Sparkly Castles and Everyday Magic

by Jeffe Kennedy

I posted this picture on my personal blog just recently, so forgive me if you saw it already.

It seemed like the perfect thing to post here, however, because so many of the Paranormal Romantics have been discussing Christmas themes recently. The paranormal genre is often conflated with the dark and horrifying, with Halloween being the "big" holiday cited. Not that this isn't valid - like many of my paranormal-inclined sisters and brothers, I love Halloween.

However, I also love Christmas and I see I'm not alone.

Amy Ruttan posted about her favorite Christmas movies. Dianne Fox mulled about the midwinter darkness and how that lends itself to thoughts of creatures of the night. The always awesome Jane Kindred confessed that she's a Christmas-a-holic.

I am, too.

I love the fantasy of Christmas in the same way I love everything paranormal. The sense that magic lingers in the air and everything is just a bit more sparkly, that the world is deeper and richer than we even realize. Those glittery castle ornaments are a gift from my mother - who's given me an ornament every year since I was born - and they commemorate that this is the year I'll see the publication of my fantasy trilogy, The Twelve Kingdoms.

Sparkly castles for the win!

When I wrote the first book in the trilogy, The Mark of the Tala, which comes out in late May, I originally called it The Middle Princess. That's because it's about the classic trope of the three princesses, each more beautiful than the last. I always wondered about the one in the middle - not the eldest, not the most beautiful. I knew, too, that a man hunted her, a man with uncanny and frightening powers. In writing it, I indulged in every magical image I love most. Yes, there are castles - sparkly ones, one built into a dormant volcano, and ones that aren't really castles at all. There's magic and love and loss. Everything that makes life rich and deep, and ever so much more precious.

Enjoy this special time of year, as the midwinter darkness turns around and gives way to the growing light.

Happy Holidays Everyone!
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Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author with a writing career that spans decades. Her 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 three fiction series: the fantasy romance novels of A Covenant of Thorns, the contemporary BDSM novellas of the Facets of Passion, and the post-apocalyptic vampire erotica of the Blood Currency.  A contemporary e-Serial, Master of the Opera, will be released in January. A fourth series, the fantasy trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms, will hit the shelves in 2014. A spin-off story from this series, Negotiation, appears in the recently-released Thunder on the Battlefield anthology. Her newest book, Five Golden Rings, came out as part of the erotic holiday anthology, Season of Seduction, in late November.
She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, a border collie, 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, and pretty much constantly on Twitter @jeffekennedy. She is represented by Pam van Hylckama Vlieg of Foreword Literary.