First Cup of Coffee with Jeffe Kennedy
First Cup of Coffee with Jeffe Kennedy
First Cup of Coffee – March 31, 2026
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What makes something "good"? I seem to be always circling this question. Is entertainment enough or does a creative work have to change your life? And other thoughts on books as experiences. Also, a vague bit on events with poor business practices.
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00:01.78
Jeffe Kennedy
Good morning, everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy. Also writing is Jennifer K. Lambert, author of epic fantasy romance. I am here with my first cup of coffee.
00:16.92
Jeffe Kennedy
Which is delicious. Today is Tuesday, 31st, 2026. march thirty first twenty twenty six I'm kind of going back and forth on whether I podcast on Mondays or Tuesdays.
00:33.65
Jeffe Kennedy
oh Do you all have an opinion? Do you care? More important, do you care if I mix it up? Because sometimes I'm traveling on Mondays, um but then I might start doing this um group writing thing on Tuesdays, which means I would sometimes do it on Mondays.
00:51.10
Jeffe Kennedy
I don't know.
00:55.64
Jeffe Kennedy
I think I'm going to shoot for mainly Tuesdays and occasionally do Mondays. I don't, all these things are like, Oh, you should be consistent. You should be consistent and, uh, algorithm, blah, blah, blah, blah bla We should be machines, I guess.
01:11.45
Jeffe Kennedy
but That's probably taking it a little far, isn't it? But, um, Yeah, you know, but so far as consistency, I think this is like one of my strengths that I'm actually pretty good at maintaining things seeing as how this is the ninth season of this podcast.
01:32.76
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, and I've written a lot of books and I have a long running career, so I guess I'm good at sustaining things. Um, what kind of news do I have? I did over the weekend, write up the book ideas and Sarah sent them off to editor Ali. So now we cross our fingers and wait.
01:54.55
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, I don't know. said I'm, I kind of hate this part. We all hate this part, right? Where you're waiting, waiting to hear.
02:07.93
Jeffe Kennedy
Especially when it directly impacts like how much money you're gonna have in the near future.
02:16.50
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, I listened to the new Taylor Swift. video this morning. i saw it pop up on my Instagram stories. Uh, she did a video for Elizabeth Taylor and it's, it's fine.
02:29.53
Jeffe Kennedy
You know, um, I like that song pretty well. I end up singing the view of Portofino was on my mind. I am not Taylor. This is why I'm not a singer, but still I love that, that line. Um,
02:46.87
Jeffe Kennedy
And so she did, it's basically a compilation of Elizabeth Taylor from various movies. And, and it's very well done. It's beautiful. It's great. I didn't find it to be special or insightful or in any particular way.
03:06.23
Jeffe Kennedy
Taylor probably wanted to do a um an homage a tribute to Elizabeth Taylor which is great. Um and yeah I mean it's one of those things where it's fine. It's fine.
03:19.88
Jeffe Kennedy
I've been hearing a lot of people liking the movie Hail Mary. I have not yet been to see nor have I read the book. But I've been thinking about it a lot um besides having an argument about whether if you put any nerdy man in a chunky sweater and slutty little glasses if that's overwhelmingly sexy or does it have to be Ryan Gosling.
03:47.13
Jeffe Kennedy
um You know how that goes. I have a Killian visitation on the desk here and I've been having requests to see all of him more than just a tail.
04:02.33
Jeffe Kennedy
So I'm going to try to move things around. he doesn't like being on camera. i don't know if it's just because he doesn't like being messed with or what? Come here.
04:15.32
Jeffe Kennedy
Come here. Come here. Come on. Yeah, come here, baby. who Okay, when I'm going to try.
04:29.21
Jeffe Kennedy
Oh, nearly knocked that over. Okay, here he is. Here's my big baby. Look, that's not so terrible, is it? Yeah.
04:39.35
Jeffe Kennedy
My big, floofy baby. So here's the full-on Killian for those of you on video who wanted to see him. Oh, yes, I love you, too.
04:50.33
Jeffe Kennedy
He is a big baby, isn't he? Okay, you want to be back over here? Where are you going to be?
05:02.52
Jeffe Kennedy
He says you can view the back of his majestic head. ah Anyway, now I have cat hair on my face.
05:12.60
Jeffe Kennedy
Anyway. to keep pausing there to get cat hair off my face again. The wages of pet ownership and enforced oh kitty display.
05:25.05
Jeffe Kennedy
I was going to say infection, but that was more about the kitty display, wasn't it? Hail Mary. um I'm glad that everybody loves it so much. And I think Andy Weir is very good at writing something that is action, action, action, action.
05:43.06
Jeffe Kennedy
I have a good friend who, um, read the book and was a friend who's a science fiction writer, um, and was very bothered that the book does not follow NASA protocols, uh, that it is, um,
05:59.35
Jeffe Kennedy
but you know, basically ignores a lot of that. And this friend, this writer is very exacting about detail and does a tremendous amount of research to get things exactly right. And I think it's frustrating for them that something like project Hail Mary is so incredibly successful and, and, and people enjoy it so much that,
06:26.57
Jeffe Kennedy
that um but then stuff in it is wrong and it's just interesting to think about it's i i circle around this same topic all of the time you know what makes something good good what makes something worthwhile
06:47.03
Jeffe Kennedy
you know does it have to be accurate? Does it have to be well fleshed out? um Is it enough for it to be entertaining?
07:00.06
Jeffe Kennedy
In my science fiction book club last night, we talked about The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. I think I got all three of those names correct. And it was interesting because everybody in the book group liked it. um Almost everyone read it.
07:18.20
Jeffe Kennedy
Everyone who read it liked it
07:22.62
Jeffe Kennedy
Which usually and then everybody kind of groans because that usually means that we don't have a very good discussion because there's not that much to say. But then it ended up being a very interesting discussion because people had nitpicks on it.
07:37.98
Jeffe Kennedy
And. Some of them I didn't agree with. Some of them were my my own knits to pick, which are largely authorial. You know, like I thought there was a particular reveal in the book that was meh, and I didn't think it really needed to be there.
07:58.84
Jeffe Kennedy
Other people liked it okay. I mean, I thought it could have been, I don't know. I just thought it didn't do its job. Yeah.
08:09.85
Jeffe Kennedy
but that's partly my critique brain, right? If I were reading it for a friend, I would be like, Oh, I think you need more buildup for this or more suspense about this because it didn't really pay off.
08:21.53
Jeffe Kennedy
And maybe it doesn't need to, not everything needs to pay off. Uh, I thought that this was a very good book because it was very tight on both genres that it crossed, that it was a very well done,
08:36.73
Jeffe Kennedy
ah Mystery, detective, procedural, and also a really well-built fantasy world. Now, somebody else quibbled about the fantasy world saying that they didn't think it was as immersive as it could have been. Like, they didn't know how things smelled and so forth. And I was surprised by that because I'm normally...
08:59.29
Jeffe Kennedy
super super picky about my world building um Jennifer Estep and I argue about this all the time because uh she doesn't feel like things need to have that type of world building she doesn't like to do it um I for me if your world doesn't make sense I just I can't even I don't want to play anymore.
09:23.29
Jeffe Kennedy
So I thought this world was immersive. I thought it was very logical and I thought it made a lot of sense. And more important, I thought you could not extract the fantasy elements from the murder mystery.
09:36.96
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, they were inextricably entwined and that's, that's beautifully done. Crush on red work. Um,
09:46.46
Jeffe Kennedy
my point, and I did have one is It was interesting because everyone in the group basically said that they found it very entertaining that they found it a very quick read, but like one gal said she didn't feel like her life was changed by it She said she put, she finished it and never thought about it again. Um, you know, and it's like, okay, which is, you know, fine.
10:15.48
Jeffe Kennedy
Do we need every book we read to change our life? know right um do i think that this book was only that i i kind of don't um and i'm interested to read book two which we did put on our calendar for um i think september so that's um or maybe november anyway later in the year i think september uh So we all liked it enough to want to keep going directly into the sequel. So that was something that we very much enjoyed and
10:52.56
Jeffe Kennedy
this sort of segues into another conversation I was having with a writer friend the other day about um paying for ads and, you know, paying for a publicity firm and, and how do you actually move the needle on selling books? And I was saying that one of the problems with what, let me back up slightly. One of the authors was saying that she was seriously considering hiring a PR firm that is not already in the book world because there have been several things lately.
11:27.10
Jeffe Kennedy
with book world PR firms um using generative AI I'm just like I can't even with this people I I won't go into another rant today but it's stop using this stuff. Nobody wants it. Nobody wants you to use it. The only reason you're using it is because it makes things easier for you. It does not make things better.
11:52.38
Jeffe Kennedy
So there was, there's this big, um, author book PR firm that's been using AI.
12:01.66
Jeffe Kennedy
They made a um, a serious gaffe. Uh, I don't think I'll go into detail. Um, I'm trying to think of how I could talk about this without going into detail, mostly because I don't want to draw more attention to it. It potentially smeared some author but reputations by implying that they were interested in or might be using generative AI, which they are not, but it
12:32.28
Jeffe Kennedy
this um kind of ah personal information reveal by this company made it seem as if they might and a couple of authors were very distressed by this because they didn't because they're not using generative AI and yeah.
12:48.75
Jeffe Kennedy
Meanwhile, a reporter was let go from the New York Review of Books for using generative AI to write a book review.
12:59.38
Jeffe Kennedy
Not worth the cost people. It's not worth any of the costs. You're just stealing to save yourself trouble and creating more trouble from it, which is always the way, right? That's always the, the fairy tale, uh, moral of the story. When you try to save yourself trouble, you just build more trouble later.
13:19.74
Jeffe Kennedy
Anyway, so we were talking about these scandals with these author PR services and there's been a few of these and so one of the authors was saying that she was seriously considering going to an outside publicity firm. I one that's you know does other stuff not just book world and I said know which is an interesting idea and I certainly am not naysaying it and didn't at the time.
13:45.75
Jeffe Kennedy
But I said, you know, the problem with other kinds of sales groups like that marketing groups is that they tend to treat books as widgets.
13:56.73
Jeffe Kennedy
They tend to treat books as anything else they're selling, which is to create the need, create the problem, make people think that they have a problem that only buying this widget will answer or solve.
14:13.34
Jeffe Kennedy
And the thing is, is that books are not a widget. And I said, this is going to sound terribly life coachy of me, but books are an experience. And they agreed that that sounded terribly life coachy, but, and and then I said, but am I wrong?
14:29.43
Jeffe Kennedy
because I don't think I'm wrong. I think a book is an experience. We, yes, and you have your collector's editions, you have your pretty sprayed edges. I mean, I'm not going to throw stones against sprayed edges. ah But as my assistant reminds me, reading and collecting books are two different hobbies, right? Yeah.
14:53.91
Jeffe Kennedy
reading is about the experience of the author's voice of sinking into that world. And so for something like project Hail Mary or the tainted cup, you're having this lovely experience of really enjoying something, uh, for however long that lasts. And does it matter how,
15:18.65
Jeffe Kennedy
well it adheres to real life. I mean, it matters to some authors, um, you know, like for me, the, I, I just can't get past if there, if your world building isn't deep enough, if it doesn't have enough logic, I can't stop thinking about that long enough to enjoy the experience.
15:38.39
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, yeah, so, so those are some random thoughts about that.
15:49.56
Jeffe Kennedy
somebody figure out how to sell people on the experience that would be that would be great.
15:56.73
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, I've been thinking a lot about the book Innamorata which got into trouble um, for. oh not meeting reader expectations and, but other people really loved it, but it, it had, it's a horror horror romance and, ah it had horrifying stuff in it and maybe not enough trigger warnings, but hum does that mean that there was actually anything wrong with the book? No.
16:30.94
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, and we're in this era of especially romance readers,
16:37.69
Jeffe Kennedy
having very specific expectations. Maybe romance readers always have, but
16:45.75
Jeffe Kennedy
you know, i don't know. i I probably shouldn't try to dive into the whole content warning thing at this point. I know a lot of people believe in them very strongly. um I do in general, I don't tend to put them on my books because
17:04.70
Jeffe Kennedy
I don't know but also people don't complain to me about it. So if you think there are times when I should have been doing that let me know but yeah I guess maybe that's part of the whole experience thing you want to know what kind of experience you're going to have and that's probably fair.
17:28.92
Jeffe Kennedy
um One other thing I wanted to talk about, I keep thinking about vague posting on this and then I haven't, but I was invited to and event, a new event. Um, I received a, an email specifically to me. It was not broadcast, uh, specifically to me, inviting me to be a featured author at this event.
17:56.41
Jeffe Kennedy
And i and it was very vague on details. And they had asked for a reply by a certain date. And so I replied and said that I was provisionally interested depending on details like costs and so forth.
18:14.68
Jeffe Kennedy
And I'd even discussed it with the Bramble team because I've got a lot of travel this year for among the thorns. And I, you know, was saying, do any of you know anything about this event? Should I do this event? Nobody knew anything cause it's new.
18:30.94
Jeffe Kennedy
And we were talking about, well, it could be good. And so that was when I replied and said I was provisionally interested. And then the Bramble team came back to me later and saying that this other event had invited me for that same weekend and that Tor would pay all of my expenses to travel to that. So I was like, ah, you know, I've never heard back from this first one.
18:55.03
Jeffe Kennedy
And I had asked around to to see i thought maybe it was a broadcast email, but a lot of people did not receive the invitation. I only know of two other authors. Um,
19:07.22
Jeffe Kennedy
who are friends, uh, who received this invitation. Uh, the, the spoiler is, is that then I saw them announce the attending authors for this event.
19:19.32
Jeffe Kennedy
They never once replied to me. They never said they'd made their selection. I just see on social media that they've selected these other authors to attend. I had already at this point decided with the Bramble team to do this other event that same weekend. So,
19:35.70
Jeffe Kennedy
worked out well for me, but I'm glad I didn't decide the other direction. Right. And it's just, it's not great behavior to, send a personal invitation to someone and then not communicate with them at all after that.
19:54.01
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, and just really poor showing that and yeah, it just makes me side eye. Um, people, if you're running events, keep in mind that authors have things going on and there's no reason not to give the details up front. There's no reason to be vague about whether or not the the invitation possible.
20:27.58
Jeffe Kennedy
I don't know, withdrawn, because that was what I ended up saying to my friend who had sent a couple of emails saying, so, hey, what's going on with this? um And I said, well, you don't have to worry about it because you're no longer invited. and she said, what do you mean? I said, look, they've already announced the attending authors and there's not us.
20:48.02
Jeffe Kennedy
So, which is not a big deal. I mean, you, you pick your people and fantastic. That's great. Uh, let the other authors know so that they can plan their lives.
20:59.54
Jeffe Kennedy
Anyway, that's my, um, that's my big posting about it as much as I'm going to do. So there we are. All right. I am going to go get to work. I hope you all have a fabulous week and I will talk to you all on Friday.
21:16.15
Jeffe Kennedy
You all take care. Bye bye.