GtPGKogPYT4p61R1biicqBXsUzo" /> Google+ Jeffe Kennedy guest post: This kind of thing is my catnip! (Lonen's War book tour) | I Smell Sheep

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Jeffe Kennedy guest post: This kind of thing is my catnip! (Lonen's War book tour)

So, I had this idea for a book. I’ve been nursing it along for some time.

I wanted the king and queen of warring kingdoms to agree to a marriage of state. You know – all that juicy marriage-of-convenience/enemies-to-lovers tropey goodness. Getting to write a slow-burn romance appealed to me, too. And I could just picture my hero and heroine, from very different worlds, both proud and strong, having to find ways to work together.

A couple of years ago, when my agent asked about my next planned project, I enthusiastically described this concept. He wasn’t as enthused, saying it sounded too much like THE MARK OF THE TALA.

This is the thing about writers, though. We write a book on a certain theme and it goes in particular directions that might not totally scratch the story itch that birthed the idea. This is why Robin McKinley has written TWO Beauty & the Beast retellings. She’s said that she wasn’t completely satisfied by the first one, which annoyed her for years, until she finally recapitulated and wrote a second one.

That’s how I felt!

I mean, I love the story that THE MARK OF THE TALA tells, but Andi and Rayfe’s story lasted for one novel. I have a lot more to say on this theme.

When I mentioned this to my darling friend, Grace Draven, she replied, “Oh yeah – when I find a book that’s my catnip, the first thing I think is that I never want to read a story along those lines again!” Okay, so she’s a little sarcastic, but I love her and her point is well taken.

The upshot is, I decided to go ahead and write the Sorcerous Moons series. And I have had so much fun!

In the first book, LONEN’S WAR, out next week, we meet Oria, a princess of Bára and a sorceress, facing the assault of the barbarian enemy, the Destrye. And we meet Lonen, prince of the Destrye, on the battlefield.

Yeah – you can smell that marriage of convenience coming, can’t you? But it takes a nice, long time to get there. Something that’s very nearly scratched my itch. Although, now that I’ve written the sequel, ORIA’S GAMBIT, and am starting book three, I’m thinking of some directions I had to discard, feeling that itch to write a different kind of riff on this theme.

What can I say? This kind of thing is my catnip!

What are your favorite marriage of convenience stories?



Lonen's War (Sorcerous Moons – Book 1) by Jeffe Kennedy
An Unquiet Heart
Alone in her tower, Princess Oria has spent too long studying her people’s barbarian enemies, the Destrye—and neglected the search for calm that will control her magic and release her to society. Her restlessness makes meditation hopeless and her fragility renders human companionship unbearable. Oria is near giving up. Then the Destrye attack, and her people’s lives depend on her handling of their prince…

A Fight Without Hope
When the cornered Destrye decided to strike back, Lonen never thought he’d live through the battle, let alone demand justice as a conqueror. And yet he must keep up his guard against the sorceress who speaks for the city. Oria’s people are devious, her claims of ignorance absurd. The frank honesty her eyes promise could be just one more layer of deception.

A Savage Bargain
Fighting for time and trust, Oria and Lonen have one final sacrifice to choose… before an even greater threat consumes them all.


Available at Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Smashwords on July 19, 2016 
Buy links will be added to the website once available 


About the Author:
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Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author whose works include non-fiction, poetry, short fiction, and novels. She has been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award. Her essays have appeared in many publications, including Redbook.

Her most recent works include a number of fiction series: the fantasy romance novels of A Covenant of Thorns; the contemporary BDSM novellas of the Facets of Passion, and an erotic contemporary serial novel, Master of the Opera. A fourth series, the fantasy trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms, hit the shelves starting in May 2014 and book 1, The Mark of the Tala, received a starred Library Journal review was nominated for the RT Book of the Year while the sequel, The Tears of the Rose was nominated for the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2014 and the third book, The Talon of the Hawk, won the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Fantasy Romance of 2015. Two more books will follow in this world, beginning with The Pages of the Mind May 2016. A fifth series, the erotic romance trilogy, Falling Under, started with Going Under, and was followed by Under His Touch and Under Contract.

She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, plentiful free-range lizards and a very handsome Doctor of Oriental Medicine.

Jeffe can be found online at her website: JeffeKennedy.com, every Sunday at the popular SFF Seven blog, on Facebook, on Goodreads and pretty much constantly on Twitter @jeffekennedy. She is represented by Connor Goldsmith of Fuse Literary.


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