Crown and Kingdom Spotlight

@jeffekennedy  #Spotlight Crown and Kingdom 
The Crown of the Queen
A Twelve Kingdoms Novella

Dafne Mailloux, librarian and temporary babysitter to the heirs to the High Throne of the Twelve – now Thirteen – Kingdoms, finds it difficult to leave the paradise of Annfwn behind. Particularly that trove of rare books in temptingly unfamiliar languages. But duty calls, and hers is to the crown. It’s not like her heart belongs elsewhere. But how can she crown a queen who hesitates to take the throne?

This novella will be part of a duology called For Crown and Kingdom, which will also contain a novella by Grace Draven.

For Crown and Kingdom (The Crown of the Queen) will release on May 24, 2016 and will be available in digital format and print.

Buy links will be added to the bookpage once available: http://www.jeffekennedy.com/for-crown-and-kingdom/

AN ORPHAN’S THRONE
Magic has broken free over the Twelve Kingdoms. The population is beset by shapeshifters and portents, landscapes that migrate, uncanny allies who are not quite human…and enemies eager to take advantage of the chaos.
 
Dafne Mailloux is no adventurer—she’s a librarian. But the High Queen trusts Dafne’s ability with languages, her way of winnowing the useful facts from a dusty scroll, and even more important, the subtlety and guile that three decades under the thumb of a tyrant taught her.
 
Dafne never thought to need those skills again. But she accepts her duty. Until her journey drops her into the arms of a barbarian king. He speaks no tongue she knows but that of power, yet he recognizes his captive as a valuable pawn. Dafne must submit to a wedding of alliance, becoming a prisoner-queen in a court she does not understand. If she is to save herself and her country, she will have to learn to read the heart of a wild stranger. And there are more secrets written there than even Dafne could suspect…

Coming May 31, 2016

One of my favorite parts of THE PAGES OF THE MIND is when Dafne, Jepp and Zynda drink some of Jepp’s favorite whiskey around the campfire and discuss their sex lives. Not that Dafne wants to have that conversation, but you know how Jepp is. Cheerfully relentless and totally without a filter.
Also... there’s something about the girls’ night out. For these three it’s a pause along the journey, a time away from their usual preoccupations and responsibilities to confide those things they might not in the light of day. We carry those secrets around, deep in our hearts, and rarely speak of them to anyone because they might sound silly or shameful or ... simply not that big of a deal to someone else. But among other women, in that bubble of space and time, we can talk with more honesty and trust.
A little Branlian whiskey never hurts either!
 
Here’s a little snippet of that conversation.
 
**************
 
Jepp, Zynda, and I had our own campfire, a bit away from the Dasnarians. Our Vervaldr guard had thrown in with them for the evening and they’d all fallen into some sort of Dasnarian drinking and gambling game. Jepp glanced over at a particularly raucous group shout they sent up, with cheers and groans. “Men,” she muttered.
 
“You could join them, if you prefer,” I offered. “I wouldn’t mind and I doubt Zynda does.”
“Not a bit,” Zynda agreed. “Though I don’t think Jepp wishes to.”
 
“No, Jepp does not wish to.” She made a face. “I’ve had enough of male egos for the day, thank you. Besides, the High Queen told me to guard you two with my life and I’m not about to let her down.”
 
“Understandable. I would be equally loath to face Ursula with a failure like that.”
“Does it bother you,” Jepp asked, “that she’s with Harlan?”
 
I blinked at her. “Why would it bother me? I think he’s really good for her.”
 
“I just figured that you’re in love with her and it’s hard when that happens and the other woman picks a man instead. I mean, it hurts when they pick anyone else, but for some reason it’s worse when it’s a guy and—”
 
I cut in then, not wanting to hear more. “I’m not in love with Ursula. That is...” I searched for the right way to explain my feelings.
 
“No more so than we all are?” Zynda offered. “She’s an admirable woman who inspires great feelings of devotion.”
 
“I admire her greatly, yes.” I sounded stiff, even to myself, badly wanting out of this conversation.
 
 “I would do Ursula,” Jepp said thoughtfully. “All that intensity and passion, focused on you in bed? 
Mmm.”
 
Zynda snorted. “From your tales, it sounds as if you would do anyone.”
 
Jepp grinned, unrepentant. “Well, I do have standards. But they’re woefully low. I’m weak—I rarely turn down an opportunity for an honest, vigorous fucking. I prefer cock, in general, but women can work for me, too. I wouldn’t blame you if you did have a crush on our High Queen, Dafne.”
 
 “I do not have a crush on Ursula!”
 
“I just figured because I never see you with men. And you spend so much time with Ursula. And Harlan.” Her eyes brightened with salacious interest. “Unless you’re in a threeway with both of them? That would be amazing.”
 
I choked on my tea, face hotter than the campfire. “No! Don’t put images like that in my head.”
 
“I wouldn’t judge,” she insisted. “I’d be insanely jealous, but you can tell me. In great detail, please.”

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 Word Whores blog, on Facebook, on Goodreads and pretty much constantly on Twitter @jeffekennedy. She is represented by Connor Goldsmith of Fuse Literary.