Hello, and thanks so much for hosting me
today! After nearly a decade of having this story kicking around in my head
(and through countless incarnations on my Google Drive) I’m thrilled to be able
to finally share ‘The Colonel’ with
all of you. Some of you might be familiar with my first book, Longbourn’s
Songbird, and the trials and tribulations of Will Darcy’s cousin, Richard
Fitzwilliam. When I set out writing this story back in 2009, I had an idea of
telling Pride and Prejudice from The
Colonel’s point of view, in a more modern setting while still keeping the
action at a pivotal moment in world history.
After several drafts, I put most of
Fitzwilliam’s story aside in favor of getting to the juicy Darcy-and-Elizabeth
story. But Richard lingered in my head. A kind-hearted rake, the archetype of
men I’d been watching on AMC since I was a girl. The final product, this
character I’d borrowed from my beloved Austen, had become a sort of
Frankenstein of these leading men. My Richard would have the quiet intensity of
Cary Grant’s TR Devlin in Notorious,
his exterior cool while his eyes devoured every expression on his lady love’s
face. He would have the gin-soaked humor and self-depreciating wit of Bogart’s
Richard Blaine in Casablanca, and the
looks and go-to-hell attitude of Gene Kelly’s Victor in Cross of Lorraine.



