say, tell me why I should like this thing, or what are you doing to make me like this thing of yours? And it's like, you know, uh it's absolutely a right to not like a thing or not read women writers or whatever it is, but um it's my right not to care about what you think. So there's my there's my manifesto, my Mardi Gras manifesto. Yeah. Probably not all sorts of celebratory, but uh yeah, that's what that's what I've been doing. What have you guys been doing? I hope you're wearing your beads today. Have a little bit of uh partying, flash your breasts, someone who will appreciate them perhaps. And uh certainly uh not to just anyone's not for a cheap string of beads. And I this will be my last podcast for a few days because uh yeah, because of the road trip and stuff. You know, I always say maybe I'll podcast from the road, and then I never do. So uh I will talk to you all on the flip side. Take care. Bye bye.