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.
The sequel, Damsels in Distress, is due
out in August. It will continue Belle's story, give Sleeping Beauty her time in
the spotlight, and reveal a little more about Snow.
While the book is touring,
the Kindle price has been reduced for both Amazon US and UK.
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?
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).
The giveaway is an ecopy. Please enter here:
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Vicky, thank you for supporting Laura on tour.
ReplyDeleteShaz
I have read all of sherrilyn Kenyon's books are you related?
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