First Cup of Coffee - September 23, 2025

Nirvana, Rapture, Hurricane Ragasa, current reads and most excitingly - Magic Reborn writing updates and new release date! And also, the lost art form of party jokes. 

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Transcript

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.

Ah, Nirvana, Today is Tuesday,
September 23rd, 2025.

I hope you all are working your way into
the week and I don't know what I should

wish for you.

Apparently today is one of the many,
many potential dates for which the

rapture can occur,
during which time the the good Christians

or certain kinds of practicing Christians
will be taken up into heaven to join with

God.

There is some debate as to whether they
leave bodies behind or simply piles of

clothing,
which is surprising to me because I know

you can't take it with you.

But I always thought you weren't supposed
to be able to take your bodies with you

either.

Isn't that a spiritual thing?

So anyway, if you wanted to be raptured,
I hope it happened for you.

If, uh,
like most of us out here who are like

actually grateful to be living in this
world,

I hope that you find reasons for joy
today.

I don't know.

I think that's a thing, you know,
like there's this whole vein of it's not

just Christianity.

It turns up another turns up in Islam and
I've seen it turn up in a few obviously

cults,
various sects and so forth that there's

this desire to leave this mortal plane,
right to go and join with the creator or

achieve Nirvana to I think Nirvana,
and I actually don't know much about it

is a state of bliss in this world, right?

I've never been able even,
and some of you will know that I studied,

I did comparative religious studies,
was one of my majors in college.

And so I've always been very interested
in this idea of transcending spiritually,

you know, like what are why are we here?

Why do we live our lives?

What are we working towards?

Who are we trying to become?

You know,
what does it mean like trying to become

your best self?

What is that best self?

Does that mean finding Nirvana?

Does it mean finding a state of,
of saintliness, a state of, of happiness?

But it always kind of mystified me that
there was this element of that I was

supposed to long for this moment of like,
joining with the creator, which, you know,

'cause it, it, I never liked it,
'cause it means losing yourself, right?

You know,
it's like what I'm supposed to go like,

dissolve myself into some greater entity
and this is going to be absolutely

blissful and wonderful.

Yeah.

I, I don't buy that.

I also never really liked the idea,
even when I was little and, you know,

growing up with my Catholic family,
that there was kind of this idea that you

would be like, I don't know,
in like the kids books about Christianity,

like on a cloud playing a harp.

I was like, how is that interesting?

How is that fun?

And one of the things I've come around to
is that, you know,

I feel like we are so blessed to have
these wonderful if mortal bodies, right?

If we weren't so blessed,
if we didn't love having them so much,

we we wouldn't be interested in
immortality, right?

We wouldn't be interested in making them
live forever, which is a persistent idea.

We all want to persist, right?

And, and I'm the same way, right?

You know,
with my not liking the idea of somehow

losing my identity as I dissolve into
some sort of greater flow of the universe.

I don't.

I wanna do that.

I wanna be me.

But I also really,
really want to enjoy being alive.

And it's surprising to me,
maybe not surprising.

That's probably not the right word.

It's distressing to me how many people
focus on not wanting to be here,

not wanting to, you know, like these,
you know,

and forgive me 'cause I think I know some
people who are very good practitioners of

religion,
but I'm feeling very soured on a lot of

the evangelical stuff going on in the US
right now with the control and so forth,

the attempts to run other people's lives,
right?

You know, it's like,
why is your religion about running

someone else's life?

Why not find the thing that works for you?

But then This is why I'm a Taoist, right?

You know,
Taoism is about finding your own path,

doing your own thing.

But, you know,
like when people talk about, you know,

God's creation,
God gave us this world and dominion over

it and that sort of thing is 1
interpretation, right?

It's like, well,
why are you so anxious to kick it to the

curb?

Yeah, I mean, we have,
we have sunshine and we have flowers and

we have our animal companions and we have
these blue skies and birds that fly

around and sing to us and it's it's
glorious.

You know, we have we have lattes.

We do things like we make these beautiful
glass cups and we can drink delicious

beverages from them.

So anyway,
I went on a little long about that.

Sorry.

But, you know, ain't it great to be alive?

Yeah, there's some awful people out there.

But, you know,
don't let the awful people ruin your,

your good time, right?

You know, this is this is what we get.

You know,
maybe we don't get more than this.

So, yeah, savor it.

Enjoy it.

Shout out to my friends on the Pacific
Coast of China and Philippines.

I I have a very good friend from college,
a lover from college who lives in Hong

Kong.

Now shout out Jaron

I don't think he watches the podcast,
but he's in his sixty story glass

skyscraper as a typhoon,
super typhoon Ragasa bears down.

Ragasa is an 8 on the one to 10 scale.

So it's like, yeah,
they just got to do everything bigger and

better, more granular.

I figure, an eight is a four, right?

Category 4 for us.

But yeah.

Anyway, he says it should be fine.

It's just disconcerting when the
skyscraper sways and the typhoon wins,

which I- I'm kind of like,
can't you go to a basement?

But he says it should be fine.

It's designed to do that.

So crossing fingers.

Good luck.

Enjoy the, uh, fury.

I hope to get some photographs of it.

He said he would peek through the blinds.

And I said, "Well, you know," I said,
"I assume you can't board up the windows,

right?"

And he says, "No,
it doesn't work that way." Which,

it was a fair assumption on my part.

Somehow I imagined like the window washer.

What do they call them?

Like the platforms on the cables,
you know,

like going up and boarding up 60 stories
of glass, I guess.

Yeah, you don't do that.

But he says you put the blinds down to
keep in case a window breaks.

It prevents the glass.

It makes the glass just go down instead
of blowing all the way into the condo.

So it's like, OK, well, that's fair.

And he said,
but he would peek out and take photos.

So I would want it.

I mean, I would want to just keep those.

If I'm going to be in my glass box in the
sky during a super typhoon,

I kind of want to keep the blinds up and
just, like, fully experience this thing.

That's the theme for today, isn't it?

All right.

And actual writing news.

Since this is theoretically a podcast
about writing and publishing,

all the long time listeners know that we
do go off brand.

Well,
one thing before I launch into that is

thank you.

For those of you who have commented on
the amazing editing job that Sydney is

doing.

Props to Sydney.

I'm glad you're enjoying the new format.

It's all professional and stuff.

She's doing a great job.

If you pre-ordered Magic Reborn then you
will already know that I did successfully

delay the pre-order.

I'm sorry.

Gosh.

You know when I set that date I was like
tra-la tra-lay

There's no way I'm going to miss this
release date!

And turns out,
as Wayne and Garth would say, "Way."

So I moved it to November 30th.

It turns out if you were listening before
when I talked about this and I was saying

that my calendar was grayed out,
I was indeed in the Amazon Doghouse.

I emailed finally and asked and groveled
and said I know I'm a bad person,

but could I please be forgiven?

And so they forgave me.

And so I was able to delay it 30 days,
which I really,

I'm gonna make no promises,
but we should totally be able to make it.

And I got 2500 words on the book
yesterday.

I'm having a lot of fun with it.

I'm I feel like this is not spoilery.

This will make you all happy.

Those of you who have been waiting for
this book and waiting for the completion

of this nine book series,
I am going to have 6 POV's in this book

so I'm bringing back Nic and Gabriel's
POV's and also Jadren and Seliah.

So I just did a chapter in Jadren's POV
which was immensely,

I wanted to say amazing.

Both amazing and immensely entertaining.

Jadren is just one of my favorite
characters.

He's so,
so freaking snarky and pretends to be an

idiot and he's so wily.

So anyway,
I had a lot of fun writing that chapter

and I'm over 10,000 words on the book.

So you know Halloween was going to be a
major stretch, but November 30th,

Cross our fingers should be OK.

The other thing I've done is I have been
talking to cover artists about a cover

for the book that was called Bandits,
that was called Amethyst Run that went

out on submission as Sex,
Lies and Ley Lines.

I think I'm going to if we ended up,
if we end up pulling it from submission

by the end of October,
which is the plan unless we get an offer.

It would be great to get an offer,
but if we don't get one then I have plans

to self publish it.

And probably as Lust, Lies and Ley Lines.
So,

the quadruple L If you are a writer or
self publisher with both if you if you

understand metadata things.

Let me know if you think the word "lust"
will get me dungeoned or shadow band and

so forth.

I remember that there was a joke a long
time ago when I was a contractor working

for the EPA.

There was a program for leaking
underground storage tank tanks,

which was of course lust leaking
underground storage tanks,

which referred to the storage tanks in
gasoline stations where they would store

gas beneath the gas stations.

And a lot of them had been there for,
you know,

coming on 100 years now and they had
rested and they'd never been great

quality to begin with and they hadn't
been maintained.

And a lot of times these gas stations had
been abandoned.

You know, they went out of business.

So you think about going down one of
those two lane highways and you see the

abandoned gas station that is basically a
couple of concrete pillars and maybe a

concrete pad and a a falling down shack
that used to have snacks and a cashier.

And, and you know,
who knows how long it's been out of

business.

But one thing that persists - the word of
the day - is that it often those tanks

are still underneath the underground
storage tanks and they would be leaking.

And so there was this whole program to
you.

You have a problem with environmental
clean up with those kinds of things

because there's no way to take ownership.

It's like, who has to pay to do this?

You know,
the owners are dead or long gone.

You know who who's responsible, right?

It doesn't come cheap.

So there was this whole EPA program to
deal with these leaking underground

storage tanks because we don't really
want gasoline leaking into our soil and

groundwater.

But in Georgia,
bastion of Christian primness,

I do have my themes today, don't I?

They (in Georgia) one of their
legislators objected to the acronym list.

And so they changed it to I think it was
like G.U.S.T.

It was like ground underground or I I
maybe it was P.U.S.T.

I don't know what it was,
but at any rate it was not L.U.S.T.

And so the joke became that there is no
lust in Georgia.

A long a long story for a quasi good
punchline.

I had dinner with a friend last night at
Itzanami up at 10,000 waves,

which was wonderful,
but we got to sit by the window and it

was raining and the hills look misty.

10,000 waves I mentioned frequently was,
you know, it's Japanese themed,

so Itzanami Japanese themed restaurant
and it's up on the road to the ski area.

So it's beautiful views and it was a
really nice, nice dinner.

We had a great time.

But one of the topics of conversation
that came up is how people don't really

tell jokes anymore, right?

We don't tell jokes in the way that we
did pre Internet, you know,

now it's all these memes and videos and
that sort of thing.

Whereas it used to be back in the old
days before Internet people, you know,

usually had their repertoire of one or
two jokes.

And so we ended up exchanging like what
our party joke back in the day used to be.

And I had one that like I could tell it,
I think I told it this time and you know,

I don't know, 3 to 5 minutes,
but I could stretch this into like a half

an hour joke.

It was, it was a lot of fun,
but kind of making me think about that on

the one of my favorite ones,
which I can tell on here.

Sydney worries about me staying within
the guidelines cause YouTube does say,

have these things saying, you know,
have you used bad language?

It's like, but if you read it,
it's like it has to be really foul.

And in the first couple of minutes,
but this one,

all of the bad language is implied.

And so it's: What is the difference
between a circus act and a chorus line?

And the answer is: one of them is a
cunning array of stunts.

You have to be very careful to tell that
one when you are not drinking because

it's really easy to get it backwards.

Other things that are going on.

I finished beta reading for Minerva
Spencer.

You all are going to love this book.

I am now reading, interestingly,
I'm reading Octavia Butler's Parable of

the Talents,
which is the sequel to Parable of the

Sower, the lesser known of the two.

And I'm reading it for my science fiction
fantasy book group.

And I would not have read this book on my
own,

which is the entire reason I am in this
book group is because I read books I

wouldn't read on my own.

And so I have been reading this and it's
it's so dark.

And what's amazing is there's like this
rising Christian nationalist movement in

the book where their slogan is Make
America great again.

But she wrote this book in the mid 90s.

So it's like, I don't know,
she have a window to the future.

She was really clairvoyant that way.

But The thing is,
is Octavia Butler is such an incredibly

good writer that I am enthralled.

I cannot stop thinking about this story.

I want to pick it up again as soon as I
put it down.

Even though it's grim and I'm not
enjoying a lot of the things about the

story, I'm also obsessed with the story.

So it's it's fascinating to read that way.

And I don't know how she does it.

I mean,
that's really amazing when I'm reading

something like this and it's like,
what is it?

What is she doing?

One thing that I think she does,
and I want to say I don't like it,

but obviously it works,
is she does this foreshadowing of dread

where you know that bad things are going
to happen.

And so like my, my writer brain,
my analytical brain keeps thinking, oh,

she shouldn't be signaling, you know,
that this is going to happen because then

and it happens, I'm like, Oh my God,
she told me I'm like page one,

that this thing was going to happen and
why'd she do that?

And but it works.

It works really well.

And I'm fascinated.

And now I kind of want to try it.

I don't think I have it here.

I've also been reading T Kingfisher's
Hemlock and Silver, which I'm enjoying,

and I usually have both my Kindle and
that book next to me.

So like,
when Octavia starts to crush me too much,

I can pick up Hemlock and Silver.

But Dang,
Octavia Butler is such a compelling

writer.

I might have to just go read all of her
books again.

I think I, you know,
I definitely read Parable of the Sower,

although long time listeners will recall
when I read that for our book group and

realized that I'd only ever read the
first chapter and then gave up because it

was making me sad.

Yeah.

So I hope you all have a great week.

I hope you find something to go out and
celebrate about being alive.

If you did not get raptured,
in which case, more power to you.

Good luck.

I enjoy heaven.

Yeah.

But yeah,
if you're still on Earth with the rest of

us, I hope you find something.

Joyful and just being alive and enjoying
this amazing world that we live in and

the amazing sensations of having a human
body.

It's it's a precious thing.

All right,
you all take care and I will talk to you

all on Friday.

Bye bye.