FALLEN BLOG TOUR: ELIZABETH AND THE DRIPPING WELLS

 

Elizabeth and the Dripping Wells, guest post from Jessie Lewis

“But surely,” said she, “I may enter his county with impunity, and rob it of a few petrified spars without his perceiving me.”

 So Elizabeth Bennet thinks to herself in Pride and Prejudice when faced with the prospect of a truncated tour of Derbyshire instead of the Lakes. She makes the same trip in Fallen, though this time, she doesn’t make it all the way to Pemberley and is instead waylaid in Matlock Bath, where she and the Gardiners visit the famous petrifying well. But what are petrifying (or ‘dripping’) wells? 

SPEECHLESS BLOG TOUR & GIVEAWAY: TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH AUTHOR JESSIE LEWIS

Hello and welcome to My Jane Austen Book Club, Jessie. Congratulations on your new release,

Speechless! Let’s start right away talking about the premise of your Pride and Prejudice Variation. 

It’s set during the winter following the Netherfield ball, after which Darcy leaves Hertfordshire and takes Bingley with him. As I’m sure your readers will know, at that point in the original story, Darcy is in denial about his feelings for Elizabeth, whereas Elizabeth is very clear about her feelings for Darcy: she detests him! That is how we find them at the start of Speechless, when a horrible accident leaves them stranded together at a remote inn. Darcy has been badly injured,and despite her antipathy towards him, Elizabeth is forced to be his nursemaid. You can imagine how unimpressed either of them is with this turn of events, and it gets even worse when they realise Darcy’s wound has left him unable to speak. Our dear couple have to work out how to understand the words they’re saying before they can even begin to understand what each other means.

MISTAKEN BLOG TOUR - VIGNETTE BY JESSIE LEWIS + GIVEAWAY

Thank you so much, Maria Grazia, for hosting the first leg of the blog tour for Mistaken. I’d like to celebrate the occasion by sharing with your readers a scene that didn’t make it into the finished novel. There were quite a number of outtakes strewn across my virtual cutting room floor by the time I finished writing; I thought this one would give readers a wonderful introduction to some of my favourite characters. It’s dated, as is every scene in Mistaken, so readers can place it within the story. In it, we join Colonel Fitzwilliam, his brother Lord Ashby and their incorrigible grandmother Tabitha Sinclair, as they discuss Darcy’s uncommon state of melancholy.

Jessie Lewis