A Tale of Dragons, Love, and Magic: An Interview with Jeffe Kennedy, Author of "The Shift of the Tide"

A Tale of Dragons, Love, and Magic: An Interview with Jeffe Kennedy, Author of "The Shift of the Tide"
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If you love fantasy and romance, you can’t go wrong with the Twelve Kingdoms novels of Jeffe Kennedy, which combine richly imagined magic with witty, sensuous romance plots. The heroines are powerful and smart, with strong friendships and alliances with other women. The first of Jeffe’s novels set in the Twelve Kingdoms, The Mark of the Tala, begins a multi-book saga of magic, wars, and romance. Her latest, The Shift of the Tide, tells of the shapeshifter, Zynda. In a quest to save her people, Zynda seeks to achieve Final Form as a dragon. This goal is directly in conflict with a normal human life—and love.

I caught up with Jeffe to talk about the series, her unique heroines, female friendships, and more.

The Shift in the Tide marks the latest installment in an epic series. What are your feelings, looking back on this rich and complex story? Did any of the turns it took come as a surprise to you?

So, actually… Yes! The turns the story took came as so much of a surprise that it turns out that The Shift of the Tide is not the ending to this series after all. When I started the book, I fully expected it to be the ending, but there was so many layers to tie up that I simply couldn’t do it. So I know there will be at least one more book, and—let’s be honest—probably two more. The next book will be The Arrows of the Heart. In addition, I’m doing a high fantasy spinoff trilogy in this world for Rebel Base Books, The Lost Princess Chronicles. The first book, Princess of Dasnaria, will be out in June. By the time the third book is out, it’s going to dovetail with the timeline in this series. I’m more of a gardener (in George R.R. Martin’s parlance) than an architect, so I have a good feeling that everything will bloom at the same time. If it works out, it should be quite the show!

Each of your heroines is different—in terms of their personality as well as talents. Zynda gives us insight into the magic of the Tala and the siren allure of shapeshifting. Can you talk about the elements she brings to the series?

Zynda turned out to be super fun to write. These books are first person point of view (POV), so each is—as you say—time spent in a very different heroine’s head. Zynda is the first time I’ve written in the POV of one of the Tala. This race of shapeshifters and magical beings has always been viewed from the outside before, so I wondered how writing this book would go. Zynda is wild and free at her most basic level. Not only has she grown up in a culture with few restrictions on behavior or other social obligations, she’s also the most talented shapeshifter of her generation and capable of taking on well over a hundred different animal forms. She loves shapeshifting and the freedom it gives her. Because she’s been so many different kinds of animals, she sees the world through almost a prismatic lens of different sensory abilities. Thus, her morals and what she most values are different from the non-Tala. She takes magic for granted and, in her mutability, in some ways lacks real emotional connection to other people. Of course, that changes in the story!

Your series is characterized by strong women. It’s noteworthy that their relationships with one another are given center stage as much as their romantic relationships with men. What are your thoughts on this trend that runs through all your books?

I didn’t really set out to make the relationships with other women as important as the romantic ones with men, but I suppose that arises out of my worldview. I’m blessed to have wonderful friends who both support and challenge me, along with my husband of almost twenty-seven years. Female friendships, however—both blood sisters and found ones—are a subject of fascination for me. I think women interact with each other differently than they do with men, romantically or platonically. There’s a shared understanding in the female experience that operates in our lives on a profound level.

I suppose this is an area of intense interest for me. We—as women and as a society—put a fair amount of emphasis on the romantic “breakup.” But we don’t always talk about how much impact friendships have on our lives, or how painful their endings can be. There’s a terrific collection of essays The Friend Who Got Away (https://www.amazon.com/Friend-Who-Got-Away-Friendships-ebook/dp/B000XU8E82) that explores women’s friendships and why they end. One thing I took away from all the wonderful insights of those writers is that a lot of times our friendships with other women end because we let them. If conflicts arise within families or with partners/spouses, we’re hugely compelled to deal with and resolve them. With female friendships? Just as easy to never confront the conflict and instead let it die away. That’s part of my search for the happy-ever-after in my books—not only is the romantic love life-altering and fulfilling, but so are the female friendships.

The magic of the Tala seems inspired by Celtic magic, but with your own spin. How did this magic realm take shape in your imagination? Did it expand in the course of the series?

This is very true! I’m a longtime reader of Celtic tales—from fairytales to the Táin Bó Cuailnge—and my ancestry is almost entirely Irish and Scots. I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of mutability, as in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, and the Celtic mythology of shapeshifters being able to take any form. When I began the series, with The Mark of the Tala, the Tala were a mysterious and insular enemy, magical and spawning all sorts of wild tales. Of course, as I continued with the books, the Tala became more known and understood. This comes back to being a gardener—the seeds were in the Celtic mythology, but the “reality” of the people in the book continues to be revealed in the fruit and flowers.

What’s next for you?

I’m finishing Princess of Dasnaria this week, then turning back to writing book five in my Sorcerous Moons fantasy romance series (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01NATX3DW?ref=series_rw_dp_labf). I’ve also signed a deal with St. Martin’s Press for a new fantasy romance series, The Forgotten Empires. The first book, The Orchid Throne, will be out in 2019, so I’ll be working on that series, too!

Jeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author whose works include novels, non-fiction, poetry, and short fiction. 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 award-winning fantasy romance trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms hit the shelves starting in May 2014. A high fantasy trilogy taking place in The Twelve Kingdoms world is forthcoming from Rebel Base books in 2018. She also introduced a new fantasy romance series, Sorcerous Moons, which includes Lonen’s War, Oria’s Gambit, The Tides of Bàra, and The Forests of Dru. She’s begun releasing a new contemporary erotic romance series, Missed Connections, which started with Last Dance and continues in With a Prince.

In 2019, St. Martins Press will release the first book, The Orchid Throne, in a new fantasy romance series, The Forgotten Empires.

Her 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.

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Ilana Teitelbaum has written about books for the Globe and Mail, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon, and other places. Her epic fantasy debut, Last Song Before Night, was released by Tor/Macmillan in 2015 under the pen name Ilana C. Myer. The sequel, Fire Dance, is forthcoming in 2018.

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