Another Friday, another yay! Hope your week was great!  Mine was busy with mostly non-writerly stuff.

Writer Stuff

Been working on a contemporary romance.  There are lots of alpha dog sexytime scenes.  Be prepared. Be very prepared….

Non-Writer Stuff

Loads of promo the past couple weeks to spread the word about King's Warrior. I'm sometimes astonished at how much work it takes to sell books.  For the record, I'm a terrible, terrible saleswoman.

Reviews for King's Warrior

Was really touched by this blog Courtney Milan did over at Amazon's Book Review blog, Omnivoracious, recommending exciting, immersive, out-of-the-box historical romances. She rec'ced King's Warrior, saying

“…medieval romances that manage to capture, on the one hand, the hard, almost epic romanticism of an era filled with castles, brigands, and nobles, and on the other, romances that appeal to modern sensibilities with searingly hot romances with plots that start at adventure and never stop.”

 All About Romance reviewed King's Warrior and said, “King’s Warrior is full of action and Ms. Kennedy is a superb storyteller…I’d definitely recommend King’s Warrior to you.”

 I was especially touched by one reader's review over at Amazon, who said, “This felt so…E P I C. Well done, dear author. And thank you. You made Magdalena, our intrepid auburn-haired heroine, even more sensual, capably resourceful, and fierce. You also gave her grace. OMG I love her!! Our, Tadhg? You made him truly heroic….you gave him an inner voice so profound, unsure, yet resolved, that all I wanted was what HE wanted. To go home.”

New Cover for Claiming Her

Getting a new cover for Claiming Her!!  It's super pretty.  It'll be up on bookseller sites soon. I hope you love it!
I gave newsletter readers a sneak peek yesterday.  If you aren't getting the newsletter, it's free & easy–just drop your email address in the the sign-up form on the sidebar of every page of my website.  See?? —>

Or just click HERE!

A Shout-Out…

…to all the author friends who talked up King's Warrior in their newsletters & social media. Here are some of the book deals & releases I've shared in my newsletter this week (are you on the newsletter??  Come on over–it's fun! I only send it when there's book news, and I make sure you get all the news first.  For instance, see the next item….)

Erica Ridley, USA Today bestselling author has an upcoming Regency, Lord of Chance, only 99 cents as preorder! 

Vanessa Kelly, has a new short story, Three Renegades and A Baby, part of her RENEGADE ROYALS series, and it's only 99 cents!

When a former crime lord and two lethal spies take on the task of caring for a baby girl found on the doorstep, it’s up to Jack Easton, Marquess of Lendale, to decide who does the best job. But none of the men have any idea how much mayhem one little girl can create!

New York Times bestselling author Claire Delacroix has a new MEDIEVAL–yes, medieval ladies!–release this week. Crusader's Vow is ready for you.

Thought it might be fun to give you a sneak peek behind the scenes at the writing of King's Warrior, which just released last week. 

His plan was heartless, ruthless, and simple. Until he met her.

My plan for this story was simple, too.  (Not so much ruthless, but then I'm not an Irish warrior….)

I wanted to write a story where the hero exploits the heroine while appearing to help her, a story that would set up the new series I was starting, Renegade Lords.

I originally wrote King’s Warrior (originally titled The King’s Outlaw) for an anthology with three other author friends, Eliza Knight, Vonda Sinclair, and Jennifer Haymore, Captured by a Celtic Warrior (out of print now).  It was terrific working with these ladies, and if you haven’t checked out their stories, do!

The theme for our Captured anthology was, perhaps unsurprisingly, ‘captured.’  All the stories were also going to have a jeweled dagger running through them.  The same jeweled dagger. And yet, the stories were going to span hundreds of years.

Since my story was appearing first in the anthology, I  knew I wanted to set up a compelling, exciting ‘story’ for the dagger that the other authors were going to be working with.  But I also had to keep the storyline relatively tight, because these were all novellas—no sprawling 400 pg epics here!  And of course, it had to be über-sexy. All within a ‘captured’ theme.

I wrote and wrote, but kept writing around the story, until I wrote what is now the opening scene with Tadhg, the Irish hero of our story. He’s on the docks in a grubby little French seaport, trying to get out of town before he’s captured by the villain, and, boom, the story took off.

I really loved the challenge of this story, and when it came together, it came together fast and tight. Really fun!

But that was only half of it. Because as I wrote, the story morphed and grew (of course!) and kept getting longer. This hero had a backstory, a big one, with complicated relationships that were going to yanked brought back to the forefront and tested.

Clearly this was not a novella.  And so not all of it could make it into the anthology version. But I knew Tadhg (pronounced /tie-g/) needed to have his story told.  As did Magdalena, his simple, innocent heroine, who, Tadhg is about to find out, has the heart of a lion.

King’s Warrior is their story, in a full, single title release, with loads of adventure and scorching hot passion.

Travel to medieval France & England and get a taste of the Holy Lands with King Richard the Lionheart. Visit a sea town shrouded in darkness and corruption, sneak into hidden caves, and get snowbound in a firelit cottage with no one but a dangerous outlaw and the way he’s looking at you, firelight glinting in his eye… (Yes, there is snowbound-ness!)

I hope you love it.  Let me know; I love to hear from readers!

Have fun in there! 

Amazon | iTunes | Nook | Kobo | Google Play

Claiming Her is now available at Google Play!

So happy I can now offer my Google Play reader peeps the story!

What happens when a big bad warrior hero intent on conquering everything in his path comes up against a strong-willed heroine who has no intention of being conquered?

A seriously scorching hot romance, that's what!

Go see!

If you prefer other vendors, here are your links!

Amazon | iTunes | Nook | Kobo