First Cup of Coffee – April 14, 2026

A recap of my weekend at the Jack Williamson Lectureship, including great conversations with Connie Willis and T. Kingfisher. I'm sharing some nuggets from our panels on leveling up craft, why we write retellings, what a pastiche really is, and a bit on fan fiction and filing off the serial numbers.

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Transcript

00:01.53
Jeffe Kennedy
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.

00:17.18
Jeffe Kennedy
Hmm.

00:20.40
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, today, today is Tuesday, April 14th. And, uh, if you are on video, you will see, that was why the little pause there, uh, that I have my espresso cup, um,

00:38.07
Jeffe Kennedy
because I'm just doing a little bit of espresso this morning instead of my usual latte long time listeners will recall that there are times where I periodically stop having the latte and just do, um, a little bit of espresso in the morning to clear out my system a little bit. Um,

01:00.54
Jeffe Kennedy
So content warning for body image stuff, eating things and so forth. Uh, periodically I have done 16, eight fasting. Um, I'm not going to go back into full doing that. I've been watching some of the wellness influencers stuff and how it is, um,

01:22.36
Jeffe Kennedy
that that's really disordered eating. And I really don't want to do disordered eating, although I think I'm generally pretty healthy that way. But all of this travel, you know, eating out is just the ah kiss of death for me. So I'm going to do a little bit of cleansing just like this week. So a little bit of sixteen eight

01:48.16
Jeffe Kennedy
Wait till little bit later in the day to have any actual calories. ah So we had a little bit of a rickety start getting the podcast posted last Friday. of Technical difficulties, new equipment, new stuff, but it is posted. So if you get a chance to watch that, it's pretty fun. a Good conversation between me and ah John Barr, professor at Eastern New Mexico University. We talked a lot about the lectureship and we talked about um voice acting and podcasting and audio book narration. And it was ah a super fun conversation. So I hope you loop back and listen to that a little bit different content for you.

02:39.13
Jeffe Kennedy
So the lectureship was great. I had a wonderful time. Uh, Oh, it's just, uh, it's always kind of like old home week and something that a couple of different people said, uh, the ENMU people, commented on how they invite guests of honor. And then those people tend to come back year after year. And it is, it's really great. Like, um, you know, I live in the same town uh,

03:07.05
Jeffe Kennedy
Arkady Martine and Vivian Shaw. I mean, we like literally live 15 minutes apart and I see them there. I see them there and at Bubonicon. So, you know, at least it's something digs them out of their introvert cave. Delightful people. I'm always happy to see them. But yeah, trying to get them to come out and socialize is always a thing.

03:33.72
Jeffe Kennedy
So, yeah, and it's ah it's a good weekend getaway. We had some terrific panels. um I was on two. I was on one with Connie Willis and John Stith, which had a very broad topic that was something like... um digging into writing.

03:52.51
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, and we, we talked about craft and ended up giving, um, writing tips on improving craft. And I was the moderator and, uh, not a terribly prepared one. Okay. Let's be honest. I was completely unprepared because I reader, I did not prepare. Um, but

04:19.48
Jeffe Kennedy
but it went fine ah because I knew I could count on those two to talk a lot and I can talk a lot.

04:27.59
Jeffe Kennedy
I'm going to do a total aside because I didn't want to forget to mention this and then I will come back to craft. But I did want to say that if you're on video, ah you'll see, I have this adorable espresso cup. That's got little green shamrocks on it. And I wanted to give a shout out to my nephew, Brett Goldsmith, who this year for Christmas,

04:48.98
Jeffe Kennedy
ah decided to like thrift and secondhand all of his Christmas gifts. And so he found me an assortment of little coffee cups and espresso cups,

05:02.45
Jeffe Kennedy
from various shops. Here's another one. Um, also green. I think that's coincidental. They're not all green, but they're adorable. And he packed them in this amazing box so that I could get them home where he cut out the shapes and then he like covered it in the plastic wrap. So I'm going to post a photo of that on the show this time, because I kept meaning to after Christmas and now it's April. So anyway, craft,

05:32.92
Jeffe Kennedy
So one question I asked was how do you improve your craft? What what's the number one piece of advice? Because I hear this a lot. I hear people wanting to ah wanting recommendations for good craft books or wanting recommendations for good craft classes and workshops.

05:54.14
Jeffe Kennedy
And i often come up empty on this and so it was interesting to ask John and Connie what did they think and they thought a shockingly enough the same thing that I do which is the very best way to improve your craft is to read.

06:16.87
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, not read craft books, but to read books, both in your genre and not in your genre, uh, read the books you love and see if you can figure out how the author did what they do. Um, read books that you hate and figure out why do you hate them?

06:38.42
Jeffe Kennedy
Read books that you think are not well done and pay attention to how they are falling apart. I read a lot of the very popular books. I at least start them to see what the crack is.

06:55.58
Jeffe Kennedy
um i read books that people complain about to see why I think they're complaining. ah Being a writer is a really awesome job because I'm just going to assume that you are a writer because you love to read. And so reading is actually part of your job.

07:17.72
Jeffe Kennedy
of And buying books is tax deductible because you're doing research for your literal job.

07:28.25
Jeffe Kennedy
So we had a lot of good conversations about craft. ah It was, um yeah, it was a really fun panel. The other panel I did was with Ursula Vernon slash T. Kingfisher and um tu Vivian Shaw and moderated by Lauren Teffeau.

07:56.57
Jeffe Kennedy
And Lauren was prepared. You've got to give her credit. And she did a great job of moderating, especially because Ursula and I are two people who don't always stay completely on track.

08:09.59
Jeffe Kennedy
We tend to riff on panels. And Lauren did a good job of corralling us and keeping us on topic and also asking really good, relevant questions. We were talking about story retellings. We talked about fairytale retellings and various kinds of story retellings.

08:30.04
Jeffe Kennedy
and Why are we compelled to retell? We ended up getting into definitions of like, what is a retelling? What is like a reimagining? What's an homage? What's a pastiche? And one thing I love about doing author panels like this is that I come away having learned something and it turns out that pastiche did not mean what I thought it meant.

08:57.27
Jeffe Kennedy
ah Vivian was the one who could like pull the exact definition off the top of her head. I thought a pastiche was kind of like a collage, like a text collage of various, um,

09:12.98
Jeffe Kennedy
you know, influences and pieces pulled together, something like that. ah And it turns out I'm like, well, I was in the neighborhood and this is probably familiar to all of you. ah The problem of someone who learned most of their vocabulary via, ah via reading, you know, because I would get definitions pretty much from context without looking them up.

09:36.41
Jeffe Kennedy
So pastiche is actually, um writing in to imitate someone else's voice. So you would to write a pastiche of like um Arthur Conan Doyle in, you know, in the style of a Sherlock's and Sherlock. Yeah. Yeah.

09:59.41
Jeffe Kennedy
Sherlock Holmes. I wanted to say Sherlock and Holmes. Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock and Watson. ah So the pastiche is writing in that style. And a lot of times it was apparently done to make fun of that writer.

10:16.70
Jeffe Kennedy
ah which I could kind of see as ah as a satire, but it can also be an homage. and oh And then we also talked about what about if you're having a conversation with another work. And we inevitably talked about fan fiction and where fan fiction falls into this. And you know i still have people ask me this and I kind of feel bad having this opinion. I have nothing against fan fiction. I think fan fiction is great.

10:46.58
Jeffe Kennedy
I know so many writers have, uh, cut their teeth, learn their craft, uh, by writing fan fiction because it gives you one piece already there, right? You know that the world building is already done. The characters are established. Some of the emotional arcs are ah already established.

11:09.34
Jeffe Kennedy
And you can pick up the storytelling from there. So I think fan fiction is great for that kind of thing. And I know for a lot of people, it's a decompress. It's a non-monetized form of creativity. It's a way of being part of a community. I think all of these things are really great.

11:27.96
Jeffe Kennedy
um I have a problem with the current... milieu where people are writing fan fiction using other people's intellectual property filing off the serial numbers and then these are being published and sold generating money for people who are not the original author and or possibly generating money for the original author who is incredibly problematic and using their money to actively squelch people's rights. so You all know who I'm talking about.

12:11.13
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, Because what's happening with, and I mean, let's just put it right out there, with these Harry Potter um fan fiction republishings where the Harry Potter specifics are barely filed off, they're still marketing it as Harry Potter fan fiction.

12:35.80
Jeffe Kennedy
um they don't say fan fiction, but they, they make it very clear in the marketing that this is, that these are Harry Potter characters. um And there has been a lot of speculation about the famously litigious author ah who shall go unnamed lest we evoke her demonic presence and But she does not litigate in these cases, even though people are writing books using her IP and marketing them, which makes people wonder if she has not given legal permission, in which case she would be getting a royalty cut.

13:22.07
Jeffe Kennedy
One wonders. So anyway, yeah, I have a lot of problems with that. I'm sure there are other ones. are there other ones? I mean, there's been twilight where 50 shades of gray was republished fan fiction of twilight. And then once that they're like another level where there was like something that was fan fiction of 50 shades of gray, Hmm.

13:48.68
Jeffe Kennedy
I'm not remembering it now, but it's very prevalent in the, uh, the Harry Potter fandom. And, Yeah, it's ah it's a difficult question, right? It's, um you know, it's too bad. This whole thing of separating the art from the artist is one question. But, you know, when...

14:14.20
Jeffe Kennedy
she who shall not be named is actively funding organizations that are trying to take away rights from trans people. It's like, well, is that where you want your money to go?

14:27.86
Jeffe Kennedy
ah but um you know, but this is all very easy for me to say, because i have literally never written fan fiction. Uh, it never occurred to me to do so. I think,

14:41.82
Jeffe Kennedy
Maybe it was the age that I grew up in. I mean, certainly pre-computers, there was not the ability to go on sites and share things. I think had i've been I young woman, girl, of with the availability to write books,

15:03.86
Jeffe Kennedy
probably Pern fan fiction, Anne McCaffrey fan fiction, I probably would have done it. um Certainly my boyfriend, Kev, back in the day, um you know, had picked out his dragon rider name. He would be K'van.

15:20.70
Jeffe Kennedy
And he wrote me stories, sometimes little short stories that were essentially pern fan fiction. I don't think I did. Um, there was something about that, that I just, um, if I've ever done it, I don't remember it, but I understand the appeal. I understand wanting to do it.

15:43.45
Jeffe Kennedy
i do have a problem with anyone. um trying to run a business, trying to generate money off of other people's creativity. And there's a lot of it out there, right? You know, there's the people who get very upset that they're not able to run their small business because somebody has, uh, said, no, you can't use my characters to to create your own things.

16:10.42
Jeffe Kennedy
So, um, most people out there ethical, a lot of people are just, um, I don't know don't seem to have a really good grasp of what copyrights and trademarks mean.

16:21.83
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, either deliberately or accidentally. i don't know if people aren't getting the education but. Um, yeah, there we are on that.

16:33.37
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, in other news, what else is going on? I mean, otherwise I'm just finishing blade books on the bandit. I am getting there. Okay.

16:45.24
Jeffe Kennedy
ah Oh shoot. Dare we look at the word count? I mean, I didn't do great while I was in Portales. Um, I'm at 55,000 words. So I go to Apollycon next week.

16:58.17
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, so this week is really the big crunch. Uh, the delightful Kelly Robson comes to visit on Sunday. So maybe we'll do a, uh, a twinsie podcast on Tuesday. Wouldn't that be fun to have? We've had her on the podcast before, but it might be fun to have her on here again.

17:19.50
Jeffe Kennedy
we'll make room here. ah I'm looking around at, uh, ah I still haven't. I'm so behind this year. ah Last year, i did have my taxes done by April 15th. I often file in October.

17:34.58
Jeffe Kennedy
um Last year, i did it early and it was awesome this year. I have not done it early. But I think that whole with my mom falling in the fall and dealing with all of that and getting her an assisted living, ah you know, I'm just like...

17:50.23
Jeffe Kennedy
that sucked up three or four months of my life. So now I'm getting back on track, but focus right now is getting this book done. Then I need to do things with like consigning the art you see stacked up behind me We are, uh, we have workers here today fixing our trash corral because we have these trash bins and a little, uh, wooden fence fenced in area for them, which was rickety when we bought this house low these 16 years ago and almost 17. Wow.

18:25.54
Jeffe Kennedy
Uh, but it's been getting increasingly decrepit. So the gate actually fell off. Yeah. like all like the post came up out of the ground i don't know if it rotted or what we have pack rats in there it's a disaster so um we have our wonderful handyman who's done a great deal for us uh Urie Meza his name is Uriel when he when i wrote him a check turned out it's Uriel and i'm like for the archangel? and he's like yes I like, no, that's that's awesome.

18:57.08
Jeffe Kennedy
So he is a rebuilding it for us and going to put down a concrete pad and it'll be ever so much nicer money I didn't necessarily want to have to spend. So please go buy books. Oh, the um Love Lies and Ley Lines free giveaway was awesome.

19:12.60
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, if you tried to get it through the web store and they tried to charge you 50 cents, uh, contact us. We'll send you a copy and ah pre-order Blades books on the bandit and starting Monday, there's going to be a goodreads giveaway for the trade paperback of never the roses coming out in June.

19:33.91
Jeffe Kennedy
uh ahead of the release among the thorns in July and if you subscribe to my newsletter you will see that there is a giveaway for arcs of among the thorns so jump on that so many things all right I'm gonna get to work I hope you all have a terrific week and I will talk to you all on Friday you all take care bye-bye