First Cup of Coffee – July 8, 2026

We are less than a week away from the release of AMONG THE THORNS! Amazing, really. I'm also talking about "easy" writing advice that really isn't useful because it's too pat. And what kinds of scenes and details truly are gratuitous.

Preorder ~

Among The Thorns

Indie Booksellers! You can buy my indie books direct from me at discount!! Submit a Request for an order here

New Releases ~

Blades, Books, and the Bandit

Love, Lies, and Ley Lines

MAGIC REBORN

Never The Roses

The posture correcting sports bra I love almost more than life itself can be found here

Thank you for listening! You all take care. 

Transcript

00:01.08
Jeffe Kennedy
Good morning everyone. This is Jeffe Kennedy. Also writing is Jennifer K. Lambert, author of epic fantasy romance. I'm here with my first cup of coffee.

00:15.10
Jeffe Kennedy
Delicious. Today is Wednesday, July eighth Um, how are all of you? Things are good here. Beautiful weather. We've started to get some rain, hopefully get more rain. That'll be awesome.

00:31.03
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, and we are a week away from the release of among the thorns comes out next Tuesday. So less than a week. a week

00:43.70
Jeffe Kennedy
very excited for this book to come out. Um, well, it should be, um, I don't know. It's weird that it's here already. Uh, big book launch down in Albuquerque at books on the Basque looking forward to that.

01:00.47
Jeffe Kennedy
And, uh, then I'll be at tattered cover in Denver and steamy lit bookstore in Miami. And it should be, um, Super fun. And I'm going to spend an extra day in Miami with a friend that I haven't seen in a long time, Marcella Bernard. We've, we talk online pretty much every day, but we have not seen each other in a long time.

01:27.86
Jeffe Kennedy
She lives in Florida, but she's making like a four hour drive to come and come to the steamy lit event and then also to hang out.

01:39.06
Jeffe Kennedy
So I'm, I think that'll be great. I'm excited about that. Um, it was funny, you know, sitting down this morning, I was thinking, you what am I going to talk about on the podcast today? i don't know. um I feel like things are are fairly good here where I'm not making much progress on the whole caretaker thing who knows how that's going to work.

02:04.70
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, but you know, it's it's in process and yeah, probably not a lot more to say about it than that.

02:18.10
Jeffe Kennedy
I was um, had my therapy appointment yesterday. Did I tell you I'm in therapy now? hashtag. And one of the things we were talking about is how I am a point of big transition in my life where I'm trying to ah figure out just a lot of different things, you know, like how my life has looked so far. The people who have been fixtures in my life so far who've been very important to me and who will be important to me in the future. What will my

02:51.54
Jeffe Kennedy
life look like right? You know like you think that things are going to go a particular way and then like maybe your partner gets a chronic disease and you know you know that it's going to change that it's not going to keep going that way.

03:09.66
Jeffe Kennedy
And but one of the things we were talking about was while there is grief associated with this kind of loss with this kind of transition.

03:21.59
Jeffe Kennedy
um you know, and my mom is in assisted living now and you know, she's still in great health but that's going to be a transition also.

03:35.51
Jeffe Kennedy
But there are also exciting things about being where I'm at right now and that I can think about what I want my life to look like going forward that I can shape it to be what I want, which is interesting to think about right that um, you know, like when you're young, you kind of make a lot of decisions based on the needs of the moment right or the expectations of others.

04:07.00
Jeffe Kennedy
So, yeah, those are just things I'm thinking about. Oh, I was, yes. Sorry, I got distracted momentarily there. um Yeah, when we're younger, we decide things based on what works. Like my partner now, David, we moved in together after we had been dating for...

04:28.73
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, six months we've been dating and we um, we moved in together because we both had leases ending on our apartments. I was in grad school. He was divorced with two young kids. Uh, had, we both had to find a new place to live and it made sense to,

04:49.46
Jeffe Kennedy
You know, i remember going hunt apartment hunting with with you know, and both of us looking and finally we're like we should just consolidate. We were at each other's houses all the time. you know, overnight anyway.

05:03.74
Jeffe Kennedy
But and I mean our relationship has lasted 35 years so that's that's been a good thing. But was that a a deliberate choice on my part of who I wanted who I wanted to be with.

05:19.18
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, well, so these, uh, it's, it's interesting to think about what I want the rest of my life to look like and what that would be and who it would be with. And I don't know.

05:33.53
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, but yeah, I don't, I I'm just like in a funny space with a book release next week. Last year was such a big deal with never the roses coming out. And this feels like,

05:46.49
Jeffe Kennedy
not as exciting but I've been seeing a lot of really lovely reviews for it and I'm really gratified by all of that and it's wonderful. Um, I am 24,000 words into writing book three and it's going quite well. I'm ah it's kind of weird and twisty but I think that's okay. Um,

06:14.50
Jeffe Kennedy
I'm doing this one just sort of more like I wrote the first one, um kind of dreaming it along as the, ah of I'm trying to think of what the word is. I may be a little book brain at this point. Maybe that's what's going on with me. I'm also feeling like I'm going to have to stop because of book launch and book tour next week, right? You know, so I'm sort of, um,

06:42.62
Jeffe Kennedy
not going to be able to get really deep into that flow again until after I get back from book tour. But, um, yeah, that's the, uh, I was making a reference to the dream and I can't even think of the word that I want on that.

07:04.31
Jeffe Kennedy
I think one thing that we think about a lot as writers is to what to keep in a book and what to take out, right? This sounds like such a simple thing that it's so straightforward. You know, of course it's a question of what to put in and what to take out, but it is far from straightforward. It can be agonizing decisions. And I've heard lots questions.

07:33.43
Jeffe Kennedy
Pat advice over the years on this topic. Um.

07:41.50
Jeffe Kennedy
It is. Advice that I think because it is such a complex topic that it You either do like years of study or you get a very pat answer. I think that's what I'm trying to say here. Uh, because I've heard things like, you know, like the whole kill your darlings thing. I've heard, um if it occurs to you to take it out, you should.

08:12.50
Jeffe Kennedy
I have heard that you should never keep in the central idea that you started with, that if you like started with this core concept, that you should make sure to take that out because...

08:28.31
Jeffe Kennedy
Sorry, i was frothing at the mouth a little bit there, uh, because you are somehow still too wedded to it. And that's like a kill your darlings kind of thing. I've legit heard that advice. Um, what if advice have I also heard along of these lines? Um,

08:46.99
Jeffe Kennedy
It's kind of on the same thing of um if you are bored writing it, the reader will be bored reading it, which I've talked about many times is a conflation that I really don't like that advice. None of this advice do I like, but This is all spurred by um one of the people in my writing discord, uh, who was talking about that a beta reader of theirs suggested that there be an additional sex scene at the end of the book, uh, because the characters had all been through so much and why not give them one more sex scene for fun.

09:29.53
Jeffe Kennedy
And the person was saying, well, but it would be extra, right? Because I think we worry about things being gratuitous, right? We worry about scenes being gratuitous, especially sex scenes, right? I don't really hear anyone complaining about books having gratuitous fight scenes, right? Whereas I know writers who very deliberately put in extra fight scenes to make it more exciting, right? But that's not gratuitous. It's always the sex scenes that are gratuitous. Do they have meaning to the story? Are they there for a good reason?

10:11.19
Jeffe Kennedy
ah it's sort of along the lines of this same advice that everything on the page, everything you put into the novel needs to be moving the story forward in some way.

10:25.50
Jeffe Kennedy
And you could sort of see the similarity and all of these little caches of advice that they fit into like one line, you know, don't have gratuitous sex scenes, kill your darlings. If it occurs to you to take it out, you should. Everything in the book needs to drive the story forward. ah People like one line bits of advice. It's easy to give and easy to hear Um, not so easy to execute. Right?

10:57.75
Jeffe Kennedy
Because the truth of the matter is, is that there is so much nuance. Right? And of course, you know, in today's era, we seem to be lacking nuance on a lot of things.

11:10.74
Jeffe Kennedy
But.

11:14.49
Jeffe Kennedy
I think the idea that a sex scene can't be in there simply because it's fun. And I, and I ended up replying. Uh, and I hope the person listening to this does not mind that I'm using them as an example of,

11:30.10
Jeffe Kennedy
But I was like, well, really, is there such a thing as an extra sex scene? What? Why is this bad? Why not have it in there simply because it's fun?

11:42.52
Jeffe Kennedy
Why not have a celebrational sex scene at the end of the story to leave the reader on a great note? And something that I have learned, and maybe it's a short bit of advice, but one thing that I have learned over lo these many years of writing books is that the note that you leave the book on, what the final scene is, the final emotion of a book is very often what people will carry away with them.

12:15.58
Jeffe Kennedy
And that seems intuitive but I don't think we always think about that because we think about the whole arc of the book. We think of the whole story and all of these things that happened but whatever mood image theme feeling you end the book on that the reader closes the page on or turns off the kindle on.

12:39.32
Jeffe Kennedy
This is what lingers right? So why not put something in at the end that is um, lingering on a exciting happy note right?

12:55.45
Jeffe Kennedy
Um, But you know, like, how do you decide what's gratuitous? The, this advice that everything in the story needs to like drive the plot forward, drive character development, drive plot.

13:11.61
Jeffe Kennedy
I think one of the problems is that a whole lot of the advice out there is for newbie writers. Yeah. It's for very beginning writers who are trying to figure things out. And one problem, one potential problem that writers have at the very beginning is bloat. Like there's just a lot of stuff in there that doesn't need to be in there.

13:32.50
Jeffe Kennedy
But newbie writers can also have the problem of not giving enough description, not filling in enough detail. Uh, I have given writing advice in the past where I suggested to someone that they write five sentences around each one sentence that they'd already written.

13:55.22
Jeffe Kennedy
Because the huge challenge is getting what's in your head, getting this story that is so alive and fully fleshed and these characters that are so real and vivid and full of human life in your head or monstrous life or what have you, getting those into reality.

14:14.49
Jeffe Kennedy
words on the page that then translate back again to create that imagery in someone else's head. you know, that's a, it's an amazing challenge because we don't have music like the movies or imagery like the movies. We're relying on these little blocky letters on the page to transmit these things.

14:37.53
Jeffe Kennedy
So finding the words to take what's in your head and put it back in someone else's head is is a massive challenge and sometimes people don't write enough words right?

14:49.85
Jeffe Kennedy
Sometimes people write too many but. These are general pieces of advice that need to be tailored to specific situations, right? They need to be tailored to what what is your problem? Do you tend to be overly concise or do you tend to bloat?

15:09.85
Jeffe Kennedy
I had a writer friend who didn't set goals by word count. Instead, she set them by chapter because she found if she tried to write a certain number of words, then she ended up with bloat.

15:25.69
Jeffe Kennedy
But for me, my revision process is almost never cutting. i I rarely cut much. I'm always adding because I tend to be a concise writer. And when I revise, when I go back through, i am layering things in and i am adding detail and.

15:44.54
Jeffe Kennedy
So this idea also that like everything in the book has to drive the story forward or drive the character development forward, or that you can't have a gratuitous scene. Well, you can have stuff in there that's just for fun. i mean, that's the beauty of writing a novel. If you're writing a short story, you have very little real estate with which to work. But if you are writing a novel, you're,

16:12.63
Jeffe Kennedy
Yeah, you can spend some time on description. You can spend some time um on what the trees look like and so forth. And I'm going to caveat this by saying that I know that my books read slow and people comment. Reviewers comment on that all the time. They're like, well, this was a slower book. Um, this is not the, what I write is not the crisp, you know, jump from action scene to action scene, sex scene to sex scene, uh, which is very popular today.

16:46.04
Jeffe Kennedy
I saw something recently about the way that readers were taught in the nineties, that they were taught things like,

16:56.70
Jeffe Kennedy
that they shouldn't have to see words that they didn't know, which explains to me a whole lot of why I see this. Well, there were words in this book I didn't know. And I had to look up and it took me out of the story um or they don't look it up and then they don't know what it means.

17:13.72
Jeffe Kennedy
You know, for, for me, Part of the joy of reading is learning new words. um Part of the joy is sinking in and going for a slower pace. And that's what I like to do. And I think, sure, a lot of people could um come at my books. I know of a couple of editors out there who would say that my books would be, i don't know, more creative.

17:40.31
Jeffe Kennedy
Mainline popular or something like that mainstream. I guess I want popular if I picked up if I got rid of some of the extraneous stuff extraneous, but I like that stuff that for me awesome.

17:55.90
Jeffe Kennedy
what I want to have in the book, right? And so always these things come back to what you're trying to do, of course. but And so my advice for this particular writer is if you want to put in a celebrational sex scene, then great.

18:14.52
Jeffe Kennedy
But um worrying about it being extra or gratuitous I don't know. Is that really a consideration? Uh, I think that very rarely do anyone, but the people who are kind of anti sex on the page are going to complain about there being more right. You know, why not have them? It's joyful and fun and, and sexy. And we like those things. Um, instead cut out a gratuitous fighting scene.

18:47.42
Jeffe Kennedy
On that note, I will head out and do some work. I will talk to you all next week when Among the Thorns has launched. If you haven't pre-ordered, please pre-order. It'll be in the bookstores.

19:02.42
Jeffe Kennedy
um And I hope you like it. Slow paced, what have you. ah No gratuitous fight scenes. All right. ah I'll talk to you all next Wednesday.

19:15.00
Jeffe Kennedy
You all take care. Bye bye.