First Cup of Coffee – June 20, 2025

On titles and why authors have to resist being clever and remember SEO rules. Also where the reign of social media influencers is taking us, the trad-wife fetish, and how to retain your humanity through it all. 

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Transcript

00:02.06
Jeffe Kennedy
Good morning, everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy, also writing as Jennifer K. Lambert, both of us authors of epic fantasy romance. I am here with my first cup of coffee.

00:17.40
Jeffe Kennedy
Delicious. Today is, say it with me, people, it is Friday, June 20, six twenty twenty five and i am all about dragonflies and wings this morning. Um, I was just noticing this because I'm wearing my green dress, which has like sort of light gray, blue dragonflies flying around it. I love this dress.

00:42.11
Jeffe Kennedy
And then my wind chimes, for those of you who never watched the video, the clapper is actually a green wooden circle with a little bronze dragonfly on it.

00:53.36
Jeffe Kennedy
My earrings are not dragonflies, although I do have dragonfly earrings, but they are green and blue hummingbirds so i don't know i'm i am taking flight today i hope you all are feeling your wings um yeah so

01:14.88
Jeffe Kennedy
many of you regular listeners are probably on tenterhooks uh solidarity Kev who was told my Kev is my high school boyfriend my first love my first lover from way back uh who commented sent me a message actually i think it was just a private message that his wife had told him that tenterhooks was an archaic term and that he should not be using it. But clearly he and I understand each other. And so fist bump solidarity on tenterhooks.

01:48.33
Jeffe Kennedy
So i had my editorial meeting on Tuesday and it was, it was great. It was a really good meeting. Agent Sarah was there, editor Ali, assistant editor Deanna.

02:02.90
Jeffe Kennedy
And we talked about NTR book two, As it is in the email subject lines, Never the Roses, book two, which I've been doing the working title of A Rose in the Mirror, which is clearly just not going to be because I think nobody but me likes that title.

02:19.90
Jeffe Kennedy
I don't know if I mentioned on here, Jennifer Estep suggested Always the Thorns as book two, which is a um ah great title also, but I don't think it's going to be that.

02:32.62
Jeffe Kennedy
We shall see. I am really attached to titles. I was having this conversation with, um, Jim Sorenson yesterday writer coffee, uh, about how, when you first start out as a writer, you tend to be really precious about titles.

02:49.50
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, we get all, Creative and clever about our titles and over time you learn that that's a really bad idea Especially because in this day and age ah SEO is everything search engine optimization and there are a lot of things about the clever titles that simply don't translate to and um It's sad, but it's also, i don't know. It's the reality we live in. And this is the same advice I give to writers who get very upset about their covers. You know, and remember counseling this one gal who was a newbie writer and was very upset about the cover that they had her publisher had given her.

03:38.47
Jeffe Kennedy
And she said, I want my cover to reflect the contents of the book, which I actually do understand. And that's how we feel about titles too. Like they're these, I don't know, emblems or extensions of the book itself.

03:51.62
Jeffe Kennedy
And what I told her was you have the entire interior of the book. You have all of those words, those hundred thousand or 80,000 words to reflect the interior of your book, of your message.

04:07.46
Jeffe Kennedy
um Leave the cover alone. Leave the title alone. A few more words, more or less, is not going to change the message of your story, right? Yeah. um So like mistakes I have made with titles.

04:21.42
Jeffe Kennedy
Some of my early Karina books, they were one word titles, which, and I know a lot of us love one word titles because they feel clever. I mean, like, you especially if you can find that one word that encompasses several meanings and it feels so cool and we are word people and so we like that kind of thing.

04:40.31
Jeffe Kennedy
No, no, no, no, no. It's terrible for SEO. Just awful. Um, so I have those books called Sapphire Platinum Ruby.

04:51.52
Jeffe Kennedy
Great titles. Right? And I did these very clever things with it, right? Because um, they're contemporary erotic BDSM romance and Sapphire takes place on the California coast and Ruby takes place in New Orleans kind of on the Gulf coast.

05:11.38
Jeffe Kennedy
And platinum takes place in Charleston, South Carolina on the East Coast. And the three together make red, white and blue. Right. Nobody got this. Absolutely nobody. i i don't know if I've even ever talked about it because nobody knew that. The fourth book in that series is called Five Golden Rings, which is um in the Caribbean.

05:35.09
Jeffe Kennedy
So again, on the coast, ah but it's the Mexican Caribbean. And I wanted it to be called Oro, O R O, which is Spanish for gold.

05:48.61
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, so that like would have been the next clever thing. And my editor at the time, Angela James completely overruled me. Um, it's also, it was for like an erotic holiday anthology.

06:01.23
Jeffe Kennedy
And so this is a, it's um, five golden rings is about the 12 days of Christmas. And this woman on vacation and the Mexican Caribbean, who gets involved in this very kinky love affair.

06:14.49
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, and they he does something for each of the 12 days of Christmas. So five golden rings is yeah, um, a much more appropriate title even though I was really annoyed that I didn't get to call it Oro.

06:32.09
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, but also those titles are terrible for search engine optimization.

06:40.14
Jeffe Kennedy
So um yeah, I have learned that I'm not great at titles. Oh, the other title mistake I made was again back in my contemporary erotic romance days the story I did for the devil's doorbell which is actually a great title.

06:57.12
Jeffe Kennedy
We put together the anthology based on the title. Sorry, i was burping there a little bit and had to hit the wind chimes. I don't know ah But five gold, five golden rings.

07:12.19
Jeffe Kennedy
So I just got completely discombobulated the devil's doorbell, uh, because you know, like the devil's doorbells, the clip, the center of woman's pleasure is the devil's doorbell.

07:23.36
Jeffe Kennedy
And we would be like, ring that bell. Ding, ding. ah And I wrote a story for that. There were seven of us in that anthology, which I coordinated and it's really a great anthology still available for purchase.

07:36.63
Jeffe Kennedy
um Although it tends to get buried and also in search engines because it is. has all those bad words. We're only allowed to talk about the devil's doorbell if a conservative Christian is talking about it.

07:53.80
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, not if somebody is like trying to repossess the phrase. Um, that's not the word I want, is it? It's like, um, take back ownership of something like that.

08:06.20
Jeffe Kennedy
Anyway, It's a it's a great anthology and I'm not just saying that for myself. Um, a lot of people have said it was a great anthology, but anyway, my story is called exact warm unholy, which is a reference to a poem and it does reflect the interiority of the story.

08:27.46
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, nobody knows what this story is about, right? It's a terrible title. I mean, it's a fantastic title. It's also a terrible title because it tells people nothing. um And, you know, it's...

08:41.94
Jeffe Kennedy
I'm noticing that there's, like, businesses that name their business for the search engine optimization, like that cake place on Broadway or something like that, so that when people put into the search, where's that cake place on Broadway?

08:59.35
Jeffe Kennedy
That's what pops up. You know, and there's a practicality to that because really what you want... is for people to find your cake place or to find your sexy story.

09:12.05
Jeffe Kennedy
And um nobody really cares if your title is clever except for the writer. So anyway, that's a very long way of saying that I don't know what this book will be called. And I am.

09:23.27
Jeffe Kennedy
I'm cool with it. ah A lot of people say what a great title. Never the roses is and I agree. It's a great title. My editor came up with that title. ah I had nothing to do with it. Although she did take it from a line in the book.

09:36.44
Jeffe Kennedy
So there we are. I contributed. helped. Um, okay. So sorry, I've been like babbling off on other things and not telling you the thing you want to know.

09:51.79
Jeffe Kennedy
I'm assuming you want to know about the editorial meeting. So, I had already told you all that they felt like the romance wasn't quite landing, which didn't surprise me a whole lot, but we've,

10:05.20
Jeffe Kennedy
come up with ideas for that and I'm feeling good about it. But then something of a surprise to me, um, Ali said she had been thinking really hard about, how to take this book to the next level.

10:18.24
Jeffe Kennedy
um Because everyone agreed that it's a solid book. She said it was a killer story. Yay. um That we could go ahead with it as is, but that she felt like I could take it even farther. And this is the best thing about working with a really good editor.

10:37.60
Jeffe Kennedy
which Ellie is Ellie's amazing and insightful. And so she suggested this additional layer of complexity, twist, complication um that would, she said she kept thinking about why were we meeting?

10:57.35
Jeffe Kennedy
Why was this story, the one to come after never the roses and what was it doing? And yeah, it's, it's actually a a brilliant idea and very exciting.

11:08.62
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, and amazingly, i mean, I've gotten up to page 57 now in the last couple of days, it's not taking that much to do. And Sarah had said, and I agreed that it was really actually, and it is, it's very flattering. It's a high compliment that they think I can do this. but ah Um, yeah, that they, um,

11:35.68
Jeffe Kennedy
think that I can, that I have the chops to pull off this idea. And I was like, I actually think I can maybe do this. Um, I am trying to get it done before I leave on book tour. I don't have to, but it would be nice. Uh, and I might be able to, because as I've been going through this revision so far,

11:58.68
Jeffe Kennedy
it's amazing to me that it's not taking that much for me to add in, uh, this it's, it's hard to explain without giving away this story, this, um, layer of complexity. It's changing one foundational detail that actually makes everything much richer.

12:19.45
Jeffe Kennedy
And maybe I can talk about it later. Like after the book is published, this will be a good topic for interviews. Uh,

12:29.76
Jeffe Kennedy
But all I'm having to do is tweak. I'm not having to do all that much to bring out this whole other kind of facet of the story and it's like it was already there in the bones and I'm just having to change words here and there to bring out this aspect of the character and it's, um, it's actually really brilliant. And I feel like it's all Ali's brilliance. And yet at the same time, as I'm doing this revision, I'm like, oh this was in there.

13:04.07
Jeffe Kennedy
This was, this was totally there. And she saw it and, and made this suggestion to make me lift that up out of the bones I'd laid in.

13:16.36
Jeffe Kennedy
And I think that maybe in writing book three, I would have found this, but it's like she already saw it. And so it's being laid in ahead of time and it's really cool. And this, this, my friends, my writer friends, when somebody says, what's the point of traditionally publishing, you know, they don't do anything for you.

13:40.17
Jeffe Kennedy
This is one of the best parts is when you work with a really amazing editor and Dianna had great insights and agent Sarah had great insights too. And it's really cool to have this team of people look at your story and all want to elevate it all want to make it better and saying, Ooh, what if the characters did this? What if the story did that?

14:08.20
Jeffe Kennedy
And that's, um, it's really super cool. Don't you think? I think so. So, um Yeah. So I'm working on that and I'm feeling energized and excited about it.

14:21.06
Jeffe Kennedy
So that's great. And yeah,

14:29.80
Jeffe Kennedy
I had to pause a moment so I could think about like what industry political thing I want to talk about. Um, the current brouhaha, actually it's probably not a brouhaha. It's a, um,

14:43.16
Jeffe Kennedy
kind of a funny thing. At any rate, there's this conservative magazine called like Evie that's been doing a lot to trash what they call smutty romance. And it's really a weird publication, but they ran this whole article and featured my friend, Christine, C.M. Nascosta's book, Morning Glory Milking Farm.

15:04.48
Jeffe Kennedy
And they called it, um, the article title is, The porn addled brains of monster loving women, something like that.

15:17.18
Jeffe Kennedy
And they're talking about how monsters have replaced men in fiction. And I mean, it's just, it's just crazy. And Christine is fantastic at marketing. So she's already created a t-shirt with the porn addled brain porn brains. Yeah, it's porn brains.

15:34.50
Jeffe Kennedy
Here we go. It helps if I actually look at it. Porn brained women of monster smut. um and she created a t-shirt for this, but she actually added N-Men and N-Base to be inclusive because, you know, everybody can be porn-brained.

15:50.97
Jeffe Kennedy
ah

15:54.01
Jeffe Kennedy
So, but what's really interesting is in this um same magazine, they advertise these things like milk made dresses. And it's always these young, incredibly boobalicious woman wearing an incredibly low neckline dress that like lifts up.

16:15.98
Jeffe Kennedy
I mean, it almost looks like you could milk her. Right. And then there's always, and it's like always made out of some sweet material, like with little rose buds on it. And then there's always a slit in the full skirt up one thigh. And she's even posing like kind of drawing up the slit to expose her more of her thigh.

16:33.97
Jeffe Kennedy
And it's, it's all this weird trad wife influencer thing, which is like these women and girls post photos of, you know, like them wearing these demurely sexy outfits, doing things like, you know, holding babies or whisking cake batter.

17:00.89
Jeffe Kennedy
And I mean, it's fine. It's fine. If, but it's obviously a kink, right? It is this whole, you know, like the pioneer woman, traditional wife, trad wife, um, kink and which would be okay, except that like the religious right is trying to dress it up as something else, right? You know, like, Oh, this is a proper example of womanhood, but it's obviously a fetish.

17:29.92
Jeffe Kennedy
And so they run these ads, complaining about how the, the porn brained women love monster smut. And then they have this ad there for, but you know, instead go with our slutty milkmaid.

17:44.79
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, ah it's just, it's crazy. And it kind leads into this whole influencer thing, right? Which is big business, big business on the internet, you know, tick tock and Instagram, um,

17:56.97
Jeffe Kennedy
these influencers get all of these followers and they advertise and they make tons of money um doing this kind of thing. Right. And so like, this is the actual brouhaha of the day is that there is this reviewer who has like over 200,000 followers on Tik TOK and has been posted to Instagram.

18:22.11
Jeffe Kennedy
I think with yeah Instagram ah showing how she had but she she like did this her own self where she showed her net galley account, which is an account that you have to review books and how she was behind on reviewing all of these books she had requested and how she went in and created fake reviews for all of them to bring her percentage back up. Right. Cause you have to have a, a certain high percentage of books reviewed versus how many requested.

18:52.47
Jeffe Kennedy
And she brought hers up to, I don't know, like 84% or 90% or something. um, by, and she even says, ah better create some fake reviews for all these books so I can get more.

19:03.94
Jeffe Kennedy
And she was like, don't judge, you know, you do it too. And all of these reviewers out there who are like, no, we, we actually read and review, which is why we don't have that many books or that high of a percentage.

19:18.50
Jeffe Kennedy
And, but it's this, and I've seen, um if you're watching this, I do feel you, um you know, the people who are very honest about, I request a book, I get an ARC, I actually make the time to read it, which if you're not a speed reader, you know, it takes a week, maybe two, you know, people have lives and then to write a thoughtful review of it ah takes more time, but they don't have 200,000 followers. And it's like, well, but so the, the,

19:51.33
Jeffe Kennedy
I mean, it it is with so many things these days, right? Is the answer to cheat, to be um unethical if you want to get somewhere? And I'm going to tell you that no, because that's, it's a hollow, it's a hollow achievement, right?

20:07.95
Jeffe Kennedy
It's like an author using chat GPT to write their books. It's, it's meaningless. It's meaningless to you as a human being. Um, money is great. We all like to pay the mortgage and buy groceries.

20:20.92
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, but our humanity is important too, no matter what they say. So on that note, I hope you have a weekend full of humanity. i know there's a lot of awful, scary stuff going on in the world, but um you can always make your corner of it humane and positive and wonderful.

20:44.15
Jeffe Kennedy
So I hope you are able to do that. And I will talk to you all on Tuesday. You all take care. of Bye bye.