Magic Reborn Release Day - Happy Reading! 12/30/25

Today is a special episode because not only is it the last episode of 2025, but also the final installment of this series is OUT NOW! If you've started reading it, let me know your thoughts. You've been following along since I begun writing it, and know all about the ups and downs. Here's a little insight on how it all went down when I thought of the idea and potentially what's next. 

Magic Reborn can be found through this link: https://www.jeffekennedy.com/magic-reborn

Here's to 2026!

Transcript

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Dark Wizard was one of those books that had to be written. Doesn't happen to me often, but, insisted on being written, and I always had that picture of Nick pacing her round tower room and looking out the slatted shutters and anticipating the arrival of Gabriel. It is until I release de hoo. 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. And as I'm sitting here, I just have to share one of the remarkable things about where I live in Santa Fe and northern New Mexico is the robins flock here. And when I'm talking, they flock here. I'm talking about dozens at a time. Sometimes, I swear there could probably be 100 out there. You know, like always before, in other places where I lived, robins were more or less solitary birds. You know, like the red, red robin comes Bob, Bob, Bob and along robin redbreast, all these things. You know, where it seemed like seeing a robin was a special sight? Which it still is, except that I don't think you have properly lived until you have seen a flock of robins. And so the robins are here. They're coming out on, you know, getting on our bird paths. They they squabble. There will be a dozen of them and one little bird that at once. And they are remarkable in a flock. And then they'll like. I'll go up from the fountain scattered probably by a hawk going by or something. And, Yeah. So as I sit here at my microphone, I'm looking out at my amazing view of the gallows steel basin and the Ortiz Mountains and Sandia and watching the robins flock up. Today is Tuesday, December 30th, 2025. Last podcast of 2025 saying goodbye to season eight here. And heading into lucky season number nine. I think everyone has high hopes for 2026 being a better year. Yeah, let's let's raise a cup to that. The other thing about today is not only is today the last podcast of 2025, it is done. Release day. Woohoo! Release day for Magic Reborn, which is lucky number nine. Coincidence? Maybe. It's funny because I have friends who, like, swear by lucky numbers who, like everything is an omen. Numbers. And they count up numbers and, Yeah, take omens from numbers and so forth. And then I have friends who think that that's utter balderdash and that it means nothing at all. And I'm. I think, as with all things, I am the fence sitter. I fall out somewhere in between. But I do like the number nine. I like the number three as well. And so three times three is nine, three times nine is 27, and two plus seven is nine. I like those combinations of numbers, whether they are lucky or meaningful, I don't know, but, Yeah, there we are. So Magic Reborn number nine in the series. Is it the end? Probably. Maybe, I don't know. The series began with Dark Wizard, which I wrote in 2019, which is amazing to me that time has gone by like this. Yeah. Dark Wizard was one of those books that had to be written. Doesn't happen to me often, but, insisted on being written. And I'll tell you all a little bit of the story of that, just in case you're a new listener. Lo, these six years later. But I had started writing Dark Wizard and had shown it to Agent Sarah. I had told her the idea because I remember I had been noodling that idea for a long time, that I said, there's a woman who is locked in a tower by her family, and because of the society that she lives in, which I didn't know what it was at that point, she has to entertain a different suitor each month. And the first one to get her pregnant, she, you know, wins her. She has to marry them. That was that was the nugget of Dark wizard. And I always had that picture of what became Nick chasing her round tower room and looking out the slatted shutters and anticipating the arrival of Gabriel. So sort of like the idea I wrote her. I, like a chapter or two, and she loved it and suggested that I write some more. And so I, I wrote more because when we would take books out on spec, which we will probably never do again for multiple reasons. A because the industry is not really liking buying on spec, pitching these ideas to my editor. Slightly different. And b, I am just not a writer who does well at like only writing part of the story. I have to write the whole thing in order to get the whole idea. I wrote part of this book for Sara, and we're always sort of negotiating timing because she's, of course, got many other clients. Shockingly enough, I am not role in the client. I'm always amused in, TV and movie shows when it seems like the agent has only the protagonist as their client and it's like, no, that's not actually how it works. I think Sara's got somewhere. I'm in the neighborhood of of 40 clients, of which I am not even the most important. So, shockingly enough, anyway. So we're always negotiating. And I will say, well, I think I can send this to you at this time. And she'll say, well, you know, I won't be able to read it until three weeks or three months from now. You know, sort of depends on where she is and her client load. And so when I had done my first 50 or 100 pages of that book, and I was loving it, and I was supposed to switch to something else, and Sara said, well, I said, you know, I just want to keep writing this. And she didn't have time to read anyway. And she said, we'll keep writing the whole thing, just, you know, go ahead and write the whole thing. So I did, and I recall this quite vividly because, I started writing it in 2019, but by the time Sara read it and she read the whole book, it was, fall of 2020. We talked about Dark Wizard, and I was really expecting one of our enthusiastic calls where we talked about who were going to submit this to, and Sara hated it. She will quibble with me on this. She'll say, I didn't hate it. I remember it is that she hated it. She the ultimate. And I believe she will agree with me on this. Is she did not want to take it on submission because she did not have passion for the book. When you're a newbie writer, you think that you have to learn how to pitch, which you do, but then eventually you will no longer have to do that. And I hate to break it to you. You will be pitching for the rest of your career. If you do this as a career, that's what you're going to be doing is pitching ideas to your agent, to your editor that you might be helping shape ideas for, like the movie agents or for the marketing team and so forth. You never stop pitching ideas. You think that and I certainly thought this, that when you get an agent that everything is going to be hard, some flowers and that you will walk hand-in-hand down the beach together and your agent will hand you money. And the thing is, is your agent is not always going to love what you do. And you know, that's her job. So she did not like dark research. I ended up self-publishing it. Did that first trilogy, which is Dark Wizard, Bright Familiar Gray Magic. And then I did the second trilogy, Shadow Wizard. Rogue. Familiar twisted magic. And then finished up with Reluctant Wizard. Strange familiar. And today Magic Reborn comes out, which completes the nine book arc. It's a rich world. Will I write more stories in it someday I might. It definitely makes a difference. If you are a huge fan of this series in this world to write in and tell me about it, or comment on social media. Right now I'm moving on to other projects and I'm happy to have this arc done. I'm happy with how it turned out. I did want to add on the side story about Dark Wizard. We nearly broke up. I asked her if we should part ways because I was so taken aback that she hated that book. Yeah, she'll say she didn't hate it, but I thought, well, maybe we just fundamentally didn't agree. And Sara was very upset about that and told me she she spent an entire therapy appointment talking about it. But we got through it, which is like, all long term relationships, right? You know, you you work through the difficult times. And this was obviously five years ago and we have since moved on. And she got me the six figure deal with Tor. And you know, it's it's just how things work that you're not going to be, in this place where this sort of golden ideal of walking hand-in-hand down the beach where they hand you money, there's always going to be strife, there's always going to be effort. And that's part of being human and being alive. Right? So and I want to talk a little bit if I remember about, what do you do like coming up with ideas and, creating pitches and creativity. Some things that I'm doing right now to try to refill the well, because it was a huge push to finish this book. I got it done on the Saturday before Christmas and, you know, got it through the editing process and proofing and all of that. And now it's out today and it's a relief. So what I'll do is I'll like write up. I mean, it's very sketchy, like the call that Sara and I had, a couple of weeks ago. Some of the things I would just like one sentence ideas and she'd say, okay, talk me through this one. And I'm mentioning this in part because I know it's difficult when you're a newbie writer. Like, you know, people tell you to come up with your elevator pitch, you know, which is the, way that you can picture book. That would take the time of one elevator ride, presuming that you go up in an elevator with an agent or editor and you want to pounce on them and try to picture book, which I don't recommend that. But sometimes you will be at a conference talking with someone who is an agent or editor or another writer, and it's great to network with people. And they might say something like, tell me about your book, and you need to be able to tell them about your book in a succinct way, frankly. I mean, for some people, I think it's helpful to memorize things, especially if you have social anxiety or something. I don't really recommend having a perfectly memorized pitch line because it ends up lacking energy. It's and it sounds like something you've memorized and real loud. If that's what you have to do, then you'll do that. But if you are able to organically talk about your book in a succinct way, then that's that's the ideal way to do it. Comps work great. You know, I, I always drag out the one that was from, I think the movie The Player. It's like ghost meets out of Africa. Which just amuses me. No, and I've never forgotten that one. But it's good to know what your comp is. That's what high concept is, is if you can succinctly describe, what your book is, you know, like my book, Petals and Thorns. It's, Bdsm beauty and the beast tells you everything you need to know right there. Now, not everything is high concept, and it doesn't have to be, Star Wars, for example, the, you know, episode for the first movie. It's not a high concept. You can't really convey what it is in a few words or a sentence like that, or convey what's great about it. Now, it's become such a cultural icon that you can use Star Wars as a reference. I think I have a friend who did that. Like, Star Wars meets Bridgerton tells you a whole lot of what you need to know right there. But for the most part, by succinct, I mean you do not want to go into the weeds of your story. If you find yourself starting to say things like, well, and then her brother, who is actually disabled, comes into the, you know, right away you can you probably even, like, started to lose interest there, right? It's not snappy. It's it's too far into the weeds of the story. You want to be able to encapsulate it for someone. So like when Sarah will say, well, talk me through this one and I'll say, well, you know, so here's this is just like a nugget of an idea, which is she's used to working with me and we'll sort of go through various ones, and then I will attempt to flesh them out for her more. I say attempt because it's hard for me to come up with ideas before I've actually written the story, or at least to explain it very well. So, this last year has been a rough one for me. And the last couple of months in particular have been a difficult progress since September. Really? But now, you know, we're back from Christmas. It went fine. My mom's actually suddenly. And to assisted living pretty well. She even thanked me for finding, the place that she's at and that, said that she really likes it. That's not what she says all of the time. But she did say that. And so that was, that was good. And it's feeling like, knock on wood, that that's kind of settled. And now I am moving into a space of finishing out other projects. Yesterday, I completed copy edits on Among the Thorns. I got through all 446 pages, and so that was great. I need two proofs this week for love, lies and ley lines. And then next week I'm going to start writing again. But in the meantime, what I need to do is write up these pitches for us to take to Ali and Diana at tour next week. I have been feeling very empty. It's hard to say how some of it is finishing this book, which was a push all of the emotional turmoil of the last few months and the last year, really, the last few years now, it's sort of like since fall of 2022, it's been a lot. My friend Kelly Robson says that, writing takes emotion and that if you're very emotional about other things, then you can't, can't write. And I'm not sure if I agree with her, but I do think that there are aspects to that, you know, and I think that probably I can picture some of you that I know that are listening, that you're like, cheugy, of course, of course you're feeling depleted and it's like, yeah, but I, I need to do this right. This is my career. It's my literal job. And I need to sort of come up with these ideas. And Sarah and I did talk through some, and I have my list of things to flesh out. But most of them don't feel like they have a whole lot of juice to me. They just don't have that that oomph that feels like, yes, this is the shiny idea I really want to pursue, which is highly unusual for me. Normally I feel like there are a dozen things I would love to write, and right now I don't feel like I want to write anything, and that's not good. So I was talking with a friend of mine who is works with creative people a lot, and, she had a really interesting suggestion, which is fairly common, which is to switch mediums. And she said, well, what if you just write some poetry for a while and, and then she said, what if you, look at a piece of art or a work of art and write a poem from it? And I thought, well, that's a cool idea. So I've been taking a work of art, and in the morning, before I do anything else, I am writing on paper a poem inspired by that work of art, and I can feel it stirring those creative juices. So that's very exciting, isn't it? So, happy release day to Magic Reborn. I'm very excited about that. I'm getting lots done this week. You're in finances and so forth, and, yeah. So I will, talk to you all on Friday. See you next year. You all take care. Bye bye.