First Cup of Coffee with Jeffe Kennedy
First Cup of Coffee with Jeffe Kennedy
First Cup of Coffee - Opening up the case for optimizing your writing style
Happy December! Time is flying by but it sure does feel like it. Can you maintain the integrity of your stories and still optimize your earnings as writer? Or would that be the same as writing to market? Ask me about Mar-A-Lago face, I could go on and on. Because it's actually quite an interesting inspiration for a book... How do I organize my inspirations in general, and what was the inspiring line of text for Never the Roses? All answered in this episode.
Among the Thorns line edits are D-O-N-E DONE! Preorder here
In case you missed it, Strange Familiar Audio Book is now available on Youtube ~ Listen for free here
You can find the Owl Crate signed edition of Never the Roses here
A very beautiful hardcover edition can be found here
The audio book can be listened to here
And Kindle Unlimited has Never the Roses digital version! Your friendly neighborhood author is doing author-ly things this upcoming month!
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
Among the Thorns line edits are D-O-N-E DONE! Preorder here
In case you missed it, Strange Familiar Audio Book is now available on Youtube ~ Listen for free here
You can find the Owl Crate signed edition of Never the Roses here
A very beautiful hardcover edition can be found here
The audio book can be listened to here
And Kindle Unlimited has Never the Roses digital version! Your friendly neighborhood author is doing author-ly things this upcoming month!
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* ...
The chapter headers in among the thorns are Easter eggs. I don't think that writing to market is it's optimizing something that I don't think it's optimizing writers. Oh, I know what it was. We were talking about Mar-A-Lago face. Yes, this is Jeffe Kennedy. Also writing is Jennifer K Lambert, author of epic fantasy Romance. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Is, Which is so good. Today is Tuesday, December 2nd, last month to 2025, down to the last month of 2025. I know I always say time is flying by, but it sure feels like it is. When I was going through the stuff with my mother. So I think those ten days that I was in Tucson after she fell and broke her hip. For those of you who may not have been following, along with the saga of a friend of mine who had been to similar, have told me that right now, it felt like time was dragging, that it would take forever for each hour and day to pass. And that was so true. One morning when I, the worst morning. One of the worst mornings, ever after the worst night of my life that Sunday morning. Sitting outside and it was raining and it felt nice to have this very light misting rain in Tucson. It wasn't too cold and trying to figure out what I was going to do, and feeling like I was just going to collapse emotionally and coming up with some solutions and talking to a couple of friends for emotional support. And all of these things have happened. And it had been it felt like a whole day had passed. And I looked at the clock and it was 10:30, you know, and my aunt said, well, maybe we should go out to breakfast. I was like, okay, well, since it's only 10:30 on a Sunday morning, I mean, I've already lived a couple of lifetimes. Yeah, let's go do that. But then my friend had also said that, once I got back to real life, that things would start to happen very fast again. And that's certainly the case. I don't really know what the timeline will be for my mother's healing and how things will go exactly from there. You know, we kind of have to it's a lot of waiting and see, but I think it's going to be at least six weeks for her was sort of the bottom, one form for rehab for her getting around. And she's officially been, in that skilled nursing for at that place. Not like, okay, for two weeks. So I think we've got another one. I have no idea what we're going to do for Christmas. I was talking with a friend of mine who is having trouble in her marriage and trying to figure out what to do, and we were talking about the fact that, because her spouse doesn't, it's sort of not making up their mind, on what they want. There's a lot of indecision. And we were talking about the fact that indecision, sucks up energy. It's really difficult if you're in a place where you can't make decisions. And I can't decide what we're going to do for Christmas, I should probably just decide, you know, like that we're going to go to Tucson no matter what. Maybe that's what I should do, but I'm not quite at that point yet. You should discuss with, yeah, maybe we should just plan to go do that no matter what. I don't know, I guess. So here I am talking about with all of you. But I guess since, you know, my mom's going to be either in skilled nursing or in assisted living, we should go and spend Christmas with her. Right? So it's kind of a separate Christmas. The matter was. And and and I'm someone who really enjoys Christmas, but, that might just have to be the way things. I had a good Thanksgiving. I did work all week. I got through, magic reforms, revisions. So I was very happy I stayed on track for that. And now I have, Well, as of yesterday, I had 29,000 words to finish this draft and get it done on time. So, it's a little bit less than that now because I did have a decent day yesterday. So, a little shy of 27,000 words. 26,700. Yeah, it's two weeks of 29K, which is theoretically doable. I think I can, yeah. I think because I did not do a podcast on Friday, I did not mention, I got a very nice email from editor Allie on the Among the Thorn’s revisions. Last Tuesday, saying very nice things about them. She said, Jeffy. Incredible work. If I could borrow a phrase from our dear friend and influencer Katherine Heigl. Just beautiful. I'm so impressed with how you synthesized all of the many notes from this revision process. It was an extremely ambitious premise, and you've come out on the other side with a bright, shining, beautiful story full of heartbreak and belonging, which was really nice. So she gave me some specifics, and then at the end she put Just Beautiful, which is and she said the manuscript is officially accepted, which we love to hear because that means that I get mine delivery and acceptance money. Yay! For those not in the know, if you get a traditional publishing deal, they break up the advance into various pieces. In general, you get so much as to book deal, so you get 50% on signing the contract. So half the money upfront, and then they break up the money, buy the other two books. So, on the other half of the roses, I got my money for delivery and acceptance after I revised. So that was 50%. And then you have your the 25% to 25% for each of the books, half of each of those right. So I got that 12.5% of the full advance, delivery and acceptance of Rose's 12.5% of that on publication. So now for Among the Thorns. I finally get that next chunk of money saying it's officially accepted. Has it dropped into my bank account yet? But should soon. And then also, I'll get that final check on publication next July. And so now we're in the talk next steps. Beginning of the year, we're going to talk about books three and see what we can do for that. And lastly for other story ideas too, which is very cool. So that's kind of what I'm going to be doing over the holidays, is putting together ideas and working up some, some concepts and that kind of thing, which is kind of fun. And assistant editor Diana, emailed to ask about me sketching some pieces for. And are you back for a month at once? And, an idea that they have for the chapter headers and never the roses. It's the roses. Kind of these, old style fantasy book roses. And the chapter header tops. And there's an idea for what we could do for Among the Thorns, which is it's going to be kind of an Easter egg for the story. And I wondered if I thought it was too spoilery, but I love the idea. So now you know, if you are a faithful podcast listener, you will know that the chapter headers in Among the storms are Easter eggs. I did want to share something kind of funny with all of you. Writing was is I was looking at my spreadsheet of ideas as I was having a conversation with someone about how I'd had an idea for something. Oh, I know what it was. We were talking about Mar-A-Lago face. Yes, I'm still obsessed by the whole Mar-A-Lago face thing and how women are having this plastic surgery that is obvious. Plastic surgery, you know, like it used to be that, you get work done and you'd want it to be. So you'd want people to not know you've had work done. I myself have not. I mean, other than, like braces and oral surgery, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't, I felt like I needed it, but this is plastic surgery that is obvious, that you look at someone and, you know, they've had plastic surgery, you know, like with the cheek fillers and the lip fillers and the the baby face. Right. And it's this I over the weekend, I was reading some scholarly articles on this whole Mar-A-Lago face thing because I'm fascinated. So this gal, and Hagan it don't know if I'm saying that right. A professor of history, art history at Barnard College said, I read it as a sign of physical submission to Donald Trump, a statement of fealty to him, and the idea that the surface of a policy is the only thing that matters. In a way, these women are performing a key part of Donald Trump's whole political persona plastic surgery that is very visible makes it clear that women have invested in their body, and that's a signal that they're sending to everybody that they're putting in this work. And they also use the comparison that it's not the first time in history, that, like in the court, Elizabeth the first, because her teeth were turning black from eating sugar. She liked sweets, I guess that, the court ladies would like in their teeth to to mimic the mimic her. I also read, an interesting research article on the whole, gym bro nail fitness influencer thing. And its connection to, like, the incel thing and the hardness of bodies, and, like, they actually have, that's really hard to choose that these guys choose so they can make their drawers be very, square. And how this relates to fascism and traditional ideals of masculinity. It was an interesting rabbit hole, and I don't know where I'm going with this, like overall, if I will. But this is, I think, part of my process is that I get obsessed with certain ideas and think about them, and sort of follow them down various rabbit holes. And I don't know where it will go, but I was going back and forth pasting these quotes with a friend of mine, who is at least somewhat interested in Mar-A-Lago face to saying, you know, I know that I had a story idea about this once. So now one thing, if you're a long time listener, you will know that I am famous or infamous for at least in my own mind, past Jeffe leaves terrible notes for Present Jeffe. So I found the, story. My story ideas spreadsheet is, it's like snippets. I don't write out the ideas in a helpful way. And I do believe in this idea that if you don't remember the spirit of the idea from a few words, then it wasn't that great. Anyway, so that's like an answer to a question. Movie ish writers often ask how you where do you get your ideas? And really what they want to know was, how do you know what is a good idea? Because the ideas are pretty cheap and easy, but it's like, how do you how do you get a really great idea for a book? We all want that, right? Although it's always in the execution. I, I found this the snippet of an idea that's related to my long ago face, which is very old, but it's, all I wrote down was woman who becomes a monster on the outside via plastic surgery, which is kind of like, the substance, the Demi Moore really? There's definitely an interesting idea there. I don't know if I'm going to do anything with the right now, but it's definitely circulating. That might have a few things circling my mind. But this is the funny part. I was, you know, looking at this spreadsheet and my note was possession style epistolary romance focusing on characters and forbidden love. So does that sound familiar? But not funny? That's never the roses. I mean, it is an office delivery romance, and there's, a lot of parallels to possession by as by it, which I read a little while back, which oddly did not hold up considering I thought it was one of the most brilliant books I've ever read. And then if it didn't hold up, and I don't know if I could explain exactly why it didn't hold up, I think that some of it is because so much of the the core part of that story was the discovery and the twist and the, the surprise that it was not what you saw, you know, kind of like Gone Girl in a way. You know, like some of these stories, without the mystery, they become less interesting. And this book became a lot less interesting, unfortunately, because, you know, for a long time, I listeners, one of my all time favorite books. Anyway, a possession style epistolary romance focusing on characters and forbidden love. That's never the roses. And when I started writing Never the Roses, I did not have that idea in mind. But clearly it was still in my mind. And I think that's, I think that's so interesting that our creative minds work that way. And I wanted to respond to something, there's an author who put up something. I don't think I'll name her, although I have a lot of respect for her. And I think that what she had to say was very useful. But I actually don't totally agree with her. Or. I agree with her. Partially. She put up sort of like a, a hierarchy of author growth and basing it on Maslow's pyramid of needs. And I do think there's a lot of really smart stuff in there about like, the different phases of an author career and how you grow through them. The part that I don't really agree with is that as she gets to the upper levels, she starts talking about the optimization level. And if you're familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we start. Yeah. Like once you get the basics, then you start moving up into, eventually self-actualization. Right? This idea that you can, focus on becoming the best person that you can be, focus on finding happiness, transcending spiritually, if that's your thing. And she got to this other optimization point where she focused on refining what the market wants, looking at which of your books resonate, focusing on genre expectations and so forth, which is I mean, she's saying author growth, but really what she's talking about is, building a particular kind of author career. And I think she would probably very freely agree with me on that. But that doesn't necessarily where I would argue with her is that this is not necessarily author growth. This is like career growth. This is building a particular kind of career, optimizing writing to market, right, which not everybody wants to do. I mean, it's, I mean, I'm not good at it. So, you know, let's just copy out that right there. I get right to market. It's not why am I right? And I think that, I don't know, maybe I'm toying with building my own author growth pyramid. Maybe I should ask her if she would be offended. Because I come at it from a different direction. Long time listeners here will know that I, I disagree with. Yeah, I, I don't think that writing to market is it's optimizing something that I don't think it's optimizing autographs, and I don't think it's optimizing ourselves as human beings, which is maybe partly why I responded to this, that Maslow's pyramid of needs is is about human nature, not about, market forces and author brands. Right. I saw someone else, things, saying what would people be interested in? Taking a class from her on how she had made six figures writing that year, and I saw that there were like 71 comments or something like that, because people loves that people climb on to that, right? Yes. Tell me how I can. It's actually here's, you know, I, I make six figures on my writing and I don't put that up on social media because I don't know, you know, as things about money, but also I, I urge people to take this into account because a lot of times when someone says that, they say that they they mean that they grossed six figures, and you don't know how much money they spent on stuff like advertising. And I and I say this because I know people who will spend $200,000 on advertising to make 400,000, which is I mean, great, you just makes the 200,000. But they say they've made 400,000. It's me. Is it natural or is it gross? It's a really important question. And I just kind of wish that. People didn't want to just take classes on how to make six figures. And, I mean, I have to pay the mortgage to. And obviously, I'm very happy about getting my DNA money. So I don't know. I know it's a quandary, but I'm going to think about this and talk about more. All right, on that note, I have to actually write a book in order to sell a book. So I'm going to get to work. I hope you all have a really good week and I will talk to you all on Friday. You all take care of.