First Cup of Coffee – August 1, 2025

My recap of San Diego Comic Con, including the amazing panel I got to be on there and what I learned about worldbuilding details from it. We talked about debt and finance in mind-blowing ways!

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Transcript

00:01.58
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.

00:15.91
Jeffe Kennedy
Ah, delicious. Today is, say it with me people, it is Friday. Woo hoo. First day of August, August 1st, 2025.

00:27.41
Jeffe Kennedy
And hope you're enjoying your summer. I am finally back from all of my traveling and I will get into that in a moment. I'll tell you all about San Diego comic con.

00:38.68
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, but first I want to say something about summer, which I feel like is my perennial, uh, rave. I want to make this a rave, not a rant, uh, that there is this thing in our culture. And I was talking about this with, of all people, my waxer who is also a gardener and she and I,

01:00.07
Jeffe Kennedy
love gardening season. And we were talking about the beautiful summertime, which is glorious here in Santa Fe. I realize some of you are in places where it's super hot and muggy and awful, but beautiful, beautiful summertime weather.

01:13.77
Jeffe Kennedy
But somehow we have connected this idea in our society with the academic year being connected to the season. And so all of these people who are connected to the academic year, either by profession or by much more commonly children, ah they say summer is over.

01:33.91
Jeffe Kennedy
Summer is over because school has started. and

01:40.27
Jeffe Kennedy
And I, and my waxer even said that she has like one, know, all these is nephew's, but like one starting August 3rd, one 15th one the 22nd. And, and you know And everybody, all of her family is like, oh, well, summer's over now. And it's like, no, no, it's still summer. It's still glorious summer.

02:00.37
Jeffe Kennedy
And I was very happy with poets.org. I get the poem a day from them, which I love getting. It's fascinating to me. They have a different curation each month, a different person who chooses the poems for that month.

02:17.57
Jeffe Kennedy
So they chose, you know, choose 30 to 31 or 28, just fine, ah for for that month. And it's really interesting to me to make a study of this that, for instance, June, I just did not grok the poems.

02:37.97
Jeffe Kennedy
to The person curating them, ah you know, wonderful person, amazing credentials and all of that sort of thing, But all of the poems that they chose, with the exception of like maybe one or two, were just did not sing to me.

02:54.68
Jeffe Kennedy
And I saw the write-up for the person who's being the curator for this month, for the month of August. And it's, you know, poem a day. They email you poem and it's it's cool. It's really, um especially if you're a creative.

03:09.96
Jeffe Kennedy
And I think even if you're not engaged actively in a creative uh, profession reading poetry is really good for our minds. It really expands ideas, even if you don't particularly love the poem, but I read the bio of the person who's the curator this month. And I thought, Oh, this sounds like an interesting person and interesting breadth of experience and interests.

03:33.53
Jeffe Kennedy
And then sure enough, I love today's poem. Uh, isn't that interesting? It's sort of like we, we pick things for each other. And I had a point there and I'm not sure what it was. oops

03:49.23
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, maybe it'll come back to me anyway. ah yeah. So I love today's poem a day today is Friday. i was going to tell you about San Diego comic con.

04:00.95
Jeffe Kennedy
ah Ah, I might be a little tired from all of my travels. Let's just go in and talk about San Diego comic con. Uh, it was terrific. I had a a wonderful time there.

04:13.63
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, that con is, um, super overwhelmed, but i did a good job of managing it. I think. So i got there on Thursday midday. Yeah. I went out Thursday morning and got this and I love San Diego anyway.

04:34.03
Jeffe Kennedy
And Tor had put me up at the ah Hilton Bay front, which was lovely and beautiful and really a delightful experience. And I went ahead and paid $80 to upgrade my room. So I had a water view.

04:50.15
Jeffe Kennedy
But you know, since they were covering my room, it was like, I got to have this really great room for $80 a night.

04:58.32
Jeffe Kennedy
And it was good to treat myself that way. I think I needed that i treating myself because even though I had time in between returning from a book tour and then going on this, I had little, well, about a week.

05:15.35
Jeffe Kennedy
um i it still was like not enough recovery time. ah And not to bury the lead, which is L-E-D-E, by the way, L-E-A-D. It comes from old newspaper speak.

05:30.00
Jeffe Kennedy
I did finish the revision of the book, Among the Thorns, is officially finished. I worked on it throughout my travels. um I did a podcast from my hotel room from San Diego Comic Con last Friday and sort of updated you all.

05:46.92
Jeffe Kennedy
I went from San Diego Comic Con to my mother's house on Sunday to visit her for a few days and did not end up doing a podcast from her house. I thought about it, but yeah ah Tucson is hot this time of year. It affects everything.

06:01.48
Jeffe Kennedy
My mother keeps her house at 80. It's like it's a lot. And I'm bouncing from topic to topic. I apologize for that. So anyway, um yeah, turned in that revision yesterday.

06:14.30
Jeffe Kennedy
And let me just tell you, folks, no wonder this revision took a lot out of me. I turned it in at 127,000 words. No, it is not my longest book to date. My longest book is still The Talent of the Hawk, which was 132,000 and thirty two thousand then change.

06:34.25
Jeffe Kennedy
we'll see if this book ends up with 5000 more after line edits, but I think I don't know. and i'm I'm not even going to try. I'm not even going to try. ah So I ended up on this second revision.

06:48.51
Jeffe Kennedy
um Well, between the revisions, let's put it this way. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out the exact number of words.

07:01.14
Jeffe Kennedy
So I added from my the first strap that I turned in, I added about 35,000 words and through my various revisions, because I take the outtakes and i put them into various files, I cut about 30,000 words. So I think that means that for this revision, for this entire revision process this year, I wrote about 60,000 new words.

07:29.16
Jeffe Kennedy
So like, no wonder it was a lot. Yeah.

07:35.66
Jeffe Kennedy
But it's done. It's turned in now, and hopefully next round is line edits. that'll be good. um Managing San Diego Comic Con. So I i got there. i had a lovely lunch outside.

07:50.31
Jeffe Kennedy
I worked on this revision a little bit. And then that evening, I treated myself to dinner at Sally's Fish House, which I loved. And then I went to the Tor party, which it turned out the Tor party started at seven and there was tons of food there. They kept trying to sell us all on food. Well, not sell us, but, you know, like passing around the food and they these wonderful buffets, but everybody had eaten dinner.

08:14.18
Jeffe Kennedy
Right. And we're like, oh, we already ate.

08:19.78
Jeffe Kennedy
But I did drink a lot of Prosecco. And so that was lovely. And I had a great conversation with Seanan McGuire, who I had never gotten to sit down with before. So that was really um excellent to, to sit down and have that conversation.

08:37.38
Jeffe Kennedy
And it was a very fun party. It was a great time. And then on the next day, I had no obligations on Friday. I had nothing at all that I had to do.

08:49.26
Jeffe Kennedy
And so I decided, and I know that this will upset everybody who would love to go to San Diego Comic-Con, but I wasn't going to subject myself to that great big exhibit hall.

09:01.09
Jeffe Kennedy
um So this is me, aggressive self-care. I took the ferry over to Coronado Island, and I did a day and a beach chair at Hotel Del Coronado, which is one of my favorite places.

09:13.98
Jeffe Kennedy
And it was delightful. It was great. I took my laptop with me. sat under the umbrella in my lounge chair and I worked on the revision and then I, and I had a lovely young man bringing me beers and tacos

09:31.56
Jeffe Kennedy
and it was Nirvana. And then I took the ferry back, got my credentials for the con like five minutes before the desk closed. That, you know, just like even walking back and forth from the hotel to the convention center, it's, um,

09:46.19
Jeffe Kennedy
just this tide of people going both directions. And it's, I mean, generally it's a very cheerful crowd, which is great. I was probably less cheerful than some of them because, oh, it's just a lot for me, um, being in masses of people like that. And especially sort of the ambling crowd like that, where people are not really directed about where they're going.

10:10.16
Jeffe Kennedy
And one of my great flaws as a human being is that I lack patience for that.

10:17.40
Jeffe Kennedy
So anyway, got my credentials and, um, yeah, ended up just like getting a slice of pizza from the hotel convenience store.

10:28.92
Jeffe Kennedy
I don't work at place. They called it. And, Yeah. Went to bed early, which was good for me. And so it was a very relaxing day. And I think this is one thing I'm learning about doing things like book tours and conventions is to that giving myself a full down day like that is not only okay and allowable, but actually really welcome.

10:55.32
Jeffe Kennedy
So, ah then on Saturday it was ending up being a busier day I was supposed to have, coffee with Julia Vee and Jayci Lee.

11:06.98
Jeffe Kennedy
And fortunately I checked my Facebook messenger before I left, but they um both canceled on me. So there I was gotten up and, you know, wearing my, my makeup and all ready to go.

11:22.36
Jeffe Kennedy
So I sat there and did, um, worked on the book for a while. And that was actually really productive time. And then I went to over for my panel, which was on like mystic mayhem moderated by Cristina Orlando, who is an editor at tour and they did a great job with the panel.

11:44.44
Jeffe Kennedy
um I should have written down who was on it with me, but it was um Moses Utomi was sitting next to me and then Serra Swift and Evan Leikan was on the panel and Oh, um here, I can look because I got, ah this is Evan Leikan's book, Anji Kills a King. i got a copy of that.

12:11.26
Jeffe Kennedy
i picked I did pick up books. I'm sort of getting back into picking up books. And I got, ah Marie Lu was on the panel, and I got this book, Red City, of hers. I also, because Tor gives me free books, is that this is a great perk.

12:25.52
Jeffe Kennedy
I got Behooved by M. Stevenson. I've been interested in that. And i also have, sorry, while we're doing book show and tell, I think I told you all that when I was in Salt Lake City on book tour, Poppy's Books, which was great, gave me a free book. And I got The Night and the Moth, which I have not yet read.

12:48.76
Jeffe Kennedy
And i also got from my agent a copy of Nine-Tailed by the aforementioned Jayci Lee. And now I'm not going to read your book, Jayci, because you canceled coffee on me.

13:00.27
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, ha ha kidding kidding. Um, it's such a beautiful cover on nine tailed. Isn't it with the, if you're not on video, it's a, a white Fox because she's, let's see, want to make sure I get the, name of it right.

13:18.42
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, she's a Fox shape shifter, which comes out of JC's cultural tradition. Oh, Korean. It is Korean mythology. I didn't want to say Korean if I was going to be wrong.

13:31.06
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, yeah, so I'm excited to read that. Oh, it's a white fox and that has a mini colored tail, nine tails of different colors that are big and floofy like, um, like those fancy goldfish.

13:43.55
Jeffe Kennedy
So it's a lovely, lovely cover. Um, yeah, so panel was great and they, they just took such great care of us.

13:54.95
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, you know, The publicist this was ah an all tour panel and so they shepherded us about and it was it was delightful. But there was this very funny moment on the panel where Cristina had asked us about our world building and Moses had said this very interesting thing that he likes to think in terms of financial details like tipping you know he's because he's lived. um I don't know. It seemed like he had lived in Europe or maybe traveled a lot.

14:28.11
Jeffe Kennedy
And he was talking about like places where, um you know, in the U S tipping is considered to be, you know, like so much, so much required so much, not a gratuity, which means uncalled for that. They actually added onto the bill. ah When I was at the hotel for San Diego comic con, even small bills just for me, like a glass of wine or something, they figured in that 20% onto the tab already.

14:54.13
Jeffe Kennedy
which is interesting, right? It makes it be required, right? It's not really a tip anymore. And then they still had space for tips. So if you weren't paying attention, you'd end up tipping twice.

15:08.08
Jeffe Kennedy
But then in some cultures around the world, it's it's absurd and people come to the U.S. and they're astonished that the bill is actually 20% more than what they were told it would be.

15:20.75
Jeffe Kennedy
And so he was talking about those minor cultural differences and how those affect a world. And I'm a big believer in that. You know all that I'm a fan of world building, had to that that it's character driven, right? what How does it affect the characters in the world?

15:39.50
Jeffe Kennedy
But I was talking about financial systems to sort of building off of what Moses said, because like one of my things is what are the financial institutions? What is the monetary exchange? How, how are, where are people keeping their money?

15:54.87
Jeffe Kennedy
Right. And how does the money work? What what's the coinage? And and i said something about this book I'm reading, which I did want to share with you all. I've got all these books stacked up. Plus, I'm reading this book, which probably, let's see if I angle it there. You can see it.

16:13.13
Jeffe Kennedy
But it's called Debt, The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber. So I had started reading this because when the delightful Kelly Robson was here,

16:24.13
Jeffe Kennedy
We were talking about Ireland and what we didn't did not like about Ireland, which is of course the homeland of my people, some of my people. I'm I also have, um, a very strong Scottish, uh, bloodline and I'm starting to think that, and I identified much more with Scotland. So I'm starting to think, and maybe more on the Scottish side than the Irish side, but Kelly was saying something about how well any people that sells are women into slavery, you have to side eye.

16:55.40
Jeffe Kennedy
And I was like, what do you mean? And she was like, well, the Irish used women as actual slaves in monetary exchange. And so she sent me a PDF of this book.

17:06.74
Jeffe Kennedy
say, look on you know page 171 or some something. And I ended up buying the book because it's fascinating. It is fascinating that women were used as a form of monetary exchange. It's sort of like goes back to this whole women is child and, uh, uh, blah, blah, blah, slave trade, but also, um, what is the word that I want?

17:36.66
Jeffe Kennedy
ah anyway, I'm not gonna be able to think of it. Uh, but yeah, it's, it's really amazing that, um, you know, like daughters would essentially be sold, uh, in to, into marriage for, Oh, dowries. That's what I wanted to say. Sort of the origin of this whole dowry system.

17:52.46
Jeffe Kennedy
Only people would pay you to, you know, buy your daughter from you. Uh, which is just mind blowing. And this book is fascinating because his whole premise is, is that we've all been taught, or at least the initial premise that we started with bartering, that we believed in, you know, that we would barter things, you know, like you, you have a chicken that I want and I will give you my, you know, piglet for your chickens.

18:20.35
Jeffe Kennedy
And that monetary systems grew from that and his whole contention, which he supports enormously well, is that we've all been lied to that. There was never a barter system that our all ah entire financial systems are built on debt are built on IO use.

18:37.38
Jeffe Kennedy
And that we have that debt came first and that we deal then developed coin. or other financial media in order to account for debt to count debt and then only later did people actually barter. And that was people who were used to using money or coin for exchange of goods. So like prisoners, uh, in prison using cigarettes for exchange, ah bartering never happened. And so I brought this up and, and Moses sitting next to me was like, I just read that book.

19:17.18
Jeffe Kennedy
um I'm sorry, I'm getting so excited. I'm joking on my own spit. and And we were like, isn't that amazing? Like we've been lied to. We've been lied to all this time. ah But it affects your world building, right? You know, that these things that we ah just assume are like core truths and then they turn out not to be true.

19:38.73
Jeffe Kennedy
So this book is blowing my mind. i highly recommend it. ah Once again, it is called Debt's the First 5,000 Years by David Graeber. G-R-A-E-B-E-R.

19:52.48
Jeffe Kennedy
I'm making my friend Jim Sorenson read it. And he'd said he'd heard great things about it so that we can discuss. I think if you're doing world building in particular, it's really great to shake up your conceptions of what a society has to be like, how it has to operate.

20:10.22
Jeffe Kennedy
You know, it's interesting to think about a society where debt doesn't happen. We think we don't like debt. We think that

20:21.19
Jeffe Kennedy
like usury is considered a sin. um Excuse me, but we don't operate that way.

20:31.61
Jeffe Kennedy
Sorry about all that coughing. So one of the things I learned on a panel at Phoenix fan fusion, I'm going to do it like a little promo spot and I do not get paid for these.

20:43.57
Jeffe Kennedy
Another woman on the panel handed me these Listerine cool mint gel things like these little thin gel things because I was coughing like that.

20:56.13
Jeffe Kennedy
It's partly my blood pressure on medication is making me do that. But these things are freaking miracle because it stops the coughing and you can still talk. You not like having a mint in your mouth.

21:08.83
Jeffe Kennedy
Who knew?

21:11.81
Jeffe Kennedy
So, um, so those are my things for today. It was the best kind of panel because we were able to, um, rip off of each other like that.

21:22.69
Jeffe Kennedy
And I love the ones that are that kind of conversation. And then I went and spent a few days with my mom and she's doing all right. We're working on getting her moved here.

21:34.85
Jeffe Kennedy
And then I got home and finished this revision. So now I'm catching up on all the business things. So that's me. Hope you all are doing well. I will, um,

21:46.44
Jeffe Kennedy
I was thinking I have a break at home now, but I actually go to world con in two weeks, which is, I'm amazed that it's already that soon. It's already August. It's summer. It's still summer. That's what I see. Now I brought it around neatly.

21:59.79
Jeffe Kennedy
ah One of the things I loved about the introduction to poem a day, did remember, uh, with the, uh, curator is that they were talking about for the summer month of August and saying that they hope that we would take time between our hikes and trips to the beach and enjoying the weather, uh, to, to read a poem.

22:24.25
Jeffe Kennedy
And so that's what I wish for you is we still have a month of summer and really Depending on where you live, summer lasts into September or or October. So, yeah, I wish for you some some warm summer sunshine and enjoyment.

22:42.77
Jeffe Kennedy
And I will talk to you on Tuesday. You all take care. of Bye-bye.