First Cup of Coffee – May 23, 2025

An annoying tussle with Findaway Voices flagging my very human narrator as digital for STRANGE FAMILIAR, with no recourse to object. It is live on Audible and Kobo though! Also, I may be reversing my insistence on writing with discipline and instead embracing the creative urge and writing what you want to! 

Buy LoveLitCon tickets here https://lovelit.com/ Be sure to use my author-specific code for a $10 discount! LOVE8368

STRANGE FAMILIAR is live! https://www.jeffekennedy.com/strange-familiar 

You can preorder MAGIC REBORN at https://www.jeffekennedy.com/magic-reborn

RELUCTANT WIZARD is out now and the audiobook is live!! https://www.jeffekennedy.com/reluctant-wizard

The posture-correcting sports bra I love almost more than life itself is here https://forme.therave.co/37FY6Z5MTJAUKQGA

Join my Patreon and Discord for mentoring, coaching, and conversation with me! Find it at https://www.patreon.com/JeffesCloset

You can always buy print copies of my books from my local indie, Beastly Books! https://www.beastlybooks.com/

If you want to support me and the podcast, click on the little heart or follow this link (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/jeffekennedy).

Sign up for my newsletter here! (https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/r2y4b9)

You can watch this podcast on video via YouTube https://youtu.be/YHdUVDqD4rE

Transcript

00:01.70
Jeffe Kennedy
Good morning, everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy, also writing as Jennifer K. Lambert, author of Epic Fantasy Romance. I'm here with my first cup of coffee.

00:15.00
Jeffe Kennedy
Delicious. Today is Say With Me, people. It is Friday. Woo-hoo. May 23rd, 2025. it is may twenty third twenty twenty five Um, and we're in a sequence of days. I didn't realize this until I like saw it on Instagram. Right.

00:32.81
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, but like we're in a series of days where the date is the forward same and backwards. Uh, so 5, 23, 25, 2025, if you flip it around,

00:46.97
Jeffe Kennedy
it's 5, 20. wait, that doesn't work. Does it? Oh, it's just if you do 25. So, okay, let's try it again. 5 slash 23 slash 25. Turn it around and it is 5, 23, 25.

01:00.49
Jeffe Kennedy
twenty three twenty five And apparently it's been like that since the 20th and it'll be that way until the 25th or something like that. So there we, there you go. Now, you know, too, um,

01:16.52
Jeffe Kennedy
Let's say if you're on video, you will see I'm not doing my usual cup of coffee. I've had kind of a busy morning and I ran out to Clafoutis and got one of their amazing lattes. I think they have the best latte in Santa Fe.

01:32.52
Jeffe Kennedy
They certainly have the best pastries. So I may have had a margotin to celebrate my Friday morning. um I am in the throes, the throes of furnishing the casita now, which everybody says, oh, this is the fun part.

01:48.60
Jeffe Kennedy
um Spoiler, this is not the fun part. Why is furniture so expensive? It feels like it's so expensive for what you get. um And I just, I don't like shopping for furniture. I have never liked it, which is why all of our furniture is really old.

02:09.14
Jeffe Kennedy
So, so yeah, I did buy a pair of bar stools yesterday and then I decided I don't like them. So I'm going to take them back. Uh, but at least I feel like I'm getting closer to my, what I want to get.

02:25.22
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, yeah. So, um it's just been, it's been a good week. I've gotten a lot done on this project. the,

02:36.69
Jeffe Kennedy
Secret project. I'm enjoying writing it. I still have not gotten my edit letter at this point, seeing as how it's Memorial Day weekend here in the United States, ah which means that nothing will happen until at least Tuesday and probably after that, because, like, they have to get in the office Tuesday and do things.

02:57.04
Jeffe Kennedy
um Even though I've taken a whole lot of time off lately, I'm seriously considering taking the three-day weekend. I may not work on Monday, which... Sorry, Mom would mean that I wouldn't do a podcast on Monday, but I would just do it Tuesday. ah But yeah, I might just do the three-day weekend and like get stuff done in the garden. I need to get stuff done in the garden and landscaping, not to mention buying furniture. Did I mention buying furniture?

03:28.41
Jeffe Kennedy
Memorial Day weekend. It has the great virtue of being the time for all kinds of sales like betting sales and so forth and I need to buy betting. So yeah, I think that's what I'm going be doing.

03:43.93
Jeffe Kennedy
i I even tried going to some consignment stores yesterday, which is where I got those bar stools and the consignment stores are really expensive. Maybe this is what I get for living in Santa Fe.

03:55.88
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, Anyway, i think I'm getting closer to knowing what I want. And maybe that's what it takes. You know, like all these things take practice. And so far I've been hitting a high level of overwhelm. like And having decision paralysis, which is totally unlike me.

04:13.84
Jeffe Kennedy
ah Because usually I'm very decisive, which is probably why it's driving me up the freaking wall to be indecisive. But I think it's partly because I don't shop for furniture. And so I just don't have.

04:29.68
Jeffe Kennedy
I was thinking about this yesterday as I was hitting overwhelm. oh That when we first moved to Santa Fe and I was driving down Surios and just sort of noting, like, what are the new stores?

04:40.98
Jeffe Kennedy
When we have first moved here, we had a really hard time finding things. ah And part of it is because ah Santa Fe is this historic city and. um Art and beauty are very important values here, which I love about the place. I love living in a place where is it beautiful is one of the primary values, especially after living in Wyoming for so long where something being beautiful is almost sneered upon as being frivolous and like anti-survival.

05:13.28
Jeffe Kennedy
It's that real frontier mentality. You know, so it's like make it a Quonset hut. ah And you say it in that voice too. So, uh, a lot of the stores, there's, there are very strict rules on signage. You can't have big blinking signs for things.

05:32.13
Jeffe Kennedy
And because of that, we had trouble finding stuff. Like I remember having a really hard time finding a dry cleaner and, ah like for no good reason, but you know, like I was having to Google them and then it would take me forever to like find them on the street and,

05:47.91
Jeffe Kennedy
As you all know, I'm a a neurophysiologist, neuroethologist from way back. And neuroethology is the study of the senses, right? How we process sensory information in the brain.

06:01.50
Jeffe Kennedy
And one thing we talk about a whole lot is search image. That animals use search images to find what they are, to find prey or to find that fruit that they want, the banana in the tree.

06:17.48
Jeffe Kennedy
ah So if you imagine sort of the, oh, you know, like any cyborg movie you've seen where there's like the radar screen that goes in and goes and shows the outline of the deer or something like that.

06:32.88
Jeffe Kennedy
We actually have that in our brains. Some of you may know that we have like face detectors in our brains. Well, we also have the ability to recognize certain search images.

06:43.89
Jeffe Kennedy
So when we're looking for something, where we're actually looking for that search to image. We have an idea of what the thing that we are looking for, what its shape is, what its outline is. Our eyes see outlines and our brains fill in the middle.

07:02.02
Jeffe Kennedy
ah So we might have an idea of the color. And so I knew at the time that part of the problem was is that our search image was off, that we were looking for stores that looked a particular way.

07:15.98
Jeffe Kennedy
And because Santa Fe is so different but that way, the city different is our motto, that we were, our search image didn't fit. And so I could literally look straight at a dry cleaner and not recognize it for what it was.

07:32.27
Jeffe Kennedy
ah And sure enough, ah it took me a while, but like later I noticed I had been driving past a dry cleaner every day. That was like in a old converted gas station, Adobe.

07:46.13
Jeffe Kennedy
And um yeah, I had not recognized it for what it was because the sign was very small.

07:53.55
Jeffe Kennedy
And now because I am so familiar with the city, Lo these almost 16 years later, my I'm I know what is familiar. i know what's been there a while and I pick out new things very easily for what it's worth. And why did I get started on this?

08:17.21
Jeffe Kennedy
Oh, the boring topic of furniture, such shopping, you know, like I walk into these places where there's countless sofas and coffee tables and chairs and things stacked up everywhere. that They're not actually stacked up, but it feels like it. And you have wind your way through.

08:36.62
Jeffe Kennedy
And my brain keeps going, there's a couch, there's a couch, there's a couch, there's a couch, there's a couch, there's couch. And i feel like I have no ability to discern which couch is the one that could potentially be the one I want.

08:53.04
Jeffe Kennedy
And yeah, that's my overwhelm. But I think I'm getting better at it. So that's all a very long way of talking about a not very interesting topic, at least not to me.

09:08.28
Jeffe Kennedy
But writing wise, oh, so this is interesting. I want to tell you all of this. um The audio book of Strange Familiar is available with an asterisk on that, a caveat.

09:23.33
Jeffe Kennedy
I don't know, ah this is hashtag symbol. How do I make an asterisk with my fingers like this maybe? ah yeah Except it's available on Audible and on Kobo, but Findaway Voices bounced it.

09:39.60
Jeffe Kennedy
yeah And Findaway Voices is now Spotify. And so like the distribution everywhere else, they've bounced it twice because they said that I submitted it as human narration, which it is.

09:53.66
Jeffe Kennedy
and that I need to re-upload the files and target to digital narration and that they only accept digital narration from certain trusted partners. And let me tell you what those are Google Play Books or 11 Labs Only. So this is what it says.

10:13.52
Jeffe Kennedy
Title is being submitted as a human narrated title. If the title is digitally narrated, this must be by a trusted partner, Google Play Books or 11 Labs Only.

10:24.21
Jeffe Kennedy
To correctly upload this as a digital voice narration, you must remove the audio files. currently uploaded, then use the toggle to switch from human narration to digital narration in the top right of the audio tab of the titles project page.

10:41.28
Jeffe Kennedy
You may then upload the LPF obtained I don't even know what LPF stands for. Do they tell me? Obtained by Google Play Books or 11 Labs. And once it is uploaded successfully, you may resubmit as a digital voice narration project.

10:58.44
Jeffe Kennedy
Okay, so what do we notice about this email? is It does not give me the option to say, ah but it is human narrations. Right? They're just like, oh no, you have to upload it as digital narration.

11:11.44
Jeffe Kennedy
So I contacted my very human narrator. I mean, it's good. They're doing this, but geez, what a sucky system, right? um And my very human narrator has contacted them.

11:26.06
Jeffe Kennedy
Her theory is is that she has a very low noise floor. she's a She lives in England. She lives in a rural village.

11:37.00
Jeffe Kennedy
And she has a soundproof studio on her property. And she has an exceptionally low noise floor, which I guess is like the background noise. And she said she has heard from other audio book narrators that the lack of noise floor is like something the bots are using to probably some form of AI is using to identify it as digital narration.

12:07.05
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, that she may ironically enough have to add a little bit of noise floor to convince people that she's human. And she's a wonderful voice actress. I mean, if you listen to my audio books and the bonds of magic world, you know, she's, she's great. She does not sound like AI.

12:25.38
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, so interesting, huh? Well, here comes Killian to visit. Excuse me. Excuse me. You're in way. You're in the way, baby.

12:37.92
Jeffe Kennedy
know Get your butt out of the way

12:42.67
Jeffe Kennedy
way. yeah, so that's been interesting. ah The other thing I want to talk about is just that how much, how fast this secret project is going.

12:58.48
Jeffe Kennedy
It's more of a nonfiction, more of a memoir, narrative nonfiction thing. And I'm really enjoying writing it. And I'm writing it as I promised I'm just doing 2000 words a day, which is feeling very sustainable. I often get that done in like an hour and a half, which feels crazy.

13:18.72
Jeffe Kennedy
ah and it's giving me lots of time left in the day to handle business. so I'm actually getting caught up on things and I'm enjoying working on the project.

13:30.88
Jeffe Kennedy
It's allowing me to process some stuff. And so that's great. But I've been thinking about the, this whole idea, right, of like working on what's presenting itself as opposed to like the book you're supposed to be writing.

13:49.85
Jeffe Kennedy
and And many of you longtime listeners or people who follow me, you know, that I mentor and so forth, you know, that I am very big on, Hey, oh, fly.

14:04.75
Jeffe Kennedy
I need to, turn off my mouse and keyboard so he can't do that. There we go.

14:15.82
Jeffe Kennedy
Hi. Yeah. Okay, there he goes

14:21.34
Jeffe Kennedy
chasing the fly still which is a good thing for him to be doing. Um, sorry for the interruption there. So I've always been very big on completing the project I'm supposed to be working on, which is partly why I'm very good at meeting deadlines.

14:38.27
Jeffe Kennedy
And I am a pretty disciplined and ritualized writer that way. And I was thinking about when did I first develop those ideas? And I was remembering being a baby writer and ah I was in this writing group and there was a gal in my writing group who was older than I.

14:59.43
Jeffe Kennedy
um by a couple of decades, at least, I think. And she had ah published memoir and she was like, and she'd won an award. And so she was like the most accomplished of the group.

15:13.90
Jeffe Kennedy
It's kind of funny to think about that I've like surpassed her success-wise since then. But at the time, like she was she was my mentor. She was one of my mentors and I looked wanted what she had.

15:26.69
Jeffe Kennedy
And i remember asking her one day i was working on some project and i had gotten an idea for something else which we in the business often recall to as recall to refer to as the new shiny or the plot money the new thing we want to chase and asked and it was a really shiny idea no idea now what thing that was.

15:54.00
Jeffe Kennedy
But I said, should i chase this thing? Should I write this thing that's presented itself or should I keep working on this other project? And she said, well, that she thought I should keep working on the other project, which is frankly the advice that I would give 90% of the time that I have given to many of you.

16:15.66
Jeffe Kennedy
And it, it is the right advice a lot of the time because One of the great dangers, especially for newbie writers is that you start things and you never finished anything.

16:29.78
Jeffe Kennedy
And we all know people like this. We've all been people like this, right? Um, you know, people who have 15 beginnings to various novels and have never finished one.

16:41.02
Jeffe Kennedy
And, and I do feel like it's very solid advice, especially if you're brand newbie writer that you have to have to have to have to have to finish a book because you don't know what it's about until you're done.

16:52.31
Jeffe Kennedy
And, I stand by that advice.

16:57.03
Jeffe Kennedy
But one thing I'm learning, and maybe it's just like where I'm at in my career, but long time listeners will know that when I wrote Never the Roses, that for a very long time I called it the book I wasn't supposed to be writing. There were two other projects I was supposed to be writing that I was not because Never the Roses spell on me from out of the sky and insisted on being written.

17:25.32
Jeffe Kennedy
And I couldn't write anything else until I got that out of my head. So I didn't really have a choice. If I had been able to banish it and work on what I was supposed to, I would have.

17:35.95
Jeffe Kennedy
But no, that one just had to be written, which really doesn't happen to me very often. And right now, this book that I am writing this secret project, um, who, and who knows if I'll ever do anything with it, which is also how I felt about never the roses.

17:55.18
Jeffe Kennedy
And I think that that's key too. Uh, you know, I just want to write it and there is an ease and a flow to the thing. I just want to write.

18:07.17
Jeffe Kennedy
i think also because It's removed from the pressure of that I need to create a specific thing and that there's an expectation for it.

18:19.10
Jeffe Kennedy
The intention of monetizing something. So

18:26.92
Jeffe Kennedy
i'm not sure what it means, but, you know, right now I'm incredibly fortunate. that because I have this book deal with tour, um, because we are financially unstable in a way that we hadn't been for 15 years, uh, that I can just write the thing that I want to write without worrying about how I'm going to use that thing to pay the mortgage, for example.

18:55.99
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, so I guess that's the ideal. That's where we'd all like to be in. Believe me, if you're sitting there going, i can't possibly afford to do that. I understand. i have been there, but this seems like such a great thing to, to aim for, right? To be in a place where you can write the thing that presents itself, that you feel like writing.

19:20.65
Jeffe Kennedy
It is a, um it's much better energetically. I feel much less drained. Some of that could be the ah writing only 2,000 words a day. I do have to write Magic Reborn before the end of the summer.

19:35.18
Jeffe Kennedy
So that will be a book that I'm supposed to be writing. And we'll see if it's the word count or if it's, I mean, I want to write It's not that I don't want to write it, but it's not presenting itself.

19:47.60
Jeffe Kennedy
Dark Wizard was another book that insisted on being written and was easy to write. And normally I don't try to attach much value to the books that are, that just flow, that are easy to write versus the ones that are tooth pulling, because I do think it's difficult to tell the difference when they come out in the end.

20:10.41
Jeffe Kennedy
But certainly experientially as a creative process, it's so much better. All right. I hope you all have a great weekend. If it's a long weekend, to enjoy it.

20:21.43
Jeffe Kennedy
And I will talk to you all on Let's Commit to It Now Tuesday. You all take care. Bye-bye.