LoveLitCon Recap

Long time, so see ~ In case you missed it, I was in San Diego for LoveLitCon and moderated a Romantasy panel while I was there. I also discovered the view under the bridge is sometimes the more interesting story. I also drive uHauls now. 

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Transcript

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Good morning everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy, also writing as Jennifer K Lambert, author of the epic fantasy romance. I am here with my first cup of coffee. I am sitting here back in my office, looking down the galleys, steel basin. It's a very, beautiful view this morning. It's always beautiful, but there's this kind of stark light against the bluffs and the Ortiz Mountains. Sandia is about shrouded in clouds. We're very overcast. We were supposed to get a winter storm, which seems to have sadly petered out. Unfortunately, because we could release the moisture. But but so it goes. It still makes for very dramatic skies, which is always a good thing, as it has been busy. I was sorry that I had to miss the podcast last week. I went to Love Lit Con in San Diego, meeting with various people and writers I hadn't seen in a long time. Getting to enjoy the sights. The Chicano murals underneath the Coronado Bridge. It's extraordinary because unless you specifically go, you don't know it's there, which adds to the magic of it. And it's in the barrio Loja, neighborhood, which is a Chicano neighborhood, Hispanic neighborhood. Forgive me if I'm getting some of these details wrong, please. We went to the, museum and did read up on the things, but then, walking around and seeing the murals is the truly amazing part. This had been a vibrant ethnic neighborhood, and I believe it was in the 70s that the city built the Coronado Bridge, and they built this bridge with its immense cement pylons right through the middle of this part of town, cutting it off from the rest of the city and creating this immense kind of under the highway wasteland. Right. You can just imagine if you've ever been underneath an elevated highway, right? What kind of atmosphere that is? And I love Coronado Island. And here it was, sort of, as so many things seem to be. And I think I'm wrestling with these ideas. You know, built on the destruction of something else. And apparently the neighborhood had asked for the space beneath to become a green space, and the city did not do that, and instead everything is cemented in. And so over time, it became an area of protest and resistance. And there is this incredible art painted all over underneath. And like some of the, supports, like, has a big one, has a big atlas, as if Atlas is holding up the bridge and there's this immense emotional power to the images. And while I in no way count myself as, marginalized like this group, I was so moved by the power of this artistic resistance, especially in this day and age of feeling like we are needing to resist fascism and resist these incredibly conservative voices wanting to, take away people's rights and freedoms, essentially wanting to build their, I don't know, their bridge to heaven by dividing us and destroying the things that give us happiness. And then a few days later, we went over to Colorado Island, and I was again struck by how many times I've been over this truly beautiful bridge over the water to the island, and never knowing what's underneath and how much privilege I've had. And that's the definition of privilege, right? That you're not necessarily, cruel. You're not necessarily, you know, stomping on someone personally, but you just sort of blithely glide overhead, never knowing. I had a wonderful time, though, with friends. It was excellent decompression. The conference itself, Love Lit Con, was excellent. Not as well attended as they hoped. I don't know if they plan to do it again next year, but it was a wonderful venue and, immaculately run. That was just really everything about it was terrific. I did so quite a few books. I moderated a panel on the Explosion of Romance AC, and it was very interesting being on that panel. Everly, who has also written as Zoe Archer, and we were by far the two oldest people on the panel, both in age and in, careers. And longevity as writers, because Zoe wrote, some fantasy romances, a historical fantasy, I think she calls it, as a valley. She now writes, as writes, mostly historical romance, although her newest book is, a little bit fantasy romance. Her first. Her books back then were, The Blade, the blade, the Rose. I think she did four of those. So anyway, you know, like Sally and I, Eva and I have been around for a long time, and every other person on that panel had started writing books since 2020. The the longest career, longest lived career daughter. I don't know how I want to say that, had published her first book in 2020, and I had took advantage of this panel to talk about the history of fantasy, romance and the history of romance. And I had asked people to talk about their gateway drugs to both romance and to fantasy, because there's this idea that romanticism knew that it was created by Sarah Jane Moss or created by Force Wing or, you know, all of these very younger people who are coming to it recently and without a sense of the context of this, rather vast history. And for the record, my, my gateway drugs were, a book, a romance book, a historical romance called Indigo Knight's gateway drug to fantasy was Dragons song by and McCaffrey. And I was one I wanted them combined. I wanted fantasy with sex and kissing and centering female protagonists. And one of the things we talked about on the panel that was very interesting was that and romances say the female protagonists are have the freedom, have a lot more freedoms than, say, an historical romance, which has a lot of the the roots of romance are in historical romance. Contemporary romance came later to have the freedom to act. And also you can do things like subvert regimes that you can't do in historical romance because we know it didn't happen. It was amazing because one person on the panel, when I asked for, you know, your inspirations, she actually cited Disney movies, which no shade on her. You know, we we get what we get. But I kind of wanted to say, well, you know, I actually meant a book, but, the world we live in, all right, Disney movies. But it was a strange experience because I don't know if it was this con in particular. It could have been. But not only on that panel was I one of the oldest authors, but I easily was at the entire convention. There are, you know, there were a few of us around the same age group, but mostly the other authors were in their 20s and 30s, and I was texting one of my friends from my signing table because I would say the only downside of the con, and it's kind of a downside of of all the reader cons like this. And I don't know if there's much of a solution. Actually, I do think there's a solution, and I may offer one, but they have these, early entry or VIP tickets. And for, for example, on this one, on the two signings they had early entry an hour before everyone else. And the thing is, is the early entry people to VIP people, they want to go to the big name authors. And I totally don't blame them for that. You know, you want to get in line, you want to get your signature from from the rock stars. And that's the whole point of doing early entry, right? It's the whole point of doing the VIP ticket. The thing is, is all the other authors, of which I am one, we're kind of twiddling my thumbs during that time. I mean, maybe it looks good to have us all be at our tables and stuff, but it was very pointed at this one that really nothing happened in that first hour. And after that was the general entry. People are still prioritizing seeing the big name authors, but also they're circulating and going to the other tables. And I think this is I don't think we need to change reader behavior on this, because I think this is understandable and I don't begrudge them that. But also, why have the other authors sitting there? You know, arguably we can't we don't want to leave our tables unattended. While people are in there circulating. But I think it would be really nice if some of these cons had special sessions for the big name ticketed authors. They know who they are going to be. They're very good at predicting this. Occasionally there's surprises, but in general they they know. And so why not put you know, it's I want to say, why not put the big names in a specific room and have a specific signing for them? I think that there's an argument to be made for. Yes. Let's sprinkle the big names through the others, because then you get that, side traffic to your table. But really, I don't think we get a lot of that. I think that's pretty minimal. And I would much rather not have to spend my time sitting at my table, during a time when we know that people are not going to be circulating and looking for new to them, authors. So but anyway, so I was bored during this first hour, and so I was texting my friend and just talking about this demographic and saying, you know, when did I get old? And they replied with a really interesting spin and said that what I was noticing is how very difficult it is to not only succeed in this business, but to have longevity, and that the authors who are older than I am. When I started, probably didn't a lot of them didn't navigate the huge changes in the industry, but that also, you know, I am a mid list author and they said, you know, like for there are the people who are the rock stars like the Rolling Stones and, but that's a such a huge outlier, right. You know, very few people hit that kind of stratospheric success. But that there's a lot more. And they compared me to Marianne Faithfull that are solidly working along and have, you know, success that I am very grateful to have, but am not a rock star. But I do have this longevity that, that is unusual and it takes so much perseverance. And I saw and that what I was saying was emblematic of that, which was a great spin and very good for my ego and and interesting. And I think that it's not not untrue. I think that's probably the case. And it occurred to me after this conversation, thinking about it, that when I went to the RWA conference for the first time lo these 20 years ago and met Nora Roberts, that Nora Roberts was probably about the age that I am now, which is a sobering thought. It's a funny industry that way. So we Archer Ava Lee has stuck it out. Christina Lawrence, the writing team, they were there, and I think they're a little bit younger than I am, but not by a whole lot. But they were around before I was. The other thing I've been thinking about, which is going to sound really odd, but I've been thinking about Paul Simon. Because a friend of mine was recently telling me about Paul Simon's truly awful behavior. And we certainly focus on that here at first. Have a cup of coffee examining artists. It's Jen, it's the Coronado Bridge, the beautiful bridge with its feet in this ruin. And despair. Paul Simon, behave very badly in recording the Graceland and, read some of the Saints albums. A lot of cultural appropriation did not share money with the African artists that he work with. I was listening to to my songs on our song shuffle, which is one of my favorite things to do. People who write with me complain that it gives them musical whiplash because I just every song am I, which is ripped from all of my CDs over the years. Right. And uploaded, every song sitting there, and I just shuffle them so you get everything you can call me out spun up and I was listening to the lyrics of that song. And there are those specific, lyrics at one part where he is saying, it's a I don't think I want to quote it. I might not be able to, but it's the it's the final verse. And he's talking about, a man being in a foreign land and seeing, orphans and cattle in the marketplace and poverty and feeling out of place and seeing angels in the architecture. And there's a great phrase, angels in the architecture spinning into infinity. And he says, Amen. Alleluia. And I thought, wait, that's his response. That's. And I guess I was thinking about this because of the murals under the bridge. And, you know, like when you witness personally witness how other people have lived and are suffering, and what they are laboring under that your response is to look at the angels in the architecture and say, oh, but it's so pretty and Amen. La lutte. Alleluia. And I was thinking, well, how is this you take away Paul Simon and it occurred to me that I do think a lot of his lines sound like poetry. And I remember doing a deep dive once on The Obvious Child and trying to figure out what he meant by the obvious child and going down, kind of a research rabbit hole of the origin and meaning of this phrase. And it turns out, spoiler alert, that there really isn't that. Apparently Paul Simon just made it up because it sounds good. And I was thinking about this in context of him not treating fellow artists from marginalized communities as well. And and I thought you know, I don't think he does mean anything. I think he just puts angels and the architecture spinning into infinity. Amen. Alleluia. Because it fits in the song and it sounds cool, like the obvious child sounds cool. And I think he's just there's another part in this song where he says there were hints and allegations, and it reminds me of me and Julio down by the schoolyard, right where he's just sort of throwing this patter together. That kind of sounds profound, but actually means nothing for me. It matters that it should mean something. It's it's it's nice to have cool sounding phrases, but it should actually be meaningful. And then just catch you all up on my life, because I know you care. And I do appreciate the nice comments that you. That you sent. I'm not being sarcastic. I flew from San Diego to Tucson, spent a little time with my mom. My Aunt Karen was there also. And my uncle Bob and I got a U-Haul truck. And on Tuesday morning, my aunt and uncle and also stepsister Hope and her husband helped me load up, all the things, the furniture that I wanted from my mom's house, which is now cleared out and re carpeted and painted and going on the market. And I drove that back and stepsister Hope road with me, which was nice because we got to have a long conversation and the truck wasn't as hard to drive as I thought it would be. So I'm I'm now a truck driver. Add that to my resume. Yeah, I know, and we got it all unloaded with the help of the gal who cleans my house and her husband. They came over Tuesday night fairly late and helped us unload everything. And so now I have chaos. But I it's sortable chaos and and it's done. That chapter's closed and that feels it feels good at this point. Drove Hope down to Albuquerque and put her on a flight home. Returned the U-Haul there. Took a rideshare over to the airport, got my car. My mom's Infiniti, which I've now got her to gift to me. I had to fill out the paperwork for that car would not start. Turns out, I needed to have it jumped. It's great that the people at the airport garage could jump it for me. Drove back to Santa Fe, went straight to my mechanic. They put in a new battery for me. I got back in my car to drive away thinking, okay, well, that wasn't too bad, but now none of my dashboard lights up. I go back, they can't quite figure it out. I had to leave for an appointment, so they said, come back when you have time. So I went to my therapy appointment, which was great. Love my therapist and then on Thursday morning, Jim Sorensen, the wonderful pick me up at my house, we went and had writer coffee brunch. Then he took me to Crash Champions, where I picked up the Lexus, which was finally repaired while I was gone, picked up the Lexus, drove that home, got in the Infiniti, took that back to my mechanic. They figured out that blown a fuze when they replaced the battery, got the display fixed. And so now I have two working cars and I'm going to sell the Lexus any minute now. But, I spent the rest of the day catching up on emails and business and so forth, and so burying the lead here. I was also working on the audiobook for Magic Reborn, which is done. I'm getting it uploaded. I got it mostly uploaded yesterday, but I was missing the cover and the retail sample, so I'm getting those from my people and I'm getting them uploaded today. So then it's up to the sites how soon it will go live. So that's all the news. That's a lot, isn't it? I hope you all have been doing well. I want to say I miss talking to you, but, I mean, I do kind of miss talking to you, even if you can't really talk back. Please send me those messages. I love hearing from you. And, I will talk to you all next week. You all take care. Bye bye.