Right now I’m sitting at my desk — dog at my feet, toddler slumbering directly above my head, purple water bottle by my keyboard — completely flabbergasted that the calendar on the wall keeps insisting it is July. I hope you’re all having a phenomenal, restful, one-for-the-memory books kind of summer.

Many of you have reached out in the past year to ask when (or, in some cases, whether!) I plan on revealing what happened to Belle, Cinderella, Dawn, Rapunzel, and everyone else in the Desperately Ever After series. For months, all I could do was explain that life (new baby, house search, health scares) has a way of knotting up even the best laid plans, but rest assured I’d been devoting every spare minute to Book 3 since before Book 2 even hit your Kindles.

But today … finally .. I can answer your questions with something new: Skipping Midnight, the concluding novel in the Desperately Ever After series, is complete!

NOW I’m off to the land of revisions, proofreading, copyediting, and formatting — all of which I plan (ah, there’s that word again!) to finish as quickly as possible without sacrificing one lick of the story. If all goes well, you’ll be reunited with the ladies of Marestam before summer officially sets and Ariel loses her human legs. (Can you tell I’ve been living with a toddler? I can’t even tell you how hard it is to write with the entire soundtrack from Frozen playing on a constant loop in my head!)

But I digress. Thank you all for your wonderful emails, comments, and reviews. You have truly been my coveted midnight oil over these many, many months. Keep checking laurakenyon.com for updates, sneak peaks, giveaways, and the date of Skipping Midnight’s big cover reveal next month.

And again … enjoy your summer!!!

My first e-reader came to me by force. It was many Christmases ago, when my logical-to-a-fault husband took a look at the guest room wall (floor-to-ceiling built-ins essentially vomiting paperbacks), noticed how much extra weight my suitcases carried on vacation (“But I don’t know what I’ll want to read first!”), and took the bold and courageous step of purchasing me a Kindle Touch.

I won’t say I felt like my dog, Shadow, unwrapping a box of flea and tick medication … or an electric collar. But, well, maybe a little.

But alas. While I hate to admit it. (Especially in writing to the entire world.) He was right and I was wrong.

As much as I railed against them in the beginning, it’s safe to say that I’m an e-book convert. In fact, it was my idea to upgrade my Kindle Touch to a shiny new Kindle Paperwhite a couple of years ago — and this time, opening the package was like opening a box filled with puppies sporting big, red bows on their heads.

Before e-books, spending a week in Punta Cana with twenty-three possible titles was a thing of fantasy. Before e-books, I wasted countless hours trying to predict what I’d be in the mood for this day or that. Before e-books, I actually had to use a book light if I read in bed while hubby was sleeping — a struggle that never seemed to work quite the way I wanted. And before e-books, millions more trees met untimely ends in order to stock our shelves. How’s that for an Earth Day connection?

Hypocrite warning: I’m not against paper books. And if I LOVE LOVE LOVE an e-book, there’s still a good chance I’ll purchase the paperback just so I can place it on that lovely guest room wall and make easy reference to it later. I did this with all three Hunger Games books (The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay), for example, and have absolutely no regrets. But I’m also likely to purchase the Kindle version of something I have in print because it’s more portable — and yes, the chance of me getting to everything on that bookshelf is slim to none.

Yes, it’s a sickness. But I love it 😉

Need help choosing an e-book for Earth Day? Try an Amazon #1 bestseller like Desperately Ever After or its sequel, Damsels in Distress. The trees will smile and so will you 😉 Continue reading →

It’s 11 p.m. My adorable menace is sprawled out like a drunk freshman in her crib. My dog, who’s still coming to terms with said menace’s arrival, is seeking solace in a ball at my feet. My husband is in the next room watching what sounds like a particularly terrifying episode of The Walking Dead. And despite accomplishing a fraction of what I intended before the day’s exhaustion set in, I’m capping the pen for the night.

But in honor of Valentine’s Day, I must first pass on Heather Havrilesky’s hilarious article for New York Magazine about the true definition of ‘romance.” Hint: It goes a heck of a lot further than the credits in a Rachel McAdams movie.

One of my favorite lines: “When it’s 10 p.m. and you crawl into bed like two old people and tell each other about the weird things that your kids said that day and laugh and tell stupid jokes and giggle and then maybe you feel like making out or maybe you just feel like playing a quick game of Candy Crush, all the while saying things like, ‘This game is stupid, it sucks’ and ‘Your feet are freezing’ and ‘My ass hurts,’ that’s romantic.”

Granted, her marriage still has three years on mine, but the sentiment still resonates — freezing feet and all 😉

Check it out: What Romance Really Means After 10 Years of Marriage

Whether you’re a fan or foe of the Hallmark holiday, there’s something for everyone during PageCurl’s Valentine’s Day blog hop this year — with 75 authors participating!

Head on over to my Facebook page for a chance to win one of three Kindle copies of Desperately Ever After, as well as one of four $25 Amazon gift cards.

Hurry up though … the cupid’s clock is ticking! Best of luck to you all 😉