First Cup of Coffee - January 27, 2025

Updates on NEVER THE ROSES and the challenges of making bonus content. Also, reflections on housework, the contempt for expertise in the home, and being taught and *learning* the best way to do something.

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Transcript

00:01.56
Jeffe Kennedy
Good morning, everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy, author of Epic Fantasy Romance. I'm here with my first cup of coffee.

00:13.73
Jeffe Kennedy
Very good. Has a kind of cinnamon taste to it this morning, and I don't know why. That's kind of odd. ah Today is Monday, January 27th. Last week of January.

00:30.24
Jeffe Kennedy
And welcome, welcome all of you. I know that if you're in the U.S., even around the world, that the amount of political chaos in the last week has been overwhelming, um which is by design. And so the best thing we can do is don't get overwhelmed. it's Easier said than done. But yeah, it's been a lot. A lot of people have been talking to me about it, you know, trying to figure out how to continue to be creative and lead a decent life when there is like so much, so much. um One little tidbit, I'll give you all this one.

01:06.01
Jeffe Kennedy
ah so Apparently, ah Native Americans have been told that they need to carry papers ah so that they can be inspected by ICE, which is deeply, deeply ironic because if we were to deport Native Americans back to where they came from, where would that be? um Crazy times. it's It's all about racism. It's all about skin color.

01:35.40
Jeffe Kennedy
um

01:38.71
Jeffe Kennedy
just Unreal. Just unreal. Uh, frankly, you know, I think the tribe should get together and deport all of us. So send us back to where we came from. Maybe we can pick if you've got a mix. I'll pick Scotland. I liked Scotland better than Ireland, but that's like a whole thing for me. Anyway. Okay. So updates. Um,

02:05.75
Jeffe Kennedy
but busy I guess I've been busy 37,000 words on strange familiar closing in on midpoint I figured out some things so that's always a positive um and I even though I've not been going as fast as I want to be I do think it's good to mention that I mean that first week of January end of December was a really good week. um And but then I overdid a little bit but in the three weeks since I've been steadily climbing at a nice rate showing good training. And um as far as monthly word count, this is going to be my best month since October of 2023. I mean, unless I get

03:00.97
Jeffe Kennedy
Nothing done for the rest of the week, which I suppose is possible. Let's knock on wood there. Let's see how far away.

03:14.82
Jeffe Kennedy
Sorry if this is boring. yeah I have to move the cursor over and get on in the right spot. um So I'm beating 35,672, and I am at...

03:30.11
Jeffe Kennedy
and would probably be an easier way to lift this up. 34,647. so I will almost certainly have this be my best month since October, 2023, which kind of feels like I'm back. um So that's great before things got really crazy. And if I stayed on this trajectory, which I probably won't, but if I did, it would be my best word count ah since 2021. It's all of that not traveling.

04:05.33
Jeffe Kennedy
ah I decided not, I probably didn't say it on here, but I decided not to go to Wild and Windy West. I had no pre-orders for it. Nobody was saying anything to me about looking forward to seeing me there. ah Oh, I did talk about this because I said that I got invited to Phoenix Confusion in June. So, you know, I figured I'm going to be there a few months after that and I'll have more copies of Never the Roses there, which I wouldn't at Wild and Windy.

04:35.93
Jeffe Kennedy
And you know, the thing about Wild and Windy is I gave them plenty of notice and told them that I wasn't going to make it after all. And I asked if I could sell my table to someone else, which is like $350. And they said, no. And I know they have a waiting list of authors. And when I said, well, that seems predatory and unfair that you know I should be able to sell my table to someone else. And they said, no, it very clearly says in all of our paperwork that there's no refunds. And I was like, did I use the word refund? I did not use the word refund. I said I wanted to sell it to someone else, which they are going to do, right? So they will be able to double,

05:26.32
Jeffe Kennedy
And they're like, well, but we spent time on social media advertising you and stuff. It's like it was not $350 worth of social media time. So I probably won't ever do anything with that group again. ah Yeah. I mean, it was, and there was a snotty tone to it. I mean, I get being busy. I get being annoyed.

05:49.43
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, but you know, sometimes people have to drop out and I totally get, you know, like I would not want them to be out of the money. I would not ask for a refund, but to prohibit me from selling my table to someone else so that they can make that money, selling it to someone else. No.

06:08.95
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, so I'm not going anywhere in February is the plan. Uh, actually I think I'm not. really scheduled to go anywhere until Apollycon in April so that's nice. ah Over the weekend I did get a bunch of stuff done. I got a lot of the tip-in sheets signed a lot. I realized I shouldn't have tried to figure out number of pages. I kind of went that way because they told me it was going to be like eight to nine thousand And I counted up how many were in an inch and trying to figure it that way. And I'm realizing I should have just gone by inches. So pro tip, um much easier to just figure it by inches and measure progress by inches if you're one of the people like me who has to measure progress on everything. So anyway, I got, let's see how much I got done. Three inches. We just don't know how to how many.

07:07.04
Jeffe Kennedy
I'll figure that out later today. I also got my bonus content done, which I wish to grant that I had forgotten about that. Deanna, assistant editor, ah asked me about when I was going to send that. And I was like, oh, that fell out of my head and off of my to-do list. And I'm really sorry. I don't know how that happened. Sometimes, sometimes it does.

07:33.79
Jeffe Kennedy
ah But anyway, rate it was fine. I got it done over the weekend so I could go back to focusing on Strange Familiar. The thing about bonus content, you know, is you have to go back and get your head into that story again, right? And so I kind of, we had all talked about Deanna and Editor Ali and me and Agent Sarah, sorry. i was going to put some polish on my nail here. um And we had talked about what the bonus content should be. And I still had to go back and revisit the story. I don't know, you know, like probably if I were super organized, maybe there would be a way to do this thing where I would like go through and

08:28.78
Jeffe Kennedy
make bonus content ahead of time. I guess that makes no sense, does it? of Yeah, so I mean, it wasn't that big of a deal, but it it was just, um I don't know, the mental effort did take a little doing.

08:47.49
Jeffe Kennedy
So, but I got that done. We'll see a if it's enough. I offered to do one piece more, but my Dear Reader letter came out longer. I hand i hand wrote that out. So, did I tell you? I did tell you all, um like after Christmas, that my brilliant nephew, Britt, gave me this beautiful pen.

09:07.89
Jeffe Kennedy
and it's a Scriveiner only it's Scriveiner like veins of blood and this is a very dark green which is my abso favorite color and he sent me this pen and it is convertible it has a um You can either use it as a fountain pen or as a regular ballpoint pen. You switch out the cartridge, right? And it's tremendously clever. I'm going to show all of you on video and try to describe, but let's see if I can show it to you. So here is the ink cartridge inside. So you don't dip it and it has a plunger.

09:55.91
Jeffe Kennedy
and what you do is you scroll the plunger all the way down and then you dip it into your bottle of ink and he sent me these great purple inks and that's what I'm using to sign.

10:08.21
Jeffe Kennedy
and you dip it in the ink and then scroll up on the plunger and it sucks the ink up in there. And then you wipe it off and reassemble. And so it does not get ink everywhere. It's it's really just the best thing. And so I use that to write out my letter for the readers. um So it is, there is verisimilitude, people.

10:33.33
Jeffe Kennedy
um There is no doubt that I hand wrote that letter. There will be no doubt really that I hand signed all of these, which I mean I so i feel like I need to caveat that there are a lot of people out there, some of them my friends,

10:53.00
Jeffe Kennedy
I mean, others, not necessarily not my friends, but just that I don't know very well, ah that they can't sign that many books because of their hands, she said, as she's fixing up her nail polish.

11:08.53
Jeffe Kennedy
i I baby my hands so much. In fact, if you're on video, you can see behind me, I have this um hand massager. You put your hands in there and machine massages it. David gave me that um a year ago, Christmas best thing. I have compression gloves. I do all of these things to take care of my hands. And so far I'm doing all right. um So, but at any rate, that's the dear reader letter. Do I see it? I'll hold it up. Okay.

11:38.11
Jeffe Kennedy
I'll show you. I saved all of my false starts for the archives. Jeremy Brett if you are listening, I don't know if you listen to the podcast. um I'm going to send you this stuff. So here's my dear reader letter. I'm deliberately Probably if you really cared, you could freeze and zoom in to read it. But there's my two pages and it's complete with cross outs and blots. And it's funny to to look at it and see this because I haven't done handwritten correspondence in so long. But when I used to, when I used to do that back before the internet,

12:24.59
Jeffe Kennedy
ah This is how my letters to people looked and so there was sort of this odd sense of nostalgia to that. um And no, I don't want to go back to handwriting letters because it takes a long time.

12:39.10
Jeffe Kennedy
ah i I love social media for that. I love the messaging systems for this. ah I do not want to go back to handwritten correspondence, but for something like this, for a special thing like this, it's kind of cool to see. how Yeah, so I had, at first I started writing it on the tip-in sheets, the back of the tip-in sheets, so that I could you know, like make it be in the same size. And I thought, no, I'll make them shrink it down because I was having too hard of a time fitting it all in there. I'm showing all of my little false starts to people, just in case it's interesting. And I'll give you a little hint. It could be that the bonus content will be similarly themed.

13:28.17
Jeffe Kennedy
How's that?

13:34.36
Jeffe Kennedy
So I posted a thing over the weekend, or I guess yesterday morning, feels like longer, on threads. I've been trying to do like a little bit of microblogging on threads just to, I don't know, take advantage of the different platforms. And i there are things I like about threads. I think I said on here that I'm definitely falling in with the people who are saying that, um oh, dang it. Forgot that my polish was wet. I need to put on that clear coat.

14:03.70
Jeffe Kennedy
um I tucked my hair behind my ear rather obsessively. And now this is all messed up, blah, blah, blah. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm staying on the social media platforms. I mean, I, I really don't blame people who are not, um, you know, now that meta seems to be owning everything in the damn world, but, um, I am on blue sky too still.

14:33.46
Jeffe Kennedy
My point, and I do have one, other than that my nail polish is obsessing me. um

14:42.83
Jeffe Kennedy
Yeah, I don't want to abandon it. i you know There are some people who are suggesting, and I don't know how fair it is to suggest, we live in an age of paranoia because the conspiracies are real.

14:59.81
Jeffe Kennedy
ah But, you know, that they don't want us talking to each other. They don't want us on social media platforms. And I'm sure it's a push-pull because, you know, like Zuckerberg, you know, who owns Meta, wants us as part of his captive audience and on there forever ah so that he can sell advertising. But there's also they also want to control what we think about and talk about, right? That's the living under a fascist regime. So, my point, oh, and I did have one other than my nails, sorry. I don't know how the the influencers do it, you know, like they're like always doing things at the same time that they're talking. I guess they edit, which I don't. Anyway, I am not an influencer.

15:56.83
Jeffe Kennedy
there but for the grace of. So I talked about housework and it's amazing the kinds of responses I've been getting on housework and maybe I'll try linking to the thread in case you all want to read it. But the The really interesting thing has to do, and I think I'm going to reply to it, ah you know like about all of the housework falling onto women and men acting like they

16:29.29
Jeffe Kennedy
can't or won't or don't or, you know, all of these things, all of these deeply programmed things ah that reinforce that whose responsibility is this? And the thing is, is that a lot of keeping the house clean of, you know, like laundry and dusting and, you know, all of the things, you know, keeping food in the house and cooking and all of this stuff about like daily life, keeping daily life going.

16:59.74
Jeffe Kennedy
falls on women in a way that is invisible, and we perpetuate that invisibility, right? um And I'm not gonna dig into the whole thing, but inevitably, ah a man popped up on there and complained about how he could never please his wife unloading the dishwasher. And he even, I believe, used the word arcane, arcane system. And I'm I sat on it for a while because I have heard this argument all my life that, well, I can't please her. I can't do it the way she wants it done, therefore I won't do it. And we've talked about the whole weaponized incompetence thing, but I think that this is like a step past that or a step different than that because it occurred to me that the things that I have had to learn or wanted to learn

17:58.65
Jeffe Kennedy
that were in Ben's things. I mean, they taught me how to do it, right? Like when I met David, um part of it was that he taught me how to throw a ball. We were on a softball team together and he taught me how to throw a ball because nobody ever had. And this is like one of these perpetuating things where boys will sneer at girls and I'm deliberately using boys and girls for like throwing like a girl or running like a girl.

18:26.40
Jeffe Kennedy
without any context of that we're not taught to do these things and I think it's changed but you know like I was a bookish girl I didn't know how to throw a ball properly ah and even though my stepdad would do stuff with me you know like I remember playing catch with him because he wanted me to get better at it he never showed me how to wrap my fingers around the so ball and and and how to hold my arm and do these things that were like the first things that David showed me. And it was one of the things that like even before I fell in love with him, it was one of the things I liked about him first was that he was patient and not contemptuous and that he said, here, there is a technique. I mean, it was like the the rays of light, right? I didn't realize

19:20.30
Jeffe Kennedy
that there was a technique. I don't know why. But nobody had ever told me that. All those gym classes in elementary school and high school, nobody had ever said, there's a way to hold the ball that makes it easier to throw, that makes it throw better. And there's a way to move your arm. it's Instead, it was like, just throw harder. You know, that kind of thing.

19:41.61
Jeffe Kennedy
and It's amazing when someone tells you how to do it. And I was thinking about that with like loading and unloading the dishwasher. I know people don't agree and everyone has their own way. But like if you know that the person in your life who has expertise at loading and unloading the dishwasher, because I'm going to go with she, because she has done it a million times. I want to calculate this um before I reply on the thread.

20:13.08
Jeffe Kennedy
But she there's there's this inherent contempt, right? It's like, well, she is this arcane way of doing it. And it's like, yeah, she has expertise. She knows how to load it so the dishes get clean and how to unload it so that the dishes are where people can find them. you know Those are the key points, right? You want to maximize how many dishes you can get in there and still get them all clean. You want them put away where people can find them.

20:43.21
Jeffe Kennedy
And the fact that these guys are like, well, you know, she doesn't like the way I do it. It's like, no, it's because you're not doing it the right way. And men are allowed to tell women, you're not doing this the right way. But if a woman says, no, you're not loading the dishwasher the right way, they act like that's capricious. And yeah, so and and I think that's at the core a lot of these things.

21:10.13
Jeffe Kennedy
So, not about writing so much, but you know recognizing competence and expertise is probably falling out of fashion in today's political climate. So I don't know, maybe that's a good reason to do it more than ever. On that note, I hope you all get to spend this week

21:34.79
Jeffe Kennedy
demonstrating your expertise, whether you teach it to someone else or not, enjoy your expertise because you earned that shit. Okay. I hope you all all have a great week and I will talk to you all on Friday. You all take care. Bye.