A CHANCE ENCOUNTER IN PEMBERLEY WOODS - BLOG TOUR: AUTHOR GUEST POST AND GIVEAWAY

Thank you, Maria Grazia, for hosting me today! I am honored to be visiting My Jane Austen Book Club. For my post today, I wanted to share some of what I learned while working on A Chance Encounter in Pemberley Woods.

I confess I never paid much attention to the travel times in my favorite author’s books. Working with the lovely folks at Meryton Press, however, has opened my eyes to the intricacy of travel during Regency England.

At one point in my novel, Mr. Darcy undertakes a journey from Pemberley to London. I thought it might be interesting to examine his travel options!

AUTHOR GUEST POST - ALEXA ADAMS, HOLIDAYS AT PEMBERLEY + DOUBLE GIVEAWAY

“Mr. Darcy is the best of men, and there is no danger of inflating either his or my vanity by making sure everyone acknowledges this fact.”

“Is there not?” her Charlotte chided. “Perhaps vanity poses no danger, but what shall you do when he does something truly exceptional – by Mr. Darcy standards, of course? Will not such accolades become commonplace if too readily invoked? You must save your loudest applause for special occasions and not become too appreciative an audience.”

Holidays at Pemberley, or Third Encounters: A Tale of Less Pride and Prejudice Concludes is a book written out my own pressing need to complete the stories of my reimagined cast of characters. While the book is ostensibly focused on Charlotte Lucas, it is just as much about Elizabeth and Darcy, the entire Bennet clan, Darcy’s extended family, and, to an extent,  the Wickhams. I had intended Second Glances: A Tale of Less Pride and Prejudice Continues to wrap up their adventures, but as I finished the final drafts of the story, the hanging threads proved too irksome to bear.

Second Glances originally included Charlotte’s romance with David Westover, the rector at Kympton, but I cut it because it didn’t mesh with the rest of the plot. It was intuitive to resurrect their minor storyline and structure a new plot around it, one which provided my flawed characters with an opportunity to learn those vital lessons Austen taught so well. There was still so much to be desired from them! My Darcy may not have begun so proud, but he was still unforgiving:

“It is insupportable, Elizabeth!” he declared. “I cannot sit down to dine with the Wickhams. They must leave at once!”

SUSAN ADRIANI, DARKNESS FALLS UPON PEMBERLEY - AUTHOR GUEST POST + GIVEAWAY OF A SIGNED PAPERBACK

When I wrote Darkness Falls Upon Pemberley I was hard at work on what will soon be my second full-length novel, In Doubt of Mr. Darcy. I was pretty much buried beneath a massive amount of regency-period research, the lot of which was starting to overwhelm me at the time, especially with my daughter starting third grade and having a mountain of homework each night. In short, I needed a breather before I made myself go mad and ended up needing a vacation!

At the time, it was early autumn here in the United States, which meant that one of my favorite holidays was fast approaching in October: Halloween. As it so happened, the group blog I belong to, Austen Authors, where I’ve been a member since its inception in 2010, was preparing to celebrate the spookiest month of the year as well. Several fellow authors who’d written books with a supernatural twist to them—Regina Jeffers, Mary Lydon-Simonsen, and Colette Saucier to name a few—were planning to include excerpts of their stories throughout the month, but there were a lot of slots to be filled. I started to think about how much fun it would be to contribute something in honor of the upcoming holiday. Unfortunately, the supernatural wasn’t something I’d so much as dipped my big toe into back then, but it was something I enjoyed reading, especially if there was a love story to be told.