ELIZABETH KANTOR AND JANE AUSTEN'S HAPPY ENDINGS - GUEST POST AND GIVEAWAY

Elizabeth Kantor is the author of The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After , which will be published on April 2nd and is already shipping from Amazon.  She is visiting here at My Jane Austen Book Club today to tell us about how Jane Austen creates her happy endings and how we can re-create them. Enjoy her guest post, leave your comment + your e-mail address to enter the giveaway contest to win the book. US readers only. The giveaway ends on April 6th when the name of the winner is announced. Good luck!

Endorphins Out of Ink and Paper: How Jane Austen Creates Her Happy Endings (and How We Can Re-Create Them) 

Jane Austen is past mistress of the truly happy ending. Elizabeth with Darcy, Anne Elliot with Captain Wentworth--the last chapters of their stories capture exactly what we all long for in love. But they're not just mouth-watering happily-ever-after endings. What makes them even better is, they're believable. My husband quotes the professor who taught him Pride and Prejudice in college: It's one of the only happy endings in all of literature that is really believable. You can actually imagine Elizabeth and Darcy as a happily married couple.

So how does Jane Austen do it? What's her recipe for compounding endorphins out of ink and paper?

And--a question even more interesting to us 21st-century women--can the kind of happiness that Jane Austen figured out how to create on paper be re-created in real life? Can we follow her map to discover the wellsprings of happy love?

Now Jane Austen would not have been at all surprised to find her readers looking to and even imitating her characters in the hopes of finding their own happy endings. It's a major theme of her fiction--from the juvenilia and Northanger Abbey (where Catherine gets into all kinds of trouble expecting life to be like a Gothic novel) to her last, unfinished novel, Sanditon (where Sir Edward Denham is deliberately modeling himself on Lovelace in Samuel Richardson's Clarissa)--that readers do tend to want to get inside the fiction we love, and make our own lives like the lives of their favorite characters. So it's fair enough to ask how Jane Austen expected women who read Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion to act, if they wanted happy endings like Elizabeth's, and Anne's. About which, more below.  

But getting back to the basic question about how Jane Austen pulls those happy endings off in the novels--look at the question first from a literary-critical point of view. Critics compare Jane Austen to Shakespeare, for many reasons. (For example, the infinite fecundity of her imagination. It's obvious that if she had lived another 40 years, she would never have run out of material--she would just have gone on inventing entirely new characters and situations. And wouldn't we be lucky! That's in contrast to a writer like Evelyn Waugh--whom I love, too, but he has his limitations--who complained that after 40 life simply wasn't making the clear impressions on him that he could turn into novels, and talked about first using up his remaining amount of life-experience in one more great work of fiction before going on to write an autobiograpy (details from my memory of a letter of his to Nancy Mitford, which I can't find at the moment, so pls. forgive the paraphrase & any inaccuracies!). Or F. Scott Fitzgerald--again, I'm a fan--who is supposed to have lifted material from Zelda's diary and resented her wanting to use her own experiences of their marriage in her own writing!) But especially because Jane Austen is the other great literary artist in English who writes generous Shakespearean comedy, with those delightful happy endings. The fascinating thing, from the literary-critical point of view, is that she worked her way up to that Shakespearean kind of comedy by an apprenticeship in the other kind--the very ungenerous Jonsonian (after Ben Jonson) comedy, where all the laughs are at the characters, not with them--where the comedy is about exposing the vices and folly of very limited characters, not delighting in the insights and virtues and possibilities opening out before fully rounded people.

All Jane Austen's juvenilia is like the old "comedy of humors"--it's full of ridiculous, truncated characters who twist themselves into absurd shapes in obedience to some single passion. My very favorite is Charlotte Luttrell in Lesley Castle, who is so obsessed with the details of housekeeping that she reacts like this when her sister's fiance has a fatal accident: 

Dear Eloisa (said I) there's no occasion for your crying so much about a trifle (for I was willing to make light of it in order to comfort her). I bet you would not mind it--, You see it does not vex me in the least; though perhaps I may suffer most from it after all; for I shall not only be obliged to eat up all the Victuals I have dressed already, but must if Hervey should recover (which however is not very likely) dress as much for you again; or should he die (as I suppose he will) I shall still have to prepare a dinner for you whenever you marry someone else. . . . Thus I did all within my power to console her, but without any effect."

There are still characters almost as silly as that in Sense and Sensibility--Sir John Middleton, who's so dependent on the society of other people that he is relieved to know the Dashwoods will be coming to London to add two to its the population, and Charlotte Palmer, who is so good-humored that she's able to find amusement in even her husband's inattention. But in Jane Austen's novels, the absurd characters show up the delightful normality of the main characters. And the comedy isn't just about how the ridiculous characters get their come-uppance. The happy ending is about how the fully-fleshed-out characters find happiness.

They find their happiness right in the middle--precisely not at any crazy extreme. Their aspirations are as well-rounded and beautifully balanced as they are. Look at the way Captain Wentworth talks about Anne--she's "the loveliest medium." And look at how Elizabeth and Darcy find each other--they overcome their extreme and partial views and learn to see each other straight on, clear & true. Jane Austen's idea of happiness is a very 18th-century idea--it's all about balance, and seeing things as they really are. To Jane Austen (and to us, when we're immersed in her novels), the normal and the right and the true don't seem boring. They seem exciting, vibrant, a dynamic balance, successful and promising more for the future.

But does it translate to real life?

As a matter of fact, it's exactly the recipe for happiness that the wise have been recommending for about two and a half millennia--at least since Aristotle. The happy medium fails to attract us mostly because we're heirs to the Cult of Sensibility (as in Sense and Sensibility) and the Romantic Movement, which have very successfully sold the world on some odd propositions: only extreme and intense experiences are worth having . . . you liberate yourself and find authenticity by rebelling against convention, prudence, and common sense . . . happiness is boring. But if the prospect of happiness--what Elizabeth and Darcy find in Pride and Prejudice--doesn't bore you, then Jane Austen can be the guide to the kind of life you want.

Elizabeth Kantor

The Book

Women today are settling for less than we want when it comes to men, relationships, sex, and marriage. But we don’t have to, argues Elizabeth Kantor. Jane Austen can show us how to find the love we really want.

In The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After, Kantor reveals how the examples of Jane Austen heroines such as Elizabeth Bennett, Elinor Dashwood, and Anne Elliot can help us navigate the modern-day minefields of dating, love, relationships, and sex. By following in their footsteps—and steering clear of the sad endings suffered by characters such as Maria Bertram and Charlotte Lucas—modern women can discover the path to lifelong love and true happiness.

Charged with honesty and humor, Kantor's book includes testimonies from modern women, pop culture parallels, the author's personal experiences and, of course, a thorough examination of Austen's beloved novels.

Featuring characters and situations from all of Jane Austen’s books (including unfinished novels, and stories not published in her lifetime), The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After tackles the dating and relationship dilemmas that we face today, and equips modern women to approach our love lives with fresh insights distilled from the novels:

- Don’t be a tragic heroine

 -  Pursue Elizabeth Bennet’s “rational happiness” —learn what it is, and how you can find it

 - Don’t let cynicism steal your happy ending

 - Why it’s a mistake to look for your “soul mate”

-  Jane Austen’s skeleton keys to a man’s potential

-  How you should deal with men who are “afraid of commitment” (from Jane Austen’s eight    

   case studies)

- Learn how to arrange your own marriage—by falling in love the Jane Austen way

JACKIE HERRING & THE JANE AUSTEN FESTIVAL IN BATH - INTERVIEW

Jackie Herring

My guest today is Jackie Herring. She has been involved in some form or another with the Jane Austen Festival in Bath since its creation 12 years ago. This will be Jackie’s 5^th in charge and as Festival Director, a job that covers all aspects from choosing and booking the artists and venues, writing and producing the programme to fixing banners to railings and washing up at the end of the Soiree. With an honours degree in and love of History, plus previous administrative, sales, computing and personnel experience – this is Jackie’s dream job. How many people have the opportunity of talking about their favourite author, researching and putting on entertainments for others that they enjoy themselves, dress in glorious costumes, appear on the television and get paid for it!

If you want to know more about the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, if you dream of beng there next September, join our chat below and ... enjoy!

Welcome to My Jane Austen Book Club, Jackie.  It’s a great pleasure and an honour to have you as my guest and have the chance to ask you a few questions.

Thank you for asking me.

Is everything ready for this year festival in Bath?

Not quite, the diary is pretty full but there are still lots of things to be sorted out before I can write the first draft of the programme.

What are these year’s  September dates?

From Friday 14th to Saturday 22nd September 2012

When did the event start and who were the founders?

The Jane Austen Festival started in September 2000, so this is its 12th year and it was the brain child of David Baldock the owner of The Jane Austen Centre in Bath who was also the first Festival Director. The first year it was over a weekend – 3 days including the Friday.

Apart from the traditional  Regency Costume Promenade, what are other important moments in the next September Festival? Is there a special topic/trail you follow this year?

 There are lots of really special moments, small gatherings and the larger ones but in particular this year the Promenade will follow a different route and Bath City Council are going to close the main shopping area, Milsom Street, for us to walk down. I am working on something that will be held in the Assembly Rooms on Sunday 16th but can’t say what just yet, there is a whole day of Regency and Baroque dancing on Monday 17th, coach trips to Hampshire and Stourhead (where the 2005 Pride & Prejudice was filmed) costume workshops, harp workshop, embroidery workshop.... there is a magical evening on Friday 21st with a reception around the torch lit Roman Baths, followed by a Regency Costumed Masked Ball in the Pump Rooms. This spectacular event was extremely popular last year..  Plus so much more.

Is there any special or new feature  you want to tell us about?

We have two theatricals being performed using the venues themselves as the ‘stage and scenery’ very exiciting and quite new to Bath and the audience sit in the action rather than view it from afar.

What are the most exciting aspect at working for this incredible event?

Meeting so many talented people and a plan coming together.

What are instead the hardest moments in the preparation for it?

Just the amount of things that must be done for it succeed.

What is it so special in the atmosphere of the Festival in Bath which makes it different from any other  National or International meeting for Janeites?

 I think there are probably a great many similarities with other meetings but probably the venues we use and the amount of costume events, plus Bath is a small place where people can meet and make lifelong friendships.

What is  it that you especially like in Jane Austen’s world?

The slower pace of life – I can understand why Jane Austen wrote particularly when she moved to Hampshire, there was nothing else to do!

When and how did you become fond of her work?

At the age of 16 my best friend gave me her copy of Pride & Prejudice and said, ‘you’ll like this, it is better than Jilly Cooper!’ I did and I was hooked.

 Why don’t you tell us about your favourite story, hero and heroine?

Pride and Prejudice is my favourite, it is so complete I wouldn’t want to change any part of it plus I married a Mr Darcy!

Jane Austen and modernity. Isn’t her success at present stunningly surprising? What is the appeal of world to  modern  readers?

I don’t find it surprising, each generation basically like the same things and Jane Austen’s novels are, to put them in their simplest form, romantic - will they won’t they novels – which also make stunning films and tv series’.

I suppose you know and meet  lots of Janeites every year and,  maybe,  all the year through, not only in September.  What kind of people are Jane’s admirers? Is there a common feature they share or are they most a miscellaneous fond crowd?

The common denominator is that they all love Austen’s  work, whether it be reproduced on film or they read the books. Other than that they are from all walks of life, male and female though the majority are female, of all ages and come from all over the world.

Now, my last request is...  How would you invite My Jane Austen Book Club readers not to miss the event and visit Bath in September ? You’ve got  50 words!

The 2012 Jane Austen Festival, nine wonderful days celebrating all things Austen in the beautiful Georgian city of Bath. Attend the world famous and record breaking Regency Costumed Promenade, plus workshops, talks, soirees, and more and don’t miss the magical and spectacular Masked Ball. Full details available from the website www.janeausten.co.uk

Thank you so much Jackie for taking the time to answer my questions. Keep up with the good work and great success with your Festival!

NEWS FROM THE AUSTENESQUE WORLD: AN AUDIOBOOK & AN ITALIAN TRANSLATION FOR CARRIE BEBRIS

Carrie Bebris has written one Mr. & Mrs. Darcy Mystery for each of Jane Austen’s six completed novels. Her Mr and Mrs Darcy Series includes: Pride and Prescience, Suspence and Sensibility, North by Northanger, The Matters at Mansfield, The Intrigue at Highbury, and the latest  The Deception at Lyme. 

Will  the series continue?  "Indeed it shall!"  - answers the author. She is presently writing the seventh book of the series. She assures:  "There is still plenty of mayhem in Regency England to entangle the Darcys, and many troublesome Austen characters they either have not seen the last of, or not yet met". 

NEW! 
An unabridged audio version of The Deception at Lyme has just released, published by Recorded Books. It is available on CD and digital Playaway, with a cassette edition scheduled for March, and as a digital download from Audible.com. 

NEW!!
TEA Books, has just released Inganno e persuasione, o: La sventurata di Lyme (Deception and Persuasion: The ill-fated of Lyme). As with TEA's editions of the previous Mr. and Mrs. Darcy Mysteries, this Italian translation of The Deception at Lyme is a handsome trade paperback with a lovely cover. It is available in print and ebook formats.  Libri: IBS.it http://www.ibs.it/  eBook: Il Libraio http://www.illibraio.it

PRIDE, PREJUDICE & THE PROVERBS 31 WOMAN - GUEST POST BY SARA DAWKINS

A wife of noble character who can find? 
   She is worth far more than rubies. 
¹¹ Her husband has full confidence in her 
   and lacks nothing of value. 
¹² She brings him good, not harm, 
   all the days of her life. 
¹³ She selects wool and flax 
   and works with eager hands. 
¹⁴ She is like the merchant ships, 
   bringing her food from afar. 
¹⁵ She gets up while it is still night; 
   she provides food for her family 
   and portions for her female servants. 
¹⁶ She considers a field and buys it; 
   out of her earnings she plants a vineyard. 
¹⁷ She sets about her work vigorously; 
   her arms are strong for her tasks. 
¹⁸ She sees that her trading is profitable, 
   and her lamp does not go out at night. 
¹⁹ In her hand she holds the distaff 
   and grasps the spindle with her fingers. 
²⁰ She opens her arms to the poor 
   and extends her hands to the needy. 
²¹ When it snows, she has no fear for her household; 
   for all of them are clothed in scarlet. 
²² She makes coverings for her bed; 
   she is clothed in fine linen and purple. 
²³ Her husband is respected at the city gate, 
   where he takes his seat among the elders of the land. 
²⁴ She makes linen garments and sells them, 
   and supplies the merchants with sashes. 
²⁵ She is clothed with strength and dignity; 
   she can laugh at the days to come. 
²⁶ She speaks with wisdom, 
   and faithful instruction is on her tongue. 
²⁷ She watches over the affairs of her household 
   and does not eat the bread of idleness. 
²⁸ Her children arise and call her blessed; 
   her husband also, and he praises her: 
²⁹ “Many women do noble things, 
   but you surpass them all.” 
³⁰ Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; 
   but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. 
³¹ Honor her for all that her hands have done, 
   and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.

Proverbs 31 is the Bible’s most famous work on the ‘Virtuous Wife’. The list of attributes it goes on to describe can be found in Jane Austen’s most famous work, Pride and Prejudice, but in many different ways. No one character had all the traits of the virtuous woman, though Elizabeth came close.

Jane Austen’s famous work, Pride and Prejudice, was published in 1813. During that time, like in Proverbs 31, marriage was the only honorable provision for women in the class of society to which the Bennet and the Lucas families belonged. The number and kind of jobs available, especially for women, were far more limited at that time than they are today. The only respectable paid work open to a gentlewoman, the class to which the Bennet family belonged, was the job of lady companion or being a governess. Imagine being Mrs. Jenkinson- Miss De Bough’s companion- and always having to be pleasant to that insipid little hypochondriac, always under the careful watch of Lady Catherine.

It might not be as unpleasant an idea to be governess to the little Gardiner children or to the large family that you may be sure Jane and Mr. Bingley would produce, but even in such kindly households as these, a governess lived in a room close to the schoolroom, was on duty 24 hours a day, had, perhaps, a week’s holiday per year and earned between 10 and 20 pounds per year. Of course she had room and board, but you wouldn’t get rich on that salary, nor could you do much to plan for your retirement. If you did not have friendly and thoughtful employers, your life could be very unhappy indeed. You would be considered one of the ‘maidens’ from Proverbs 31, and completely under the care of your mistress. The only other decent occupation open to girls such as the Bennets was marriage, and even here it was pretty unpredictable.

Unlike the Proverbs 31 woman, their clothing was mended and re-trimmed frequently, and they had no occupation. They were merely a decoration for their husbands, and did not do any actual work. Mrs. Bennet’s frequent ‘weakness’ kept her from doing any labor, a stark contrast to the hardworking Proverbs 31 wife who was up before the sun and kept the household going. Also, the disrespectful and unruly younger children of the Bennets were utterly unlike the Proverbs 31 children who praised their mother and respected their parents. As far as stature and pride goes, the woman closest to Proverbs 31 would be Lady Catherine. She was respected and wealthy, and she dressed well and kept her house in order. However, she was not respected because of her hard work, but rather her money and unpleasant disposition.

Elizabeth is the only character to whom most of the attributes of Proverbs 31 would come into play. She was no stranger to hard work, serving others, and looked to be a great future help to her husband, despite their awkward beginnings.

Sara Dawkins 

Author Bio

Sara is an active nanny as well as an active freelance writer. She is a frequent contributor of nanny agency.  You can reach her at saradawkins61ATgmail.com.

KEEP CALM AND READ JANE AUSTEN - WINNER OF THE TEA TOWEL

Ready to discover who's won the lovely Keep Calm and Read Jane Austen tea towel offered by Becca Hemmings on occasion of her interview (HERE)?

Thanks again to her for taking the time to answer my questions and granting you readers such a cute Austenesque prize. Don't forget to visit her at the amazing Jane Austen Centre online giftshop.

Here we go, then.

The winner is ... Andrea Staten

Congratulations!!!

AUSTEN E-BOOKS FREE AT AMAZON KINDLE STORE

If you haven't read them yet or want to have them always with you in your e-reader, here's your chance to do it!

Amazon Kindle Store is offering these seven titles among Jane Austen e-books for FREE! 

• Emma 
• Emma (Spanish Edition)
• Lady Susan 
• Love and Friendship
• Mansfield Park 
• Manfield Park (Spanish Edition)
• Northanger Abbey 
• Persuasion
• Pride and Prejudice 
• 
  

Just a click and they are yours forever! You can read them on your Kindle, Blackberry, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android, Windows Phone 7, or your PC & Mac! Go here to get your free Amazon reader App!

                                                                       

ECHOES OF PEMBERLEY BY CYNTHIA INGRAM HENSLEY - GIVEAWAY WINNERS

The giveaway contest linked to Cynthia Ingram Hensley's guest post ends here, this moment. Time to thank the author for her kindness and generosity and time to reveal the names of the two winners of Echoes of Pemberley:

- 1 paperback copy for US readers has been won by Julie Martin Wallace

- 1 e-book for readers from the rest of the world goes instead to Aurora

Congratulations to the winners and many thanks to all the commenters who entered this giveaway contest!

TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... DAVID WILKIN

A new "Talking Jane Austen with ..." session. My guest today is David Wilkin, author of "Colonel Fitzwilliam's Correspondence" and "Jane Austen and Ghosts".  Enjoy our Austen chat! 

Welcome at My Jane Austen Book Club, David, and thanks for accepting to talk Jane Austen with me. First of all , do you mind telling  us something about yourself? 

An evaluation in high school suggested I should either be a businessman or a dancer. So I am a businessman, having spent two decades in the woodworking industry and opening a company that does the wood interiors of restaurants.

The dancing part resulted in my mastering the dances from the mid fifteenth century to modern times, and teaching them. I have run several different regular dance practices, and entire dance weekends of these historic dances.

The fondness for the past does not just extend to the pleasantry of dance, but to the study of the conflicts from which History predominates. War gets a lot written about it. That was perhaps my earliest exposure, army men, leading wargaming, and role-playing games. Or just gaming in general. I was around when the first Computer Gaming magazine debuted. I not only have an extensive library of books, but also games, and play many, not more on computers rather than across the table from an opponent over a board, or with miniatures representing our armies.

The extensive library of books, the vast reading that I have indulged in has also had me turn my hand to writing. Starting with simple sketches while in high school and college to completing novels after graduating. I continue to hone this craft.

What is your opinion? Do you think Jane Austen is very angry for what is happening to her works? Vampires and all kind of monsters have invaded her world!

I think Jane would be very angry at what is happening to her works. From her writing I find that she looked at her society and used her stories to not only comment on society, but t ogive hope to the lives of the woman of her society. She was confined to a certain life based on her birth and that England was a very stratified place to live at the time. Her tales were to give women of the Regency a belief that they could be smart, intelligent and destined for a happy marriage. She wrote before the time of Shelley’s Frankenstein and Stoker’s Dracula. But as I understand it, the heroine portrayed here in these new adaptations far exceed anything Lizzy Bennet or Emma Woodhouse ever did

However, it seems  our world has gone vampire/monsters crazy. Have you got your own  interpretation of this phenomenon? Why is our world so attracted by this kind of supernatural characters?

I can’t really comment on the attraction of the pheonomena. I really do not like watching flicks that scare me. I like Aliens better than Alien because the Marines attack back. I’ve read Dracula twice and I can see that it is a literary masterpiece. I have not read much else, Anne Rice, or others, though what I have read in the genre was never as strong as Bram Stoker. My interpretation is based on ghosts of course as the title of my book suggests. For it, I hope I have grasped another romantic influence, Rex Harrison as the Ghost, in the Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

The story in your book is set in the world of moviemaking. Of course, any work by Jane Austen made into a movie is  a bankable project, but don’t you think that  sometimes the screen adaptations might  distort the real tone of the novels ?

I live out here in Southern California. For a brief time I worked in “Hollywood” doing a night shift for Dick Clark Productions. I taped every American Bandstand and other productions of the company to send to the copyright office. I made my 15 minute pitch to a producer at the end of my gig, but that didn’t fly. So on to other career choices.

For Jane’s work, it is very bankable and I think there is an appeal for all regencies that if produced with the right budget, could make a profit amongst those of us who love this era. Of the productions of the work, I think the only fail I can recall is the 1999 Mansfield Park. (Which was one of Cheryl and my first dates) The other that you might call a fail is the 1940 Pride and Prejudice by Huxley and with Olivier and Garson. That however is one of my favorites and why I came to the love the regency era. Edna May Oliver as Lady Catherine is a hoot…

But aside from my favorites and those I don’t like your question is if the movies drift from the tone of the novels. We look at the supporting characters I think in Jane’s work as caricatures of people and stereotypes so that they enrich the story with humor and pathos. We see the leads as those characters we aspire to be and to have lives as. I think the adaptations in film for the most part hit the mark admirably.

Jane’s world is so down-to-earth, all sense and balance do you think fan fiction mostly  respect those features?

I have to say, that I have not read much fan fiction based on Jane. I have read the Stephanie Barron mysteries which I love for the footnotes. I have read a few sequels, and then I have my own, Colonel Fitzwilliam’s Correspondence. I spent a great deal of time thinking about Colonel Fitzwilliam and the war. The war that Jane ignores a great deal in her writing. Even in Persuasion it is off camera. I don’t think you could have lived in England with the war occuring and not have had it touch you in a much greater way than Jane’s characters seem to be effected. For my sequel I did my best to convey the drama that the war could have upon a family, and in this case the Bennets and the Darcys.

Without spending time with a great many other authors in the genre of writing fan fiction based on Jane’s work, it would be unfair of me to speak about that. I do know that were one to want to elevate their writing, you need to respect what Jane did with her characters, and you also need to provide characters to have some fun with, as Jane did as well.

What is the appeal of Jane Austen and her world to nowadays readers? What’s the secret of her huge global success ?

Jane has always had an appeal. She gives us a Regency world that is clean and bountiful. All of her heroines are part of the lower upper class, or for Fanny Price, quickly sent to an upper class house. How many of us want to be part of the richest wrung of society? Then Jane has kept the underside, the part of the world that does not appeal away. Including the war as I have mentioned.

The Regency may not have been as pretty as the picture Jane has painted, but she did paint it so nicely that it is a canvas that those of us who write Regencies have been able to use ourselves in our endeavors to leave the world as an ideal and not as the reality that it was.

If Jane had  lived nowadays what kind of novels would she have written?

I think she would have written literature for women. Strong heroines, and here, instead of class boundaries that kept a women thinking they would have only one avenue in life to pursue, she would have placed them in a dead-end job, or having chosen the wrong career. Something that they would realize and begin to transform themselves, not with the aid of a hero character such as Darcy. The man would be something they would pick up and drag along as they evolved and completed their transformation.

What is it that you best love in her world and in her work?

I love the sense that things do come out for our heroes and heroines. Happy endings may not be how we are going to be rewarded in life, but in fiction, it is a reward I like a great deal.

What is your favourite Austen novel, hero and heroine?

Persuasion is my favorite tale, while I have to say that Elizabeth Bennet is the ultimate heroine. I love Captain Wentworth, but then to have the wealth of Darcy and to be so exceedingly correct and right is something I wish I could live as. Captain Wentworth and his emotions however seem to be more the lot in life for those of us not born to the highest wealth in the land.

As a lover of the Regency and a Janeite what are you next projects to spread more Austen passion?

I’ve been thinking of perhaps doing something with Margaret Dashwood. Where Colonel Fitzwilliam and history, as well as the last few paragraphs of Pride and Prejudice lent me some firm ideas, Margaret seems a very open character and I do not want to write something that would go to far afield. In the meantime I will release two more, at least, regencies that don’t touch on Jane’s characters this year. One a classic play on a rich heiress and penniless lord. The other about identical twins whose characters are different even should they look exactly alike. That of course is where the drama, trouble and humor will stem from. I have completed the first drafts of both of these novels and am beginning the second draft.

Could you please tell us something more about your new novel: Jane Austen and Ghosts?

As I mentioned, I spent some time in Hollywood, and then my cousin does exactly what our hero of JAnG does. He reads everything he can to see if the studio could make a good movie from it. I thought of that and the various Zombie, Vampire and Sea Monster books and it came to me that Jane isn’t very happy about these works. That they find some way to twist her tales away from the core values.

I then thought that the tale of making these works into a movie, one where as they are doing so, Jane might come back and have a thing or two to say would be humorous. Playing upon that ,the story reflecting a key Jane storyline as well seemed to add to the writing. In the end I have a nicely received short piece that entertains one and all.

Thanks for the interview, I hope that your readers have found this interesting and I am open to answering follow-up questions!

Thanks a lot, David, for being my guest today. Good luck with all your incredible activities and passions!

You'll find David Wilkin at his site, his blog, on twitter as @DWWilkin, at The Regency Assembly Press .