Hey'a, everyone! Today, we're celebrating the release of Love and Memory, the third book in Kendra E. Ardnek's Rizkaland Legends! I very much enjoyed this book (hop over to Light and Shadows, my other blog, to read about why), and I'm excited that other people get to read it now instead of just Kendra's alpha/beta readers. And today, we've got an interview with the author herself in which she'll share a bit about this book and her journey writing it. (Also, make sure you stop back tomorrow for an interview with one of the characters from the book!) But before we jump into the interview, let's get the details on the book and author.

About the Book and Author

About Love and Memory

The Rizkaland Legends #3

When a Queen forgets,
Her enemies rejoice in her weakness.
But when the Queen remembers,
They tremble in fear.
When a King loves,
His country rejoices with him.
But when that love is broken.
The land is broken, too.
Can Water and Fire join again?
Can Love and Memory be restored?

They spent years in Rizkaland. They ruled the land, forged friendships, built families, and made it their home. But then it was time to return to Earth, and their former lives just don’t fit anymore. Clara and Andrew struggle to reevaluate their priorities when hundreds of miles separate them. Reuben and Petra are lost as they seek a balance between their old friendship and their Rizkan marriage. And Ashna and Noraeto never planned to return, so what life is there for them on Earth?

When the unthinkable happens and a new enemy arises, they’re all thrown back into Rizkaland, into a young prince’s rise to power and struggle to build alliances for his kingdom. But they no longer belong in their other world, either.

Are good memories too much to bear?

Buy it on Amazon || Add it on Goodreads

About Kendra E. Ardnek

Kendra E. Ardnek is the self-proclaimed Arista of Fairy Tales. She lives in the Piney Woods of East Texas with her dragon babies and massive herd of mini-giraffes, and she is still waiting for one of of her fifty nutcrackers to come to life and marry her. When not writing, you can usually find her sitting in a random box, and she’s frequently known to act before she thinks.

Find her online at: Website || Blog || Goodreads || Facebook || Twitter || YouTube || Newsletter || Instagram || TikTok || Amazon

Interview With Kendra E. Ardnek

Welcome back to the blog! To start out, where did the inspiration for Love and Memory come from, and what additional sources of inspiration did you find along the way?

I don't know where the initial idea came from (beyond my obsession with amnesia, and the fact that using it with a certain couple was just tooooo tempting a torment to not do), and there's a lot of stuff of stuff I've magpied into the book over its evolution.

...

Actually a lot of this book's writing process can be summed up in "A fan made a request/asked a question and I figured this was the book to address it. So ... possibly explains why it became 600 pages long.

That would make for a long book. LaM is a return to your Rizkaland Legends series, of which you've previously published two books. How did the experience of writing LaM differ from writing those books?

Um, mostly the fact that I now had an existing fanbase that had expectations for the book. WPFP and LDTD both came out so quickly together, and each had such an insular cast, no one really had an opinion, but LaM started percolating only right about the time of WPFP's publication, so fan expectations really played a large role in what subplots I tackled.

Interesting. Although LaM is a portal fantasy, it's also a story about what happens after a portal fantasy adventure and how you rebuild and return to what you left behind. Many portal fantasy series tend to overlook or minimize this particular struggle. How did you decide to instead focus on this aspect of the story?

Because I had a fan who specifically request to know exactly what happened to Clara and Andrew after they got back. I was also hugely influenced by a bunch of Narnia fanfiction.

Without revealing any major spoilers, what was your favorite scene in this book to write? Can you share a snippet from it?

There's an eight thousand word chapter in part 3 that is absolutely amazing, but it's absolutely spoilers, so ... *sigh*

Aw, oh well. We'll just have to look forward to reading it for ourselves. Fun question time! Many of the characters in the Rizkaland Legends have special powers or abilities. Which character's power would you most like to have for yourself and why?

Petra and Reuben's telepathy. I mean, the others are cool and all, but ... mind talking!

Think fast! The main cast of this book has spontaneously appeared in your living room! How do you react, and what do you do?

Realize that I need a bigger living room. And that I should probably clean.

Haha, don't we all? What would you say is the biggest thing you learned (about writing or anything else) while writing this book?

Readers are opinionated. And when you declare a book a catch-all for the plots that you can't fit into the rest of the series ... it gets thick fast.

Yeah, it would. To finish out our discussion, now that LaM is out in the world, what's your next project going to be?

Rose Petals and Snowflakes, the first in a series of Jane Austen/Fairy Tale mashups that I'm incredibly excited about. Lemme just say - Colonel Brandon makes an AWESOME bear.

I bet he does. Thanks for answering my questions!

Are you excited to read Love and Memory? Please tell me in the comments! Also, don't forget to check out the preorder giveaway and the rest of today's tour stops (listed below).

Thanks for reading!