First Cup of Coffee – August 8, 2025

All about the extraordinary thing that happened this week regarding NEVER THE ROSES - and about serendipity, bolts of lightning, what you can and can't plan for, and why I love working with smart women who also talk about skin care routines.

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Transcript

00:01.62
Jeffe Kennedy
Good morning, everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy. Also writing is Jennifer K. Lambert, author of Epic Fantasy Romance. I'm here with my first cup of coffee.

00:16.10
Jeffe Kennedy
Ah, that's good. Today is, say with me, people, it is Friday. Woo-hoo. August 8th, 2025. 8 to 8.

00:26.38
Jeffe Kennedy
august eighth twenty twenty five eight/eight

00:31.20
Jeffe Kennedy
ah and it is um Mello's birthday. Happy birthday Mello if you know you know. Ah how are you all doing?

00:42.34
Jeffe Kennedy
So I have had this immensely startling and amazing week. If you follow me on social media besides this you will have seen that um an extraordinary thing happen.

01:00.33
Jeffe Kennedy
So extraordinary. One of those things that like you can't plan for. it This is one reason why, and I know that I'm making you wait, but I am making you wait. But like when the success people say, you know, like that you should plan, you know, like your one year planning, your five year planning, your 10 year planning.

01:19.37
Jeffe Kennedy
And I've heard some of these people talk and they're like, you know, and you have to have these very specific goals. But sometimes, sometimes you things happen that there's just no way you could have predicted that would happen.

01:34.54
Jeffe Kennedy
So the thing that happened... I'm really not being a tease, or I guess I am, but I'm not doing it intentionally. It is very early Wednesday morning. I woke up because I wake up and I look at my phone and see if anyone messaged me during the night because I have it on Do Not Disturb and because sometimes my friend in Hong Kong messages or Kelly Robson's traveling in England. Sometimes she'll have sent me pictures.

02:01.60
Jeffe Kennedy
And I play Wordle. And so one of the first things I do is I play Wordle. And people, this is not the thing, but it was a harbinger, ah happy harbinger of things to come.

02:15.93
Jeffe Kennedy
I got the wordle in one guess. Swear to freaking stars and yours, I got it in one guess.

02:28.47
Jeffe Kennedy
It was just like so incredibly lucky. And so I was sending that to my couple of friends that I share that with, Kelly and with Jim Sorensen. And was like, look at how amazing I am. I should go buy a lottery ticket.

02:43.26
Jeffe Kennedy
So then I go look at my Instagram because I get social things posted overnight. And this is a nice time for me. I like this. I you know just lie there in bed and the cats are with me. And I you know do some rudimentary social media.

02:58.38
Jeffe Kennedy
ah I don't get too caught up in it. I don't most of the time. ah It's just like liking and resharing.

03:08.40
Jeffe Kennedy
ah So especially since, since the release of Never the Roses. So I look a lot at my chats on instant messenger and, and the requests too, because a lot of people tag me on their wonderful, um amazing videos. You all are so freaking clever and so much better than I am at these things.

03:27.55
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, and so then I can just reshare your brilliant videos. Thank you very much. Um, And so one messaged me saying, oh, my God, Katherine Heigl. Oh, I meant to double check. It is Heigl. Some people were asking me if it was Heigl.

03:46.71
Jeffe Kennedy
And I said that I thought it was Heigl because E-I is typically an I sound, whereas I-E is typically at an E sound. But nobody said it's Heigl.

03:58.37
Jeffe Kennedy
um But that's the difference between like Reitz and Reitz. Anyway, little known facts that you probably don't give a damn about. Anyway, this message says, Katherine Heigl reviewed your book.

04:13.08
Jeffe Kennedy
I was like, what? You know, because I thought, oh, this is like Keanu Reeves following me on threads, right? You know, but which let me be totally, totally clear.

04:23.91
Jeffe Kennedy
It is not Keanu Reeves, right? It is ah someone using, you know, it's like, it's always like Keanu Reeves following waves 42 or something like that, you know, and it's like, you're supposed to believe it's this person.

04:37.74
Jeffe Kennedy
So this was my initial reaction. I'm like, Oh yeah, Katherine Heigl read my book and reviewed it. And it's a tick tock and people, Katherine Heigl read my book.

04:50.15
Jeffe Kennedy
She read never the roses. And she did this amazing, almost four minute long tick tock episode talking about how much they love the book. ah She called it beautiful. She called it academic and intellectual and poetic.

05:05.69
Jeffe Kennedy
And she talked about how as a more mature woman at age 46 and, you know, Katherine, honey, I'm more mature than thou. But yeah, that it really resonated with her.

05:22.27
Jeffe Kennedy
And all of the things she loved about the book were the places that I wrote this book from. And so that was, it it's one of the, my peak experiences now, peak experience of my life. Uh, it was just, um,

05:43.05
Jeffe Kennedy
Surreal and amazing. And let me tell you that TikTok of hers now has like 400, almost 450,000 views.

05:53.63
Jeffe Kennedy
um Tons of likes. Lots of people like went out and bought the book yesterday and and on Wednesday, tagging me on the videos, saying Katherine made me do it.

06:04.62
Jeffe Kennedy
And I was like, go Katherine. Thank you.

06:08.66
Jeffe Kennedy
So how do you plan for that kind of thing? How do you make that be a goal? Be like, well, I would like a celebrity like Katherine Heigl to read my book um and do a four minute TikTok on it.

06:21.98
Jeffe Kennedy
I suppose you could go more general than that, but still it's, um it's crazy special. And, you know, one of the things that I love about it too, is that, um you know, like I've always admired her so much. There's that wonderful clip.

06:41.87
Jeffe Kennedy
I was trying to find what it was on and I decided I was going down a rabbit hole, but there's that really great clip that often gets shared about Katherine Heigl talking about how she's been accused of being rude and difficult.

06:58.13
Jeffe Kennedy
And she, you know, and she says, I stand up for myself. I draw clear boundaries. And so what's amazing about this is that in Never the Roses, Oneira is a powerful woman.

07:11.77
Jeffe Kennedy
um one of the most powerful people, full stop in the entire world. And she is occasionally rude, um mostly because she's just done. She is so done and she wants people to leave her alone. You know, it's like, I won't be rude to you if you don't talk to me.

07:31.87
Jeffe Kennedy
So I could see, um i could see Katherine Heigl playing Oneira. She would be amazing. I don't know if she wants to, she probably doesn't, but wouldn't that be fantastic? The other thing that Katherine, I feel like she's my bestie now that she said was how she's only had, you know, a few loves in her life and understanding the weight of love in your mature years.

08:01.45
Jeffe Kennedy
And that is so much what this book is about. It's about, it's about love and what you do for love. Um, and not just love for another person, but love for yourself and love for the world.

08:17.11
Jeffe Kennedy
And, um, yeah, it's, yeah it, it was an amazing moment. ah You know, there are few things better when people ask like, you know, what's your the best part of being a writer? What's you know, your best moment and favorite thing that happens and.

08:39.94
Jeffe Kennedy
You know, and a lot of people assume that it's like seeing your book in the bookstore, which don't get me wrong. It's nice. ah But really the absolute best, just so you all know, the absolute best is when you nail something in your writing.

08:55.27
Jeffe Kennedy
It's when something emerges, when something comes out and you get that moment of epiphany and it's, and it is unlike anything else. It is like, um, spiritual orgasm. It's incredible. It is a feeling unmatched by any other experience in life, which is one reason why i really don't understand why people want to write their books using technical aids, like generative AI and large language model nonsense.

09:29.35
Jeffe Kennedy
and I should put that in quotation marks, "AI". Um, it's, um, why, why bother? You know, you're, you're,

09:40.07
Jeffe Kennedy
you're killing off the possibility of ever having the very best part of being a writer. Uh, but second to that, second to that best part is when somebody resonates with what you've written, when somebody really responds and,

10:02.85
Jeffe Kennedy
takes in what you wrote and sees themselves and their lives in it. And you know, what an amazing thing that someone as accomplished and powerful and confident, I don't know, maybe not confident, Katherine Heigl, I think, you know, has had troubles.

10:19.41
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, she's very confident in some ways, like many of us, right. You know, because, you know, frankly, I do consider myself to be a pretty powerful woman. Um, You know, we we sort of get around that like strong woman cliche, but you know that I have, you know, I have friends who've told me that I have the strongest boundaries of anyone they've ever seen or known. And I do have very strong boundaries and yes, I will be respected but or i won't talk to you.

10:51.58
Jeffe Kennedy
um And yeah, there is room for us to be rude to people who deserve rudeness. Right. um We deserve to be left alone.

11:04.52
Jeffe Kennedy
So I think that, yeah, having this from someone who I have always admired, always thought so well of. ah And I think this is funny because I never did watch Grey's Anatomy. I saw Katherine Heigl's movies.

11:22.08
Jeffe Kennedy
But in Grey's Anatomy, apparently she plays a doctor, I think, named Izzy. ah shows you see I really don't know but anyway you're all probably shouting things at me sorry but agent Sarah said as we were texting that morning about how unbelievable this is ah Sarah said that as someone who owns like seasons one to five of Grey's Anatomy on DVD ah that she just was having a little happy dance going Izzy likes one of my author's books laughing

11:57.02
Jeffe Kennedy
Isn't that funny how that works? of yeah so So, yeah, that's just been unreal. ah Since then, one of my publishers has contacted us for my previous series asking if I'd be interested in re-releasing them, which I am, but we're going to have to discuss terms on that.

12:23.92
Jeffe Kennedy
But yeah, you know, these things, how the cascade works is um not controllable. You know, people want to reverse engineer it. They want to make it happen.

12:35.06
Jeffe Kennedy
You know, like I could see people in the comments on Katherine Heigl's TikTok saying, you know, like, how does an indie author get their book into your hands? And it's like, you know, I feel you, you know, it was like, I always working pimp my indie books too. Well, that's probably not true. i don't work very hard at it. Not as hard as I probably should.

12:56.45
Jeffe Kennedy
But, um, these are things that you cannot make happen. and You just have to put stuff out there. And, um, I am a believer in karma and in the universe and, and,

13:10.16
Jeffe Kennedy
Well, I think that some of the worst advice out there is to write the best book you can because it's obvious. And also, how do you how do you know?

13:21.06
Jeffe Kennedy
um I think, you know, one of the great lessons, and people have brought it up to me about this particular book, about Never the know, remembering the... Oops!

13:32.18
Jeffe Kennedy
gesturing and hitting the wind chimes in the beginning. It was, I kept calling it the book. I wasn't supposed to be writing, right? It was off brand. It was different. it was, um, but it insisted on being written.

13:44.95
Jeffe Kennedy
And I really honored that because it felt like a gift from the universe. And when you get a gift, you honor it and you do your best by it. And then, you know, maybe great things will come way. Maybe nothing will happen. I mean, we just don't know. Right. I mean, that's part of the, uh,

14:01.75
Jeffe Kennedy
Enigma and excitement of life, right? We don't know. You can't control everything. and And there are people out there who want to, yeah you know, want to control everything, but.

14:15.32
Jeffe Kennedy
Anyway, the other thing I wanted to tell you about this whole thing was um Agent Sarah had said, I went ahead as soon as I saw this and I tagged, you know, like the Tor US and UK teams on the, you know, videos and all of that.

14:30.01
Jeffe Kennedy
But Sarah said, no, you need to email this to everyone on the Tor team ah because not everybody's on the socials.

14:40.92
Jeffe Kennedy
and you know And then she followed up with like some screenshots of the views and so forth. So I sent this. So I did, as I as i was told, as a good little writer. um and you know And let me take a moment just to say that you know Agent Sarah is incredible. you know She's so helpful. And um we had to pop on a very quick call yesterday to talk about this, the publisher asking about this.

15:08.06
Jeffe Kennedy
and sort of the considerations that we need to ah strategize about, you know, and so she talked to me in the five minutes between leaving her office and walking to the subway. And I adore that about her. I love that I can text her in the morning and she has her phone on, do not disturb until she turns it on. And then we can text and be like, Oh my God, is he?

15:29.32
Jeffe Kennedy
um And that she is just so, you know, generous and helpful and wonderful. But, and so there's my little bit of, oh gosh, you know, where would I be with that agent, Sarah?

15:43.70
Jeffe Kennedy
So, but then the funny thing was, so, you know, I did as my agent told me to do and I emailed everyone. And so it's this big chain that was like from the, she said, use the release day email because it like has everybody on it, um including some of the higher ups.

16:00.12
Jeffe Kennedy
And so I sent them and you know, and said, this happened and they were very excited. And, you know, there's something that will maybe happen, but I won't mention it yet just in case I'm not supposed to.

16:13.32
Jeffe Kennedy
But the other thing was, and this is what I love about working with, I think there's one guy on this email chain out of like, I don't know, 15 people.

16:24.19
Jeffe Kennedy
And the rest are women. And the women were like, this is incredible. This is amazing. How wonderful. We should do X, Y, Z. And also, what is Katherine Heigl's skincare routine? We're like, what is she doing? We have to know.

16:38.32
Jeffe Kennedy
ah And I adore this because both things are equally important. They're both part of the conversations that we have with each other. And it put me up in mind of a long time ago when I was still working the corporate day job.

16:54.98
Jeffe Kennedy
And I think I've told this story before, but my boss, who was a woman and I were, we were on a conference call entirely with other men or entirely with men.

17:06.23
Jeffe Kennedy
And I don't know, there were like five men on the call and then us two. And it was bringing like three different teams of people together. And so there was a lot of the introductions, you know, and the guys just like, even the guys that we knew really well as being kind of nerdy scientist types were falling into this hail fellow, well-met sports metaphors thing. I mean, they were basically asking, you know, like,

17:34.27
Jeffe Kennedy
What did you think about the Broncos? It wasn't Broncos, but you know, it was like, it was weird. And so she and I are texting each other on the side going, what is this? Why is, you know, Derek talking about sports? Derek doesn't follow sports, but it's like part of the male communication lingo. And, and they start out by saying, um, when guy says, well, why don't you lead off Tom? Because I think this is your wheelhouse. Um,

18:00.17
Jeffe Kennedy
and And we're just ripping on the side, trying to guess which sport each metaphor belongs to. and And she's like, wheelhouse is trains.

18:11.00
Jeffe Kennedy
And I said, no, wheelhouse is like yachting. Because roundhouse, you're thinking roundhouse. Yeah. So she and I started this thing where we wanted to come up with female metaphors for things. so and And this was a long time ago, and I've seen some people doing it since, and I like to think that we planted this seed.

18:32.86
Jeffe Kennedy
But you know we started just like throwing these metaphors into company conversations where we would say, well, I think this is you know you're putting the wrong shade of lipstick on this project.

18:45.16
Jeffe Kennedy
Or let's take this hemline up by two inches and see how it looks. And it would just like stymie the conversation, right? Because nobody knew what to do with this.

18:55.98
Jeffe Kennedy
So I love that, you know, and some of it might have been because we were like deliberately trying to create metaphors and not using things that we would naturally say because it didn't really work all that well.

19:09.11
Jeffe Kennedy
But, you know, I love that we're talking about strategizing this book's success and also how amazing Katherine Heigl's skin looks and what can what can we do to find out what she's doing to make herself look so amazingly gorgeous and dewy. You should watch the TikTok, if only because it's really fun. And it's on Instagram and it's on Facebook. And that's I shared it widely, as you can imagine.

19:38.68
Jeffe Kennedy
So, ah yeah, if anyone knows Katherine's skincare routine, please message us because we are about all things here at First Cup of Coffee Publishing and skincare.

19:52.19
Jeffe Kennedy
So, yeah. yeah All right. On that note, i haven't talked about what I'm working on, but I'm trying to get this book going. I'm going to WorldCon next week. If you're going to be there, say hello.

20:05.40
Jeffe Kennedy
And I will talk to you all Monday. Tuesday. You all take care. Bye-bye.