First Cup of Coffee - A Working Girl Holiday

Happy Turkey Day! As the title suggests, I have some book updates for you. You all know this by now, but the work has kept me grounded amidst the craziness of the personal as of late. I'll be talking about both this episode, as well as some very exciting news about when preorders for my NEW book series will be available.

Among the Thorns line edits are D-O-N-E DONE! Preorder here https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250360373/amongthethorns

In case you missed it, Strange Familiar Audio Book is now available on Youtube ~ Listen for free here: https://youtu.be/kZagVrmHdfc?si=zGU8wy3Ag_GQ4KBP

You can find the Owl Crate signed edition of Never the Roses here: https://www.owlcrate.com/products/never-the-roses-exclusive-owlcrate-edition?srsltid=AfmBOoovpc9OwJyFlDu1dq8XLBcZ_FDmq1etopWL8XhKmQq9puAuY0fI

A very beautiful hardcover edition can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Never-Roses-Jennifer-K-Lambert/dp/125036034X

The audio book can be listened to here: https://www.audible.com/pd/Never-the-Roses-Audiobook/B0DFRLPZSG?srsltid=AfmBOopGkvRC9UUEKryNef-Xsp05Bi7FZ2UEyi109IEFDZ0SIXpHqQAI

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! https://lovelit.com/

Tuscon Festival of Books is March 14th-15th this year! See you there *Wink* https://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org

Books

Preorder MAGIC REBORN here: https://www.jeffekennedy.com/magic-reborn – OUT Dec. 30th

STRANGE FAMILIAR is live: https://www.jeffekennedy.com/strange-familar – OUT NOW You can always buy print copies of my books from my local indie, Beastly Books! https://www.beastlybooks.com

Socials

Join my Patreon and Discord for mentoring https://www.patreon.com/JeffesCloset

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Transcript

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I know many of you are waiting for it. I know many of you love this series and you're excited. Strange familiar is up on YouTube. getting this stuff done. I'm very excited for you all to, read love lines and ley lines Don't even ask. Good morning everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy Also writing as Jennifer K. Lambert Author of epic fantasy romance. And here was my first cup of coffee. Oh, some days it's just so good. Today is Tuesday, November 25th, 11 2525. Thanksgiving week here in the US, which, if you're not US based, I don't know what it's like for you. I get the impression from, well, my Canadian bestie Kelly Robson, that Canadian Thanksgiving doesn't seem to be either she doesn't emphasize it or it just isn't quite the deal. It is here. It's really morphed into this thing where everyone pretty much takes the entire week off. Certainly they take off. They get Thursday off. If you have, like the day job and most people also get Friday, like they'll either take a vacation day or their company just gives it to them. And now a whole lot of people take Wednesday off. My my agent emailed that. You know, today's her last day in the office for the week, which, you know, blessings. More power to them. But it's sort of this encroaching holiday. And I guess everybody's tired, but, yeah, people are taking, like, the entire week off. So it's funny for me because, well, not only is my boss a bitch and does not give me time off, she gave me time off to deal with my mother. Who broke her hip? But you haven't been following along, and now I have to work all through the holiday to catch up on the work I didn't get done because I was gone unexpectedly for ten days. It's funny, because it feels like the only the least of my issues at this point. But it's also like, Thanksgiving's going to be weird this year. Only the third year or only the second year that I haven't traveled for Thanksgiving. One of them being pandemic. When we decided to stay home and not travel for Thanksgiving because of pandemic. So that would have been Thanksgiving of 2020. And then there was one other year when David and I decided to not do a family for Thanksgiving just to change things up. And we actually drove to Santa Fe. We were living in Wyoming at the time, and we drove to Santa Fe and spent, I think we actually got here on Thanksgiving. I think we left that morning and spent, the long weekend here. Which is a good memory to have. Maybe David and I should go do something fun over the four day weekend to, go commemorate our, long ago vacation. That was probably something like 2007, 2008. We moved here in 2009. There was one other year, that we didn't travel for Thanksgiving or spend it with family, which I had dubbed, like, the most miserable Thanksgiving ever. And I guess the thing is, is I really like Thanksgiving. And so in general, lower pressure from Christmas, you know, there's not the decorating and gift giving involved. Yeah. And I like the we have a lot of nice Thanksgiving traditions, you know, like going, shopping, not really Black Friday shopping, but on the Friday after Thanksgiving, my mom and stepsister and I would go to, the really nice mall to uncle and we where we, we mostly shop for ourselves, clothes and so forth. but the worst Thanksgiving ever is, described actually in my in my book, I feel like I really, some like, looks like I got, But. And then it feels funny when I do. But in my essay collection, Wyoming tracks True Love and The Weather Channel. There is an essay. Which I think is called Thanksgiving. This is my very first book. Published in 2004. Well, these more than 20 years ago. Amazing. But, my stepson Mike ended up going into the hospital. We had a staph infection in his hip socket. There's a lot of hips going around. Hips get in the way of my Thanksgiving people. Yeah. So he ended up being hospitalized over Thanksgiving, and we, ate kind of a Thanksgiving dinner in the hospital cafeteria, which was absolutely as miserable as it sounds. This year, I can hardly feel sorry for myself. We are going to go to France for Thanksgiving. Jim Sorensen, the ever delightful is, invited us to come. His mom is coming to town and cooking. It'll be nice to spend it with friends. And then I'm getting together with Meagan that evening, because we're just going to hang out and watch a movie, so it'll be nice. What Christmas will look like, I don't know. but yeah. So what is Christmas going to look like this year? I don't know, I think I've sort of been going back and forth on decorating, the year that my stepdad Leo, because I've had to stepdads. Three dads , stepdad Leo died, which was 2003. He died in January. And we spent Christmas down in Denver and we knew he was failing, we knew that was going to be up. And I did not decorate for Christmas that year. And that's I actually wrote an essay about that as part of the day, you know, like I wrote essays about everything, and that was called Hemlock and Mistletoe, which is in the Puerto del Sol anthology, but I'm not sure it's available anymore. But that's an interesting read. If you want to read that, you can get all of the details. But I talked about how I just couldn't bring myself to decorate for Christmas, and this year feels different. I'm kind of feeling like, do I want to spend the energy on that? But also, yes, I think I need to spend the energy on that. So I do think there's also a chance that I'm going to go to Tucson for Christmas, in which case I would drive. David and I there. David and me? because whatever. Who knows? It's I'm feeling very one day at a time about stuff right now. And, at least I am able to do some planning. But, like, people are asking me questions about this summer. This, that or the other thing and I’m like I have no idea. I don’t know. And I'm very happy for Thanksgiving. I'm bringing pies. Hooray! But, otherwise, I'm really happy to be able to waltz into someone else's house and show up and be given food and alcohol. Hopefully. My mom is really full of questions this morning. It works in the way it's the, the dementia is interesting. And some of you may know, I did my graduate work in neurophysiology, so I know some stuff about brains, but mostly I know about neuropathology, sensory processing. And then, like, the global stuff that I had to learn. But. So I don't really know the psychological aspect. And I think probably dementia isn't all that well understood, but the missfirings are fascinating. You know, like, sometimes she texts me very angry and says horrible things to me that she never would have said. Which of course, obviously makes me emotional But, you know, like, sometimes she's very clear headed and other times she, is very confused. You know, it's like, why does the brain work this way? But neurological stuff is like that. With my husband David, who has Parkinson's disease, you know, it's very much good days and bad days, and it's like the nervous system is is fascinating. But also, hard. Hard to work with, right? I know of a few people who have, like, gone completely off social media, and I know I've mentioned that some, Becca, some who I like and admire and recommend did a video on what to look at in 2026, which full confession, I have not watched it yet. It's half an hour long. Where am I going to get half an hour? Yeah, she said, asking you to listen to my podcast. But one thing she said is emphasizing in-person events, which I think is great. Yes. We want to emphasize, because I did watch the beginning and I heard other people talking about it. There's my caveat. Secondary sources. So, yeah, the in-person stuff, I think is very important. It's also hard right. If anyone else is in a position similar to I am where, you know, you can't necessarily get away, you know, there's the cost and there's the, the time to go do the thing. Yeah, it's it sounds great in theory. A lot of people are doing local stuff, and I need to do more local stuff. I was getting the local writers together for a monthly gathering. I should probably try to do that again. Those of us who have been around for, like, the 20 years of social media. Right. Facebook coming after, like Myspace and my journal and some of those things maybe we could call it 25 years of the internet and having it be. Well, as Cory Doctorow says, right? shitified, you know, like it's just become this place of bots and manipulation I saw a fascinating article about how, you know, like the, the, the bots that they're using, you know, like the clickbait headlines to drive people to, websites with that are revenue generating, you know, by foreign people, people in Mauritania doing this wasn't Macedonia might have been Macedonia. It's amazing. You know, like you you can't blame them for wanting to generate this revenue, but it's just become this, you know, sort of the mouse and the cheese and in the maze thing. Right. And I don't know if I'm being articulate that way, but, you know, this click and reward, click and reward and how much of it is really community. Because in the beginning there was community. And there are other ways for us to have community. Discord so far, fingers crossed, is being pretty good for being able to talk to people. But, how how do we how how do we have communities that aren't being controlled, manipulated by these mega corporations, right, who basically want to control our political ideas and, get us to funnel money towards them? It's it's like fighting a battle that is absolutely fighting a battle in order to have community with other people. And I suppose it's a good fight, obviously, but it's, it's too bad that it has to be a battle. Yesterday, I took Kelly Robson home. She flew in. I think I mentioned to look after David for me while I was dealing with my mom and I. She flew home yesterday morning. I miss her. Speaking of communities, I love that people come to me. If, if you all want to come to me, you know hummingbird House is available and it would be great to have have that opportunity for community and interaction. I started yesterday, as I think I already mentioned, on revising Magic Reborn. So my whole plan is to revise from the beginning of 220 pages at this point, 60% through, so I'm revising from the beginning. So it will be all revised. And then get a running start on finishing it, finish this puppy off. For December 30th, release. And I realized that I made, Well, it's funny, I want to call it an error in judgment, but it was actually just this, this weird blindness because yesterday. Was it. Yesterday, maybe it was. My time has still not quite bounced back into its correct elastic position. I reach I got my schedule yet again. I know I did some rejiggering last week when I was in Tucson, and I went through and pushed the preorder, Friday and rescheduled and scheduled the, the three, books that I worked at. I tell you, the series title, maybe I didn't, it's going to be The Fast and the Fe. The fast and the. Okay, isn't that cute? Is it? Sarah came up with that first book is love, Lies and Ley Lines, which will be out January 20th. So I've set up the preorder. I have like zero preorders so far because, well, actually, anything I want to say because I haven't told anyone yet, but I guess I just told you all, we're still waiting on the cover. I haven't, like, completely done the metadata, but it's up there. But on magic reborn, I refigure the schedule and it's like, okay, I can get it done, I can get it uploaded. It'll be out by December 30th, which was the latest I could push it. And then I realized that I actually had myself working straight through Christmas to do this. And will it work? So I, I up the word count, which hopefully will be okay. My mom’s kitties are in the casita, so I’ll probably over there today to keep them company. Always nice. Strange familiar is up on YouTube. So the weird thing that happened was I made a mistake, compiling the audio book. Partly because I was just stressed and I hadn't done it for a while, and I ended up putting a chapter four, kind of like in the middle of chapter three. So chapter three started with the chapter format that only one person commented. But I tried to fix it and I thought maybe I could edit it on YouTube. No, no, that did not work. So it ended up. So I ended up having to upload a new one. So there ended up being like on there, an eight hour audiobook and an 11 minute audiobook. And so I'm sorry, I, like a lot of you commented and sent me messages. Yeah. So going what is the deal here? And also like when I was trying to delete it, I guess some of you were like listening and it disappeared. So I really thought, you know, like with Buzzsprout on the audio, I can just replace the audio. I can just re upload a new one. But I could not figure out a way on YouTube to simply upload the new versions of the incorrect version. So that's why that was such a mess. But it should be correct. Now, I made the 11 minute version, which was like me trying to edit it down. Don't even ask. Yeah. You know, I feel like I'm reasonably techie, but I'm not extensively techie anymore because the tech keeps changing right? So anyway, that's all my things. Because it's Thanksgiving. No podcast on Friday, but I will talk to all next week if you celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope I hope that's what you want it to be. I hope that it is relaxing and a good celebration of the things you want to celebrate. And yeah, and then we'll talk to you all on Tuesday. We'll take care. Bye bye. So.