[Note From Frolic: We have a thing for novellas. A BIG thing. In the next installment of an ongoing series, we bring you a post from author J. Kenner, whose novella ‘Indulge Me‘ with our friends at 1001 Dark Nights is out now!]
I’m a late-bloomer in a lot of ways. I didn’t start (seriously) dating until well into college. I didn’t get serious about writing (despite piddling around with it all my life) until after I’d already settled into a career as a lawyer, and I didn’t start watching Game of Thrones until after the HBO series wrapped.
The last one is actually pretty normal for me. Now that streaming is available, I no longer have to engage in my childhood pleasure of highlighting the weekly TV Guide the day it arrived in the mail. I no longer have to track down missed episodes during the summer. Best of all, I can do my favorite thing in the world: Binge.
In college, I’d binge on tortilla chips and hot sauce (or pints of ice cream). Now, I binge-read and binge-watch series. And I do so multiple times. (I would not be at all surprised to find I hold the record for having read and re-read the entire JD Robb In Death series, and I’ve watched all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer so many times that my family fears watching a single episode just for fun lest I get sucked back in again.)
On the first go-round, GOT didn’t suck me in. Or, it did, but it didn’t stick because my husband wasn’t into it. Don’t get me wrong; he loved the first season. Too much. He’d become attached to Ned Stark and, spoiler alert, he wasn’t crazy about how Season One ended (understatement of the year) and decided to abandon the show. Not wanting to wait months for the next season only to watch the show by myself, I moved on.
Fast forward to this year. Once I knew that GOT was actually going to end, I got excited about glomming it. And the week after the series finale aired, I dived in. I wasn’t sure that I would get obsessed—high fantasy isn’t my thing—but GOT isn’t really high fantasy (at least not as I define it). Instead, it was about people. Their fears, their relationships, their betrayals and challenges. Holy freak, I LOVED IT. The series finale aired May 19. I started watching two weeks later. I finished the series on the plane back from Disney World on June 16 (and somewhere in there I wrote a novella). Yeah, I was obsessed.
Honestly, I didn’t expect to be. Mostly, I wanted to be “pop culture aware” – after all, I bought an “I drink and I know things” t-shirt years ago without even knowing why folks thought it was cool. When I learned it was GOT, that was just one more reason I wanted to get to know the show.
And I really did/do love it. Even the last two seasons were okay in my book (not great, but I’d heard such rumblings I was expecting it to be utter dreck. And, imho, it wasn’t). I loved the characters. I loved their arcs. I loved how they screwed up, their challenges, their ambitions, their plots, their growth. And the dragons, especially as babies, were just too cute. I mean, seriously: I want a baby dragon!
As a romance writer, what I found particularly fascinating was that there was really no romance story line in the series other than Sam and Gilly. Maybe Jaime and Cersei, though talk about doomed. Lots of sex; very little romance.
I could go on and on, but I’m so glad I glommed the show rather than watching as it aired. For me, it was way more fun. And it has primed my current obsession: reading the books. This time, however, I’m going slooooowwwwwly. Maybe GRRM will catch up to me …
About the Author:
Julie Kenner is a USA Today bestselling American author of romance and fantasy novels. She also writes with the pen names J.K. Beck and J. Kenner. In 2014, she received the Romance Writers of America RITA Award as J. Kenner for Best Erotic Romance for Claim Me. Find her at: https://www.juliekenner.com/
Indulge Me by J. Kenner, out now!
Despite everything I have suffered, I never truly understood darkness until my family was in danger. Those desperate hours came close to breaking both Damien and me, but together we found the strength to survive and hold our family together.
Even so, my wounds are deep, and wispy shadows still linger. But Damien is my rock. My hero against the dark and violence.
And when dark memories threaten to consume me, he whisks me away, knowing that in order to conquer my fears he must take control. Demand my submission. Claim me completely. Because if I am going to find my center again, I must hold tight to Damien and draw deep from the wellspring of our shared passion.
