MARIA GRACE, THREE CHRISTMASES - BLOG TOUR & GIVEAWAY

Thanks so much for having me Maria Grazia! I’m so excited about this Christmas season! It’s been a doozy of a year in these parts with Hurricane Harvey just being the icing on the cake. So much has happened that it calls for not one, but two Christmas books.  The two books go along with The Darcys’ First Christmas, kind of forming bookends to the story. Darcy and Elizabeth: Christmas 1811 tells the behind the scenes story of what might have happened during the Christmastide Darcy spent in London, while the militia (and Wickham!) wintered in Meryton. From Admiration to Love tells the story of the Darcys’ second Christmas as they try to hold Georgiana’s coming out at the Twelfth Night ball as Lady Catherine and Anne de Bourgh descend as very unwelcome guests. (The story was such fun to write, I hope you love it as much as I do!)

ALL THE THINGS I KNOW BLOG TOUR: AUDREY RYAN ON WRITING PRIDE AND PREJUDICE FOR THE MILLENIALS

 I’ve chosen an excerpt to feature in this post that’s related to finding the perfect job. Why is this important? Because there some very unique trends in the current job market.

     There is no more glass ceiling. This means climbing the ladder doesn’t really exist anymore. Instead, we career hop. It’s rare and frowned upon to be in a role longer than 4 years. People wonder why you haven’t tried anything new. They think you’re lazy if you don’t move around. Where’s your ambition?

2   40-hour work week is becoming obsolete. Instead, flexible hours are the thing. While this seems awesome (I can travel as much as I want?!), this also means you’re constantly on the clock. Canceling plans last minute so you can finish a presentation for your 9PM meeting with New Zealand office is not unusual. It just is. Going to a coffee shop and seeing other people on a work computer, also normal. As is the person on their laptop on the bus, working during the commute home. God forbid if you have to travel for work the plane doesn’t have Wi-Fi.

THE MARRIAGE OF MISS JANE AUSTEN VOLUME III IS OUT! INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR COLLINS HEMINGWAY + GIVEAWAY

Welcome back to My Jane Austen Book Club, Collins! Congratulations on your latest release and thanks for accepting to answer a few questions. Here's the first one: most of the authors writing in the Jane Austen world are doing sequels to her books or variations on her plots and characters. You chose to write about Austen herself. Why?

I had two different ideas come together. The first is that I wanted to tell a serious story of what life was like for women in the early 1800s. This was a time when everything was against them, from society to biology. I wanted to test the heart and soul of an intelligent, sensitive woman. As I began the early scenes, the voice that kept coming to me was that remarkable voice. Also, I had a literature professor at university, long ago, who encouraged me to see the depth of Austen’s writing as well as its brilliance. The literary constraints on a woman of that day limited Jane to courtship novels and forced her to deal with important issues in the background or in passing, with secondary characters.

Through the years, I kept asking myself: What would have happened if Jane Austen had been able to put her talents toward the serious issues of life after marriage? What if she had been able to write directly about some of the big social issues of the day? What if she herself had faced the good and bad of married life, as most women of that era did? How would all that come together in a story involving a man very much her equal—though unsuitable, perhaps, to her family.