1. What do you
wish men understood about women?
Sometimes we just need to cry, or be alone, and it has
nothing to do with them. The best thing they can do is just let it pass.
2. Do you only
work on one book at a time?
I'm always jotting down ideas for books, scenes, characters,
etc. So at any given time I could have five different stories in my head. But
as for actual writing, one's my limit. Between blogging and promoting and being
a wife/daughter/mom-to-be, I'd go insane doing two at once. Plus, think it
might prevent me from immersing myself in the world and the characters the way
I need to.
3. Who is your
favorite fictional couple?
I love this question!
There are so many options and I don’t want to be predictable, but … I have to
say Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. The untouchable, guarded man with a secret,
and the stubborn, independent woman meant for a different age. Their repartee
is fantastic and as timeless as Jane Austen’s book itself.
4. Do you have a
favorite quote that sums up how you feel about life?
“Live like there’s
no midnight.” It’s hanging above my desk in my little writer’s nook. I love it
because it resonates with both the title of my blog (Skipping Midnight) and a
pivotal scene in Desperately Ever After.
I’m not deluded enough to say I always live this way (or even that I live this
way more often than not!), but I’d like to. I’d like to live each day without
worrying about all the little things I can’t control, and without losing sight
of the things (or more accurately, the people) that really matter.
5. Do you set
daily writing goals? Word count? Number of chapters? Do you get a chance to
write every day?
I set and reset
writing goals so often they eventually become meaningless. But I do try to
write something every day—whether it be a blog post or a plot outline or an
entire chapter. It all depends on whether I’m in the middle of a project or
have some down time. Not that I’ve had any of that in, oh, five years.
6. What do you
like better, Twitter or Facebook? Why?
Like many writers
who are natural introverts, I’d do without both if I could. But I do appreciate
the ability to send out witty little sayings to the world via Twitter, and to
connect with complete strangers going through similar experiences. Facebook’s
okay, but I hate how it’s become THE place to make huge, personal announcements—like
pregnancies or engagements. Even a text would be better than that!
7. What are you
working on now?
Damsels in Distress, the sequel to Desperately
Ever After, is due out in August. It’s hard to say too much about the story
because the first book is still brand new and I don’t want to give anything
away! I’ll just say that Damsels in
Distress continues Belle’s struggle and also adds Sleeping Beauty (Dawn)
into the mix. Dawn is a background character in Book One for space reasons, but
her storyline is actually one of my favorites. I really can’t wait for everyone
to get to know her better. There are so many questions people never ask about
the Sleeping Beauty tale: What kind
of man would discover a comatose woman in the woods and decide to kiss her? How
would she feel waking up covered in dust with a stranger’s tongue in her mouth?
What if she had been in love with someone else before the curse hit? How would
she reconcile her old life with her brand new existence?
8. Tell us about
your latest release and where we can find it
Desperately Ever After is the first book in a series I describe as Desperate Housewives and Sex and the City meets the Brothers
Grimm. It’s a whimsical take on what happened after our most beloved fairy tale
princesses sailed off on their “happy endings.” I didn’t want it to be another
modern retelling—where “Prince Charming” owns a Fortune 500 company, for
example, and “Cinderella” works in the mail room. Instead, I wanted to continue
the tales where they left off, and I wanted the characters to actually BE those
princesses.
So I created a new
world for them, the United Kingdoms of Marestam, and based it on New York City.
Instead of boroughs, there are kingdoms. Instead of one supreme mayor, there’s
a Prime Minister. And these women (some queens, one a princess, and one an
infamous socialite) are the very best of friends—supporting each other, dealing
with how their lives have turned out, and seeing each other through all of
life's trials and triumphs. You can find it on Amazon, in both print and
e-book. (See links below)
Links:
Website: www.laurakenyon.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/laura_kenyon
Facebook: www.facebook.com/laurakenyonwrites
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/LauraKenyon
Amazon (US): www.amazon.com/author/laurakenyon
One part Sex and the
City. Two parts Desperate
Housewives.
Three parts Brothers Grimm.
Imagine what might happen if our
most beloved fairy tale princesses were the best of friends and had the dreams,
dilemmas, and libidos of the modern woman. How would their stories unfold after
the wedding bells stopped ringing?
Set in a fictional realm based
on New York City, DESPERATELY EVER AFTER sprinkles
women’s fiction with elements of fantasy, and encourages readers to rethink
everything they know about happy endings.
Years after turning her husband
from beast back to man and becoming his queen, Belle finds out she’s finally going
to have a child. But before she can announce the wondrous news, she catches him
cheating and watches her “happily ever after” go up in flames.
Turning to her friends for the
strength to land with grace, she realizes she’s not the only one at a
crossroads:
v
Cinderella, a mother of four drowning in royal duties, is
facing her 30th birthday and questioning everything she’s done (or hasn’t) with
her life.
v
Rapunzel, a sex-crazed socialite and one-woman powerhouse,
is on a self-destructive quest to make up for 20 years locked away in a tower.
v
Penelopea, an outsider with a mother-in-law from hell, is
harboring a secret that could ruin everything at any moment.
One part Sex and
the City,
two parts Desperate
Housewives,
and three parts Brothers Grimm, DESPERATELY EVER AFTER picks up where the
original tales left off—and reimagines them a la Gregory Maguire’s Wicked.
With the wit of authors like
Jennifer Weiner and the vision of ABC’s Once Upon a Time, the women of DESPERATELY
EVER AFTER rescue each other from
life’s trials with laughter, wine, and a scandalous new take on happily ever
after.
DESPERATELY
EVER AFTER is available in both print and as an e-book at Amazon.com
EDITORIAL REVIEWS
"Kenyon's
colorful imagery and often quick, lighthearted style makes it easy to keep
flipping pages.”
~ The New Canaan Advertiser
"Laura Kenyon's
Desperately Ever After is part Disney princess,
part Sex in the City, and part TMZ Celebrity
Gossip Site ... and it's fabulous!" ~ Kristy Feltenberger Gillespie,
blogger at Keep Calm and Write On
"...this book
is hilarious, sweet, and ingenious." ~ Whitney Reece, blogger at
WordsWisdomWhitney
Excerpt
Chapter
Two
CINDERELLA
Cinderella sucked in and
squirmed through the crystal tunnel, grasping for the surface as if her life
depended on it. Lacking the breath to form actual words, she forced a silent
pep talk. Just
a few more inches. The triumph will be worth the pain. Come on, Cindy. Burrow.
She pressed on, praying her head
would burst from the darkness before her heart pinched out her throat. Don’t breathe in. Air is the
enemy here. Her
mind ran wild with visions of front page jabs, of her husband’s once-adoring
face bowed in disgust, of all her admirers and endorsements turning away for
somebody younger … tighter … less mentally cluttered.
If she couldn’t fit into the
ball gown that ten years ago elevated her from cinders to chiffon, she needed
no further proof that her fairy tale was coming to an end. She’d probably turn
into a sitcom travesty. “Fallen Royals: Where Are They Now?”
Suck it
in, Cindy. Just a few more—
The snap shot through her bones.
She gasped. Her chest sprung out like a slashed canister of crescent rolls. The
roar was unmistakable. But rather than whip up and lament the fact that her
iconic ball gown had just torn open, Cinderella froze for so long and in such
an awkward position that Time itself must have admired her steadfast denial.
Alas, the inlaid clock on her mantel clicked forward.
“Crackling snapdragons!” she
shrieked, releasing her contorted spine and twirling around to make sure she
was alone. Cursing didn’t befit a queen—even one with four kids and an
eponymous social metaphor based on her life.
Just when she thought the coast
was clear, a tap sounded on the door, followed by the voice of her youngest
attendant.
“Is everything all right in
there, miss?” Delia’s words sailed clearly though the doors separating the
royal apartments from the rest of the castle.
She sighed. Perhaps life in a
castle was luxurious in other kingdoms, but Carpale was the star of Marestam in
every way—its central location, its bustling streets, its financial prowess,
its grand train station, and its iconic castle (which was supposed to prove
Parliament and local monarchies could cohabit as well as coexist). Life here
was crowded and far too exposed. She couldn’t even sneeze without someone
showing up with a cart full of tissues.
“Can I get you something?” Delia
repeated from the hall.
Cindy stifled a laugh and glared
at the gilded doors. Could she request her pre-motherhood waistline back? Or
the last ten years of her life? “I’m fine,” she said, taking a calming breath.
“But would you mind getting some of that special tea Rapunzel sent over?”
“The metabolism tea? Of course,”
Delia sang. “It’ll go great with some of those chocolate biscuits and—”
“Don’t you dare!” The words
splattered over her lips like Rapunzel’s third martini on a Wednesday. She
shuddered. “Sorry—I mean—just the tea, please.”
If Delia acknowledged the
apology, Cindy didn’t hear it as she freed herself from five layers of chiffon,
extricated her heel from the underlying web of tulle, and dove into a far more
reasonable ensemble: a velour tracksuit with “Royalty” (a gift from her eldest
daughter, Sophie, who had a matching set) spelled out in gemstones. Dropping
into her favorite armchair with the grace of an out-of-practice acrobat, she
sighed and gazed into the plaster sky overhead. She really needed to get a
grip.
For as long as she could
remember, Cindy had faced obstacles with the perfect combination of strength
and grace. From losing both her parents by age twelve to becoming her
stepmother’s maid, she neither caved in nor lashed out during tough times. Even
back then, she didn’t see the point in throwing unsightly hissy fits or
steamrolling over innocent bystanders simply because her life wasn’t going
well. It seemed far more effective to conceal all but a pinhole of resentment,
complete her assigned tasks with the expected degree of care, and escape to her
crawlspace at the end of the day to quietly plot her escape. Cindy believed it
was this attitude (much more defining, she hoped, than her marriage alone) that
prompted the Marestam
Mirror to
name her Woman of the Year five times in the last decade.
Lately, however—ever since “The
Big Three-O” had wriggled within striking range—her good nature had fallen a
bit askew. It started when she noticed that the upper left crease of her smile
stopped flattening when she let her lips fall back down. Her first wrinkle.
Then, when Sophie was fiddling with her hair one afternoon, she plucked out a
“white wire” that was somehow entwined with the rest of her golden strands.
When Cindy relayed these mortifying events to her husband, Aaron simply
laughed, kissed her forehead, and said he knew a great colorist on State
Street.
Thus began a month of
anti-wrinkle treatments, crash diets, every exercise class known to man, and a
dangerous, slightly masochistic journey through the memory trunk she kept in
the back of her closet. In it, she found old love notes from Aaron; four baby
blankets; a letter of Regal condolence honoring her mother (penned long before
she became the author’s daughter-in-law); her father’s passport (last stamped
on Cindy’s twelfth birthday, a week before he died); and a list of things she’d
vowed to do before thirty, scrawled on the back of her stepmother’s list of
“Chores and Punishments.”
Of all these bittersweet
artifacts, it was the last piece that brought her to tears. This wasn’t because
she’d come to terms with her mother’s death, or because she no longer missed
hearing about her father’s overseas adventures. Nor was it because she still
felt the stings of her stepmother’s curling iron. Rather, she fixated on the
list because she knew how its teenage author would have considered her future
self. Queen Cinderella, she would have thought, was not only a few breaths away
from a casket, but also a complete and total bore.
Item
One: Travel A LOT. Visit every realm in the world.
This had been her dream before
she crashed Aaron’s marital ball (purely to spite her stepfamily) and fell
idiotically in love with Carpale’s heir apparent. Aaron understood, bless his
heart, and tried to ease the loss with two open tickets on a year-long
honeymoon … but little Sophie slammed a wrench into that idea pretty fast.
Instead of seeing the world, they’d skulked home when she was in the throes of
first trimester nausea, and were quickly ushered onto her in-laws’ thrones.
Since then, “the world” had come to mean a cluster of five crowded islands
surrounded by ocean and bursting with monotony.
Item
Two: Do something dangerous, daring, and scarier than sleeping in a cave full
of bats.
Cindy had to chuckle over the
youthful turn of phrase, then frown over its content. Walking into that ball
wearing Ruby’s magical costume had been pretty intimidating. But scarier than a
cave of bats? Not really. Then there was her shoeless sprint home after the
spell wore off. Racing through the streets of downtown Carpale with bare feet
was definitely painful … and sort of dangerous. But swarms of young women did
it every weekend when the clubs let out. Her younger self had definitely
envisioned something more monumental. Like skydiving, perhaps. Or spelunking.
Item
Three: Create a breathtaking masterpiece.
Ahh. Her art phase. This
obsession began when her father gave her an art book procured during his
travels. For months, she fell asleep matching the masterpieces in each realm
with the stamps in his passport. Soon, her bedroom was wallpapered three-layers
deep with construction paper collages, paint-by-numbers, and drawings of every
kind. Her shelves overflowed with chunks of clay that bore no resemblance to
anything of this world. It
was her first gallery and, as it
turned out, her only. When her dad died, Cindy’s elder stepsister commandeered
the room as her personal walk-in closet and used the artwork as a pedicure mat.
The list went on, but the song
remained the same. Cindy didn’t know what bothered her more—the things on the
list that she hadn’t done, or the things that were missing. Fall in
love. Get married. Have babies too fast and far too often. Become the
figurehead of all figureheads in a realm with a political identity crisis. She was blessed
in ways so profound she couldn’t even have imagined them as a child. So why did
this unfulfilled batch
of adolescent daydreams make her feel so hollow?
About the Author
Laura Kenyon is an
award-winning journalist and graduate of Boston College. Her stories
and articles have
appeared in Kiwi Magazine, Westchester Magazine, Just Labs, Serendipity, The
Improper Bostonian, InD’tale Magazine, and
Westchester/Hudson Valley Weddings,
as well as in myriad newspapers and at PrickoftheSpindle.com. She lives in
Connecticut with her husband and their silver Labrador retriever. DESPERATELY
EVER AFTER is her first novel.
She loves connecting
with readers on her blog (laurakenyon.com), Twitter (twitter.com/laura_kenyon),
Facebook (facebook.com/LauraKenyonWrites), and Goodreads (www.goodreads.com/laurakenyon).
Representation:
Michelle Brower
Folio Literary
Management
Comments??
Thank you so much, Rachel. This interview was a ton of fun ;)
ReplyDeleteSuch fun questions Rachel and love Laura's answers :)
ReplyDeleteThank you for hosting today.
Shaz