Kingdoms world, began releasing from Rebel Base books in 2018. The novella, The Dragons of Summer, first appearing in the Seasons of Sorcery anthology, finaled for the 2019 RITA Award.
Kennedy also introduced a new fantasy romance series, Sorcerous Moons, which includes Lonen’s War, Oria’s Gambit, The Tides of Bàra, The Forests of Dru, Oria’s Enchantment, and Lonen’s Reign. And she released a contemporary erotic romance series, Missed Connections, which started with Last Dance and continues in With a Prince and Since Last Christmas.
In September 2019, St. Martins Press released The Orchid Throne, the first book in a new romantic fantasy series, The Forgotten Empires. The sequel, The Fiery Crown, followed in May 2020, and culminates in The Promised Queen in 2021.
Kennedy’s other 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; an erotic contemporary serial novel, Master of the Opera; and the erotic romance trilogy, Falling Under, which includes Going Under, 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 Sarah Younger of Nancy Yost Literary Agency.
jeffekennedy.com
facebook.com/Author.Jeffe.Kennedy
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Blood Martinis & Mistletoe: A Faery Bargains Novella
by
Melissa Marr
Half-dead witch Geneviève Crowe makes her living beheading the dead—and spends her free time trying not to get too attached to her business partner, Eli Stonecroft, a faery prince in self-imposed exile in New Orleans.
After a faery bargain gone wrong, a walking-dead relative and a deadly but well-paying job make juggling the holidays, romance, and work a lot more complicated than anyone needs.
With a killer at her throat and a blood martini in her hand, Geneviève accepts what seems like a straight-forward faery bargain. Eli’s terms might make the holidays a little more bearable, but if she can’t figure out a way to escape this faery bargain, she’ll be planning a wedding after the holidays.
Copyright © 2020 by Melissa Marr
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or business establishments, organizations or locales is completely coincidental.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to the rattlesnake. If you hadn’t rolled under my kayak with me, the series wouldn’t exist. Realizing you have a rattlesnake in your hair? Bad. Getting bitten when you shove it away from your face? Monkey Balls, Son of Weasel, ouch. (Seriously, it’s a special sort of pain.)
So these books are entirely the fault of a rattlesnake…and Molly Harper and Jeaniene Frost and Kelley Armstrong who thought my hillbilly accent and rural sass were fair game for a book. I grew up barefoot country, and while a pistol isn’t offered at birth it’s sort of an implied I.O.U. So Gen and Eli are the characters I wanted to write for years. (Thank you to all of you for the love I’m getting on their first book, too!)
Thanks, Jeffe and Leslye, for inviting and welcoming me, and thank you, Kelley, for . . . more things than I have space to say. From organizing tours and conferences to standing at my side for a memorial, you are a once-in-a-million friend.
And thank you to the readers, the writers, and the booksellers and librarians who have recommended my books, cheered and wept with me, and made me feel so much love. I will continue to try not to let you down.
~ 1 ~
Giant aluminum balls hung around me even though I was standing in the cemetery not long before dawn. I didn’t know who hung the balls, but I wasn’t too bothered.
Winter in New Orleans was festive. We might have draugr and a higher than reasonable crime rate, but damn it, we had festivities for every possible occasion. Gold, silver, red, blue, purple, and green balls hung from the tree. Samhain had passed, and it was time to ramp up for the winter holidays.
November—the month after Samhain—was uncommonly active for necromancy calls.