I would like to welcome Jeffe Kennedy to The Avid Reader today. Thanks for stopping by Jeffe Kennedy. Please be sure and check out Jeffe Kennedy's novel Rogue’s Pawn. Check out my interview with Jeffe Kennedy and an excerpt of Rogue’s Pawn.
Book Title: Rogue’s Pawn
Author: Jeffe Kennedy
Series: Covenant of Thorns
ISBN: 978-14268-9406-0
Published: July 16, 2012
Publisher: Carina Press
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Rogue's Pawn
This is no fairy tale…
Haunted by nightmares of a black dog, sick to death of my mind-numbing career and heart-numbing fiancé, I impulsively walked out of my life—and fell into Faerie. Terrified, fascinated, I discover I possess a power I can’t control: my wishes come true. After an all-too-real attack by the animal from my dreams, I wake to find myself the captive of the seductive and ruthless fae lord Rogue. In return for my rescue, he demands an extravagant price—my firstborn child, which he intends to sire himself…
With no hope of escaping this world, I must learn to harness my magic and build a new life despite the perils—including my own inexplicable and debilitating desire for Rogue. I swear I will never submit to his demands, no matter what erotic torment he subjects me to…
BUY NOW LINKS
Rogue's Pawn
EXCERPT
Rogue's Pawn
“Enough,” a male voice said.
As if I’d ceased to exist, Tinker Bell blinked her eyes and regained her lovely self, face smoothing, shining once again in sunny elegance. Reboot and resume program. She gracefully stood and glided to the tray, set the bowl precisely in the center, lifted the tray and left the room without hesitation.
Booted footsteps crossed the room toward me. Act II, scene ii. Exit Nasty Tinker Bell, Enter God-Only-Knows-What-Now. My face was sticky with whatever the brothy stuff had been, my hair wet and fouled. I stank. I hurt. I was chained to a bed in a place so completely unknown I couldn’t begin to understand it. I tried to squeeze my legs closer together, but the chains seemed at the limit of their reach. The energy of my brief triumph evaporated, allowing tears to well up again.
Oh, please, please, please, do not cry. The threatening sting worsened. I closed my eyes and one tear leaked out. He stopped next to me, surveying me.
“You’re certainly a mess.” His wry voice was rich and smooth.
My eyes snapped open to glare at him through the blur. Fifty different smart remarks flew across my tongue, most along the lines that any failures of appearance on my part could be laid on the doorstep of someone besides myself. But even the buzz of the first word on my vocal chords brought searing agony. Relieved to have a legitimate reason for the tears, I almost welcomed the searing sensation.
“No, don’t try to talk—no one needs to hear what you have to say, anyway. Not that we can help it, since you think so loudly. And you have a decision to make. We have a quandary.” He began pacing, boots echoing against stone. “No one can heal you while you’re bound in silver and we can’t release you from the silver until you have yourself under control. Which will take a considerably long time—perhaps years of training—if you’re even able to accomplish it at all.”
I thought of the birds crashing in increasing cacophony with a small shudder.
“Exactly,” he confirmed. “And yes,” he said from the window behind my head where he seemed to be gazing out, “I can hear most of your thoughts—another reason to save trying to speak aloud.”
My stomach congealed in panic. Had he heard my secret thoughts? Don’t think of them, bury them deep, deep. Think of other things…like what? Think of home, think of Isabel. Isabel, my cat—Clive hated her. What would happen to her now? How could I not have thought of her until this moment? Abandoned, wondering why I never came home for her… And my mother—she’d be frantic. How long had I been gone? They could be all dead and buried, lost to me forever. The anguish racked me.
“Shh.” The man sat on the side of my bed now, heavier than Nasty Tinker Bell. He brushed the hair back from my forehead, then placed his long fingers over my brow and, with his thumbs, rhythmically smoothed along my cheekbones, wiping away the tears that now flowed freely.
I stifled a sob. I had cried more in the past day than I had in years. The sweeping along my cheekbones soothed me, melting warmth through my skull. The rhythm became part of my breathing. Deep breaths. Smooth, easy. The awful tightness in my chest gave a little sigh and released.
“Let’s try again, shall we?” The man pulled his hands away. I could hear him brush them against his thighs. Soup, tears and blood. Yuck.
My eyes cleared enough for me to see him. Ebony-blue climbed over half his face. The winding pattern of angular spirals and toothy spikes swirled out of his black hair on the left side of his face, placing sharp fingers along his cheekbone, jaw and brow. For a moment, the tattoo-like pattern dominated everything about him. Ferocious and alien.
Once I adjusted, I could see past the lines. His face echoed Tinker Bell’s golden coloring. He could be her fraternal twin, with those same arched cheekbones. But where she was golden dawn, he was darkest night. Midnight-blue eyes, that deep blue just before all light was gone from the sky, when the stars have emerged, but you could see the black shadows of trees against the night. He shared Tinker Bell’s rose-petal mouth, but with a curious edge to it. I suppose a man’s mouth shouldn’t remind one of a flower, and there was nothing feminine about this man. Where she wore the pink sugar roses of debutantes and bridal showers, his lips made me think of the blooms of late summer, the sharp-ruffled dianthus, edges darkening to blood in the heat. His bone structure was broader than hers but still seemed somehow differently proportioned, his arms hanging a bit too long from shoulders not quite balanced to his height. Inky hair pulled back from his face fell in a tail down his back. One strand had escaped to fall over his shoulder and I could see a blue shimmer in its silk sheen.
He arched his left eyebrow, blueness in the elegant arch, repeating the deep shades of the fanged lines around it.
“Shall we?” he repeated.
I stared at him. What was the question?
INTERVIEW
Jeffe Kennedy
The Avid Reader: What inspired you to write Rogue's Pawn?
Jeffe Kennedy: A dream. I didn’t know fiction was in me until I dreamed about Gwynn and The Black Dog. I’ve had a lot of dreams about Gwynn and her adventures – it’s a great gift to have those stories to tell.
The Avid Reader: When or at what age did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Jeffe Kennedy: Not until I was 28 and was getting my PhD in neuroscience. I figured out I was miserable because I was going in the wrong direction. I had to ask myself what the perfect life would be, if I didn’t want to be a scientist. The answer surprised me!
The Avid Reader: What is the earliest age you remember reading your first book?
Jeffe Kennedy: It was Charlotte’s Web when I was six years old – and I know this because my mom was reading it to me at bedtime, as was our habit, and I was reading over her shoulder, correcting when she missed words and then complained when she cried so much when Charlotte died (I hope that’s not a spoiler for anyone!) that she messed up the story. At that point she handed me the book and told me I was on my own. It’s a vivid memory.
The Avid Reader: What genre of books do you enjoy reading?
Jeffe Kennedy: Anything fantasy, paranormal and sexy goes right to the top of my list. But I read pretty much everything except the mystery/suspense/true crime end of fiction.
The Avid Reader: What is your favorite book?
Jeffe Kennedy: I never know how to measure this, because it changes all the time. If I had to pick a book I wish I’d written, I’d choose Kushiel’s Avatar, by Jacqueline Carey, because I think it’s a brilliant book that tied that trilogy together in exciting, visceral and wonderful ways.
The Avid Reader: You know I think we all have a favorite author. Who is your favorite author and why?
Jeffe Kennedy: I have many favorite authors, but I give a great deal of credit to Anne McCaffrey. She gave me the great gift of fantasy when I was in 5th grade – and her stories live with me still. She taught me that fantasy and femaleness and romance and politics and passion could all go together. My great regret is I didn’t meet her before she died.
The Avid Reader: If you could travel back in time here on earth to any place or time. Where would you go and why?
Jeffe Kennedy: I’d love to see the dinosaurs – if I could be encased in my impervious glass bubble and not get munched!
The Avid Reader: When writing a book do you find that writing comes easy for you or is it a difficult task?
Jeffe Kennedy: Sometimes, when I’m deep into it, the writing comes easily and gives a fabulous ride. But sitting down to write, getting started, is always difficult. Writing is hard work – if it wasn’t, everyone would have novels published instead of saying they’d like to write one.
The Avid Reader: Do you have any little fuzzy friends? Like a dog or a cat? Or any pets?
Jeffe Kennedy: I have two Maine coon cats and a border collie. One of the cats is a six-month-old kitten who keeps us on our toes. Into EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME.
The Avid Reader: What is your "to die for", favorite food/foods to eat?
Jeffe Kennedy: I have a terrible weakness for wine. And dirty martinis. I also love pastries of all kinds, but can resist most. If I cave, it’s for a brownie or cannoli.
The Avid Reader: Do you have any advice for anyone that would like to be an author?
Jeffe Kennedy: My advice is always the same and is the best advice I know: write every day. Write whether you feel like it or not. Treat it like a job and it will become a career. See above about writing being hard work – the only way to scale that mountain, I believe, is step by step, with fortitude and patience.
About the Author:
Jeffe Kennedy took the crooked road to writing, stopping off at neurobiology, religious studies and environmental consulting before her creative writing began appearing in places like Redbook, Puerto del Sol, Wyoming Wildlife, Under the Sun and Aeon. An erotic novella, Petals and Thorns, came out under her pen name of Jennifer Paris in 2010, heralding yet another branch of her path, into erotica and romantic fantasy fiction. Since then, an erotic short, Feeding the Vampire, and another erotic novella, Sapphire, have hit the shelves.
Her contemporary fantasy novel, Rogue’s Pawn, book one in A Covenant of Thorns, will be published in July, 2012. Jeffe lives in Santa Fe, with two Maine coon cats, a border collie, plentiful free-range lizards and frequently serves as a guinea pig for an acupuncturist-in-training. Find her on Facebook and Twitter or visit her at her website.
Be sure and check out all the other stops on the tour.
TOUR SCHEDULE
October 18 Promo SMARTMOUTHTEXAN
October 19 Interview The Avid Reader
October 22 Review Darkest Addictions Book Reviews
October 22 Review Nomi’s Paranormal Palace
October 23 Review Blooding Book Reviews
October 24 Interview Blooding Book Reviews
October 25 Guest Post Ex Libris
October 26 Interview Banshees, Books, and Baseball
October 27 Promo Cover2CoverBlog
October 27 Interview/Review Book Lovin' Mamas
October 30 GuestPost The Insane Ramblings of an Crazed Writer
2 comments:
Thanks for hosting me!
No, thank you for letting me interview you.
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