First Cup of Coffee - Beauty Standards (in lieu of the Great Gatsby party) 11/11/25

Beauty standards never really left, did they? Also, important book updates, unlikeable female characters and my continued disapproval for our current administration. And also, Strange Familiar Audio Book will be available on Youtube MIDNIGHT TONIGHT!  Tune in!

Never the Roses ~ 

Exclusive Owl Crate signed edition

Very Beautiful Hardcover

Bless Your Ears Audiobook

And Kindle Unlimited has Never the Roses digital version!

Your friendly neighborhood author is doing author-ly things this upcoming month! Hummingbird House is officially OPEN FOR BOOKING🕊️
🕊️ Book your next writer retreat at Hummingbird House in Santa Fe here: https://hummingbirdhousesantafe.com 🕊️

Upcoming Events ~
LoveLitCon is a weekend of romantasy and bookish fun and I will be attending! Buy LoveLitCon tickets here using LOVE8368 for $10 OFF!

Tuscon Festival of Books is March 14th-15th this year! See you there *Wink* 

📚Books📚

Preorder MAGIC REBORN here

Among the Thorns will be here July 14th - Preorder available now

STRANGE FAMILIAR is live

You can always buy print copies of my books from my local indie, Beastly Books!

Transcript

0:00

Oh, so I'm watching Only Murders in the building. I think you all know. You know, my my faithful listeners there know that I am a girls girl. After Trump is gone, which hopefully will not be much longer now. And I know some of you will be offended that I say that, but, yeah, he's on his, I think he's on his last legs. The world will be better for it. I'm not sorry. Good morning everyone. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Ambrosia. Today is Tuesday, 1111. How are you? Well, this is me. I feel like I'm coming in late to our coffee date. And just so I drink coffee and staring at you. I'm actually fine. Let's see, where did we last leave our heroine? The Friday podcast. I think I, like, cut you all up on everything. I am working on the Among the Thorns edits. I am at peace with having to push off Magic Reborn yet again. You may not be at peace with it, but, so it goes. Oh, really? Good news on the, the audio book front for a long, long delayed audiobook for strange. Familiar on YouTube. For those of you who listen to my audiobooks for free on YouTube for that series. I finally compiled it yesterday. So the thing is, is this is not a super straightforward jump in on YouTube. Salute. And have done. It's okay. I'm going to go into the weeds here just because I know some of you have been asking me, why haven't I done this yet? I know the book's been out forever. It all have to do with the laptop exchange. That was one of the reasons, anyway. So the book released on Audible on June 10th. Astute listeners will recall, was like right before book tour for half of the roses. So when you do the audiobooks, your narrator delivers it to you when you do it chapter by chapter. And so it's a pain to upload to the retailers. It's not horrible, but it's also a not inconsiderable investment of time and energy in order to put it on YouTube. And I learned how to do this from Lindsay Broker when I said, well, I was putting it on the retailers for somebody said, well, aren't you what enticed by now? And it's like, yes, miracle. But this has been floating down my to do list. What I do is I use a program called Wondershare Filmora, which I import all the chapters to that saves the project and then export it to Dropbox. The thing is, is these files are frickin enormous. And to do this, I have to have enough room on my hard drive. And with the old laptop, I did that. And so every time I was doing this, I was having to reinstall Wondershare for more because it takes up so much space and then I would have to do multiple attempts to try to do this to see if I had enough room, even though I was looking at properties on my C drive and everything. It was like not the it would take up more space than it said it needed, and I know it was. It's just a trial to do, and I would have to delete other files, which is fine, but. It was just a pain. Just a pain. So I was waiting to transfer laptops. You know, that I finally transfer laptops, got the new laptop set up, but I only did this a couple of weeks ago, and I'm still having to go back to the old laptop to do my mom's finances because it wants me to do the confirm to her cell phone code for one of her bank accounts, and she gets upset now when I ask her about it. I mean, it's good security is good. Security is a great thing. The Tldr, which it's way too late for that, is that yesterday I installed Wondershare Filmora. It was actually really nice to have no hiccups. I saved the project. It's exported. I didn't have to go through any hoops or deletions. And so parang new laptop, very fresh memory. And so today I will probably will certainly probably uploaded to YouTube. It takes hours to do. Anyway, that's coming just in time for the end of Magic Reborn. So I think it's funny because I just looked on audible to see, well, what the release date was, and I saw, the review. It's a one star review, for a strange familiar saying, what happened to a release that they, the collector, previous books, but now she's turned into a malleable nitwit, and she hated her, or they hated her. And, hated this work. One star for for performance. One star for story. Sorry. Yeah. I've talked about this, right? You know, people don't always like it when their characters, screw up and. Yes, Alice goes through some really difficult stuff in strange, familiar. I don't know what to tell you. What? She valuable. She nonmetallic. She sacrifices herself to to save her niece, and she gets sucked into her, malevolent narcissist of a father's when their populations as she malleable by the way they spoke malleable world. But, that would be plenty of me to point out. I don't think she was. I think she she tries to go along with the program for a while, and there are reasons for that. I don't know what else to say. It it's a thing that I bring up a lot. Right? Because sometimes my characters are flawed and they screwed up and they are susceptible to things like manipulation. And it's so funny because, like, I was looking at the photos of, The Great Gatsby party. For Halloween at Mar-A-Lago. Did you all look at these? I think you all know. You know, my my faithful listeners there know that I am a girls girl. I think whatever you want to do to make yourself look pretty to it. I know plenty of people who have had work done, as they say. I myself have not. Other than, like braces and all that kind of thing when I was young. I am not saying that I won't ever get work done. I think I told you all on the podcast the story of the the woman in Hawaii who said congratulated me for being such a successful, accomplished woman who didn't feel like she needed Botox. And I was like, do I do I need Botox? From video, it's like hair. Should we turn up the room, like really, really bright and like, do I need Botox? I thought I was fascinated that she could look at me and see that I've never had Botox. Yeah. I think at some point if I feel like I need it. But so far I'm pretty happy with how I look. Maybe I would get something done at some point. What else? But if you look at these photos from Mar-A-Lago, was it Lauren Boebert who is only like 35 and has had all of this work done? And it's very similar, like she used to be, a quite attractive woman, you know, like conventional standards. You wouldn't, you know, you might think she was pretty if you pastor on the street. And then she had all this worked on the same kind of thing with this weird emphasis on the eyes, on the cheekbones, of the popped up lips. And, I was sharing this with a friend of mine who commented that it's really interesting to see this very particular physical type being associated with a certain kind of ideology. And, you know, I really do blend the cult thing that I wonder, you know, like once his influence has passed, will they look at themselves in these photos and wonder what were they thinking? Or what was what were they trying to do? What were they trying to look like? It's just really strange to me, you know, and and equally strange, I was watching the fifth season of Only Murders in the building that actually finished it last night. I didn't think it was a great season, but I thought it was a good season. I enjoyed it, I think beanie Feldstein is great and looks just like my agent Sarah. So I told her she needs to watch it and she said, I'm not the first person to tell her this. Oh, so I'm watching Only Murders in the building and there's this character in it, a rich white woman character. And and to get that actress looks really familiar. Who is that actress? So I looked it up and folks, it was Renee Zellweger, but it was an unrecognizable Renee Zellweger. Like she has had some hot Botox, even to me, who, like, knows nothing about it. Like, her face is totally different now. It's like this well on her face and doesn't move right. Doesn't have the character that she used to have. And I sent this to one of my friends and I'm like, what the heck? And and I do feel bad being critical because, like, I get it, you know, and it's hard for women in Hollywood because you have to be super, super skinny, which is hard on your face. Right? The, the French, I say that as a woman, ageless, she has to choose between her face and her ass. And I think that's true. If you want a tiny rear end, if you don't want to be heavy, then you have a strained looking face will change issues. So they Botox it up. And my friend said, oh, yeah, you should look at Anne Hathaway and Emma Stone. They've done it too. And I went and looked and. Yeah. And I think I'm so disappointed because I think Anne Hathaway and Emma Stone are so incredibly freaking gorgeous and have amazing faces, amazing expressive faces. And I've done this. It's somebody had quipped in one of these articles that they all have the same plastic surgeon on speed dial, because they are all it's back to the same thing. This ideology, this. They look like they're walking around with Instagram filters on their faces, and I guess that's what they want. It's what they all start thinking. They need to do this. I thought that we were allowing women to age in Hollywood and, to look like the age that they are, and, and that's kind of how I feel with myself. I mean, I know that I'm very fortunate to have youthful genes for my family, and I look younger than my actual age, but also I'm I'm with how I look. And I think it's just really kind of sad that is that these girls are not, and I really hate these pressures that are making them distort themselves, create this dysmorphia, to create some kind of ideal. Update on Among the Thorns is I, I've actually finished all of the inline edits. I'm much less stressed now, but I decided just to take as long as it takes to get this done. I have to do a little bit of weaving, some things where they said, you know, like, can we have this mentioned earlier, that sort of thing. So now I have, hidden all track changes and reading through, and I think I'll probably be done maybe tomorrow. And if not, I'm fine, but, it's it's going pretty well now and much less panic. Set up the preorders for love, Lies and Layla lines. Brainstorming titles with Sarah this afternoon. So I will set up the preorders for books two and three before I push the release date for Magic Reborn, I found out that I can. It'll be December. It won't be very long. Sorry. And then I'll lose my preorder privileges for a year. Maybe I can appeal them, but. But we'll see. I want to get those three books up for preorder first, and I will hopefully make those dates. I want to say I'm definitely going to book one. I will, because it's done. Sarah's having the internet proof up right now. We're going to see about selling the audio rights for it. I'm working on a series title. I'm thinking Goldilocks on the bandit, Goldie and the bandit, the pixie Dust bandits, the fair bandits. Let me get your votes. I would love to hear what you think it should be. And soon we'll have a cover and all of that preorder link up. I think I am shooting for January 20th for the release of that book. That's somewhat arbitrary, but that seems like a good day to, you know, sort of like after we've gotten past the doldrums of January, when nobody feels like they have any money, but you might still have Kindle credits for, the holidays. So let me know if you prefer a different date, but I think that's what we're shooting for. I hope you all have a productive week. I hope you are happy with how you look, and that you are embracing where you are in your life because it's important. I saw a, fitness influencer the other day, quote a woman who, you know, who said that she's not training for her summer body, that she's training for her old lady body. And I thought, wow, that's a great line. Yeah. Be strong and our age, whatever it is. All right. I will talk to you all on Friday. You all take care. Bye bye.