First Cup of Coffee - Friday, October 3 2025

Happy The Life of a Showgirl day!!! Team Jeffe is really Team Swiftie, and all of us are hand-hearting. Do we have any outfit ideas inspired by The Black Dog for the movie premiere on Sunday? In other news, let's talk about asynchronous order of events in writing and how Octavia Butler uses this plus foreshadowing to craft an excellent story. And also an idea brewing about how I can use such things to satisfy my creative urges. 

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Transcript

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This is Jeffe Kennedy, also writing as Jennifer K Lambert, author of Epic Fantasy romance. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Good morning everyone. Today is Say it with me people. It is Friday. Woo Hoo Hoo. October 3rd, 2025. Happy Life of a Showgirl day. I'm here with my first cup of coffee should be champagne, but I have work to do today. This is a one of those things that you know, like there's the same which is attributed to Hemingway. I don't know if it's true that you know, right. Write Drunk, Edit Sober And I don't know, I can't write even if I've had like half a glass of wine, just a little bit of alcohol. No, I know a guy, a poet once who was, he said that one beer enabled him to write poetry. More than that, it was a disaster. Less than that, he couldn't. It was 1 beer. But I don't even remember his name or his poetry. So, you know, maybe that wasn't true either. So cheers. So, yeah, Taylor dropped her new album, Life of a Showgirl last night at midnight. No, I have not listened to it yet. I could have. I was. She dropped it at midnight Eastern Time. I was barely, barely awake at 10:00 PM mountain time because I was talking to a friend and via text and yeah, but I did not stay up to listen to the album. I, I don't know, you know, like there's all these levels of like, if you're a real fan, you're supposed to XYZ. I don't have this need to listen to the thing immediately. I know that assistant Carien has already listened, but she's in Europe. And so, you know, like, the album dropped at like,

8: 2:16

00 AM her time. So she's been sending me little hints. And I don't know if Sydney the tyrant has listened yet, but I'll listen today, sometime this weekend. Yeah, I'm really just in. No, I don't ever have to be that right that moment. I know that my agent Sarah was staying up last night to listen, and that was midnight, New York time. I need my sleep, my beauty sleep. I am doing a peculiarly, that's hard to say peculiarly fangirl thing on Sunday. I am going to the Violet Crown Theater here in town in the afternoon and I am going to go see the the video 'cause she's doing the movie theater version of the the video with behind the scenes stuff from the Era's tour. And I am very excited to go do that. And this is the movie theater that has food and they have a bar so I can have that glass of wine 'cause I will not be attempting to write. And I can sit back and enjoy Taylor's creativity, and I'm very excited about that. Yesterday, I had brunch with my friend Jim Sorensen, and I told Jim that I was doing this because Jim is a fanboy for Weird Al Yankovic and Duran Duran. I mean, this, I feel like at least I am in the modern swim of things. But he's like went to this sphere and Las Vegas and saw Duran Duran three nights in a row kind of fan. I am not that kind of fan. But I told him yesterday that I was going to go see this at the movie theater. And he was very enthusiastic and supportive. Of course, I feel a little bit silly that I'm doing this. He wanted to know if I'm going to cosplay, if I'm going to dress up. And he's like I said, I did get asked in an interview what my favorite era is. And so in case any of you care and want to know, this is what I said in the interview. I feel like I'm not, I think it's different if you ask what is your favorite era versus what is, what era are you in? Two different questions, right? But this was what's your favorite. And for a very long time, it was reputation for me. I was a reputation girl until folklore, and then I was a folklore girl until midnights. And I thought midnights was going to be my forever and always. And in many ways, midnights hit at an exact point in my life, kind of like at the same time that I was writing Never the Roses. So there was a whole lot of emotional stuff going on. There are things in midnights that will forever. I don't know, I might be in my midnights era, let's put it that way. Oh, look, I'm I'm wearing black and blue. So, you know, in my midnights era. But then tortured poets department came out and that is has really replaced midnight so far as listening and favoriting favorite song right now continues to be the black dog. What would I dress up as? And and you all won't have time unless you tag me on social media. If you have ideas. I mean, it's like, you know, I I kind of want to go dressed up like bejeweled or something. I could wear black and blue. I don't know. I don't you know, it's sort of like what can I wear that anyone would get? I don't normally do this sort of thing. The other thing that Jim asked me that was kind of funny was, you know, he asked if I was going with anyone and I said no, that I don't have any friends who are local Swifties, right. Although, you know, like Sydney's not far away. We we could have gone together said, but I said, yeah, I don't, you know, and I, there's no, none of my local friends are, are into it. I mean, Meegan, because she's a delightful friend and she was curious, went with me to the era's tour movie, but I didn't want to make her go to this cause yeah, so I'm just going by myself. But Jim was like, surely there's local Swifties in Santa Fe. And I said no doubt they are. And they will be at the movie theater.

So I don't know if if you're at the 4: 7:06

00 PM Sunday Violet Crown showing, I'm going to be in the front row in the middle, you know, come say hi, Especially if you could think of something for me to dress up as, I don't know, the black dog. Would I just wear all black? That would be easy. I could do that. Yeah. Happy life of a Showgirl day. What's very interesting is, is the cover of Among the Thorns. We have not done the cover reveal yet, but the cover is orange. So it feels like, you know, me and Taylor. We are. I don't know if you all know this, but we're actually BFFS. I'm amused by some of the people strategizing, like how to make sure that Taylor knows that they're willing to be her bridesmaid. And, you know, I feel like, yeah, I you know, Taylor should know that I'm perfectly willing to be one of her bridesmaids. She wants me, me maid of honor. I'll. I'll organize the parties, especially if she's footing the bill. I don't think I could afford her typical party. But yeah, you know, Taylor and I, I think we are tailor made, ha ha, ha to be best forever distinct. That's the thing about parasocial relationships, right? You know, it's like you connect with someone creatively, you connect with the work that they make and the presence that they put out there in the world, but you don't know their, their warts. Yeah. It's it's not a real, it's not a real relationship, real as it may feel. And I know that this happens with authors and readers all the time. I did. I did not intend to spend 9 minutes talking about Taylor Swift. I apologize for those of you not into her, but, you know, you knew I was a snake when he picked me up. That's a Taylor joke. It's a half Taylor joke anyway. Anyway, OK, so I did have actual writing things to talk about today. I've had a very good writing day yesterday and I was feeling feeling very jumbled up creatively. It was interesting. I'm better today. And so I'm trying to figure out how to tell you this story. And interestingly, it has to do with breaking up chronology, non chronological order. And I'm right now struggling with what order do I tell you this story in? Let me go back to, I said I would talk more about Octavia Butler and Parable of the Talents. And one of the things that she did in this book that I didn't get around to talking about 'cause I was probably blabbing about something else, is that she plays a whole lot with asynchronous scenes and character arcs. And this may end up being spoilery if you really want to read this book and know nothing about it. I mean, there's like, not See, that's The thing is that she spoils her own story very early in the book. She tells you things that like, maybe you didn't. Jim and I were arguing about this. It's like, did, did it help us to know that? Did we want to know that before it happened or not? And I'm fascinated that she made this choice to tell us some things. So for example, and this is going to be spoilery, but Parable of the Sower ends where they have found a safe place and they're building this Earthseed community called Acorn, which is basically a commune. And but it's, you know, strength in numbers, protected from the violence of the world, able to grow their own food, they're finally safe and happy. That's where Parable of the Sower ends. And so then Parable of the Talents picks up. And right away she tells us that this doesn't last. Which I mean, I guess otherwise there wouldn't be a story. If you were going to have a story about people living happily in the commune and being safe and growing food, it wouldn't be a very interesting story, unfortunately. But she has a baby, She has an infant daughter, and the infant daughter is taken from her as kidnapped, essentially. And she spends part of the book searching for this daughter. And we also get an interweaving of the adult daughter reading her mother's journals. And we find out very early on, she tells us that her mother never finds her. So like the whole time that Lauren is searching for her daughter who was taken from her, we know she is not going to find her. And it's fascinating to me how it works. In the story, Jim made the comment that she's not very methodical about the search, but also she has nothing to go on. She has like 1 one thing to go on. She uses that it doesn't work for certain reasons. I will not spoil for you, but we and as the reader, we know why that doesn't lead anywhere. But she doesn't know that. But Jim said he thought he might have felt frustrated with the futility of her search if he didn't know. You know, hey, reader, this is going to be a futile search. She does that in a number of ways. The because we have this in part, the POV from the daughter looking back and judging her mother's choices and saying, well, if my mother had not done this, if my mother had not done that. And ever since I read this, it's been weighing on me. And we had the book discussion group on Monday night. I talked about this on the Tuesday podcast, and nobody else was nearly as interested in this as I am. But, you know, like, I geek out on structure, so, you know, it's fair. Nobody needs to geek out like I do. And Jim had promised to save some geeking out for me. So we did. We, you know, talked about that and analyzed some of the structure and what she did and why. And it's a kind of foreshadowing. And I've listened to Connie Willis give her workshop a couple of times on foreshadowing and how it works. My friend Kelly Robson, who just finished her novel and is sending it to her agent. Yeah, Kelly, congratulations. Kelly's been writing mostly short. Everything she's published so far has been novella length or shorter. So first novel is a big step, and I'm very excited for her. But Kelly said that she thinks that what Connie is referring to as foreshadowing isn't really. And I even looked up the definition because, you know, like, we all learn this in high school English, right? You know, foreshadowing is when the author hints at what's to come. And I know in high school, a lot of people would get very frustrated saying, well, truly, the author didn't mean this. Am I supposed to believe that the author, like, made the curtains be blue in order to transmit the idea of depression? And you know, just because they had the black cat run across the road at the beginning of the book, does that really mean that they were telling us that this would happen at the end? And frankly, yes, yes. Now I can tell you with full confidence that yes, that is what those authors planned. And I think some of it is because as a reader, you learn to read from beginning to end, of course, and that's how you experience the story. And it takes a while to figure out that authors, that we are ourselves non chronological no matter what. I'm a linear writer. I write beginning to end, but I still go back and I rearrange things and I layer in things. So like if I have the black cat at the end of the book, I'm like, oh, I need to have the black cat run across the road at the beginning of the book. And when I'm deciding, OK, the curtains, what color should they be? Well, yellow's too cheerful and red's right out. And it's kind of a blue mood, so let's make them blue. And what would be really striking is like Navy blue curtains. Who has Navy blue curtains, right? That kind of thing. You do make these choices. So so Kelly and I were talking about foreshadowing. What I think what Kelly's talking about is being more than foreshadowing as like this technique of hinting to the reader what's going to come. It's like setting a mood, setting an expectation. And that's what Octavia Butler really does, is she sets this whole, like, she tells you this terrible thing is going to happen. And I don't know if it makes it worse when you read through the terrible thing or makes it better, but it's a fascinating choice. And so this has been niggling at me. And I was trying to convey this to another friend of mine who's not a writer. And we were talking about this and I was trying to convey how this feels, that it's like, like it feels like there's a storm on the horizon. Like I know this storm is coming in my direction. I can see it out on the horizon. The clouds are black and the lightning is forking down. And I know it's coming my way and it's not here yet, but I can feel all this potential energy of the storm. So it's like, I have no idea what this what this story is. I have no idea what this project is or what this idea is. No idea. I keep saying that, no idea, but I can feel it. And it has to do with this non chronological asynchronous thing. And, and it was bugging me a whole lot yesterday when I was talking to my non writer friend who studies art and so has really interesting things to say to me about my creative process in a way that's like, I don't know, more objective from the outside, if that makes sense. But he was suggesting to me that I think about like if 'cause I don't write asynchronously, right? In fact, in like Among the Thorns, I worked very hard to make sure the timelines match up. And so my friend was saying, well, maybe what you can do since you don't know what this idea is yet. Like he was suggesting ways that I could make room for this idea for when it arrives. And one thing was, is to start thinking about how I would, given my process, write something that's asynchronous or non chronological. And that really did help like kind of bleed off some of that energy. It gave it a direction to go because of course many of you know, I am the spreadsheet queen. He said why don't you make a spreadsheet and start putting down ideas for like, if you were to do it, how would you do it? Oh, it was immensely helpful suggestion. So I was grateful, grateful for that. The thing about writing Magic Reborn and I was kind of ******** about this, which is a champagne problem. And so I feel bad complaining about it, but it is one of the things about being a bread and butter author, about being a career writer. You know, like I need to write the 9th book in this series. I need to finish out the series arc. Even though I don't feel particularly, I mean, I do want to write it. I'm loving revisiting the characters and I do want to get this done and tied up. But this book is a whole lot of tying up of threads that I started with Dark Wizard, right? And I was kind of looking at it. I, it would be interesting to look at what the exact percentage would be if I looked at all of the page numbers. But given that it's book nine of nine, this is essentially the last 11 to 12% of the overall arc, right? So if we apply the three act 8 scene structure, geeking out over structure, if we apply that to the overall arc, then basically this book is the Act three climax and De Numa, it's like turtles all the way down, right? It's De Numa all the way down. And so which means that it's just like not, I don't want to say not as fun to write, but it's different to write because it's, you know, like thread, thread, thread, thread, or, you know, like crisis thread, thread, thread, thread, thread. And I need to write it. I need to get it out there. I kind of want to be done with this series. Not that I don't love this world because I do. And I may come back to the world, we'll see. But you know, like I've been writing this for four years now, five years maybe when I started something like that, you know, and I'm like, I'm ready for something else. I'm ready for this idea. That's on the horizon, and now that many of you have read Never the Roses, I hope you've read Never the Roses. I know some of you Jeffrey Kennedy readers are hesitant to read Never the Roses 'cause you're afraid that I'm going to break your heart. And I might a little bit. But still, I think you'll love this story. This idea has to do with the dream, which is the huge part of Never the Roses, because the protagonist Onera is an oneromancer and that was that's her magic is to manipulate the dream. And so this book 3, it's going to be a whole lot about a lot's going to happen inside the dream, which is non chronological, right? So I think that's what this idea is, and I'm really excited about it, but it's gonna wait. It's gonna wait. Can sit out there on the horizon, which fortunately it's not here yet. When I wrote Never the Roses, it was the book I wasn't supposed to be writing because it was here. It was raining and it was raining so hard that I, I don't know, I may be taking this metaphor too hard, but I couldn't too far. Sorry that I I may be taking this metaphor too far. I can. I see how excited I am. But yeah, it was like the rain was pouring down. I couldn't do anything else. I could only direct that rain. This idea is waiting. I'm gonna finish Magic Reborn. I think I can. Now that I've come to this realization that it is pretty much turtles all the way down. I think I can. I think I can get through it and just get it written. Get it written. And And my friend, my art, my art professor friend said, you know, this is sometimes writing is a chore for you, you know, and it's like it's, it is it's work. And I think we have this idea that it should always be the storm, but sometimes it's just tying off the threads and cutting the ends and, you know, finishing off the project, turning it under, making it neat. Now we're doing sewing metaphors. OK, so I'll stop. I that's probably a sign for me to stop. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you all on Tuesday. You all take care. Bye bye.