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.

Talking Jane Austen with ... Ulrike Böhm from Germany - Author of "Ein Engel für Mr. Darcy" (An Angel for Mr Darcy)

Hello Ulrike and welcome to our little Austen club online. First of all thanks for accepting my invitation to talk Jane Austen with me and here’s my first question: You & Jane.  When was your first encounter with Austen and her work? What was it like?

Hi Maria Grazia! First and foremost, let me thank you for your warm welcome and for giving me the opportunity to introduce my first novel to your blog readers.

My first encounter with a book by our Jane was in a library. I was 16 or 17 and an avid reader of all sorts of books. At that time I lived in a small village and the village library was literally my second home. One day I borrowed “Pride and Prejudice” and simply couldn’t put it down until I’d read it through. And then I started anew...Since then I read all of Jane Austen’s novels but none is as dear to me as “Pride and Prejudice”. I regularly read it all over again and again, it never tires me.

How came you started writing an  Austen-inspired book instead?

Not instead. Rather as well. I love to read not only the original by Jane Austen’s pen but I’m also a great fan of the so-called Fan Fiction. I started with reading them online, there are zillions of according websites as you and your readers must know. Then I discovered Amazon making it easy for me to order books from abroad and therefore “real” printed Fan Fiction  – prequels and sequels and parallels. I must have bought up to 160 different titles until now, I lost count as I started to buy ebooks. It won’t be long and they’ll outweigh the paper books.

THE 2013 JANE AUSTEN FESTIVAL - AUTHOR TERI WILSON'S JOURNAL & PICTURES - PART I

The first day of the 2013 Jane Austen Festival in Bath, England, kicked off with the Jane Austen Festival Grand Regency Costumed Promenade. This traditional event always marks the official opening of the festival. Beginning at the Royal Crescent Lawn, 600 people dressed in Regency costume walked through the streets of Bath, ending at the Parade Gardens near Bath Abbey. The costumes were incredible and ranged from traditional men's and women's Regency attire, to red coats and navy officers. Led by the town crier and drums, participants walked a 90-minute route through the heart of Bath.

BOOK BLAST & GIVEAWAY - MY OWN MR DARCY BY KAREY WHITE

My Own Mr. Darcy 

After being dragged to the 2005 movie Pride and Prejudice by her mother, sixteen-year-old Elizabeth’s life changes when Matthew Macfadyen’s Mr. Darcy appears on the screen. Lizzie falls hard and makes a promise to herself that she will settle for nothing less than her own Mr. Darcy. This ill-advised pledge threatens to ruin any chance of finding true love. During the six intervening years, she has refused to give any interested suitors a chance. They weren’t Mr. Darcy enough. Coerced by her roommate, Elizabeth agrees to give the next interested guy ten dates before she dumps him. That guy is Chad, a kind and thoughtful science teacher and swim coach. While she’s dating Chad, her dream comes true in the form of a wealthy bookstore owner named Matt Dawson, who looks and acts like her Mr. Darcy. Of course she has to follow her dream. But as Elizabeth simultaneously dates a regular guy and the dazzling Mr. Dawson, she’s forced to re-evaluate what it was she loved about Mr. Darcy in the first place.

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COVER REVEAL - LOVE AT FIRST SLIGHT BY J. MARIE CROFT

Genre: Fiction | Romance | Historical | Regency | Jane Austen Sequel

Publication Date: October 1, 2013

About the Book:

“It may not be universally acknowledged, but the unvarnished truth is that a young widow in possession of a good fortune is not necessarily in want of another husband.”

In this humorous, topsy-turvy Pride & Prejudice variation, all the gender roles are reversed. It is Mr. Bennet’s greatest wish to see his five sons advantageously married. When the haughty Miss Elizabeth Darcy comes to Netherfield with the Widow Devonport nee Bingley, speculation—and prejudice—runs rampant.

William Bennet, a reluctant and irreverent future reverend, catches Miss Darcy’s eye even though he is beneath her station. However, his opinion of her was fixed when she slighted him at the Meryton Assembly. As her ardour grows, so does his disdain, and when she fully expects to receive an offer of marriage, he gives her something else entirely ….

SPOTLIGHT ON ... JESSICA DOTTA, BORN OF PERSUASION + JANE AUSTEN PILLOW GIVEAWAY

Book Blurb 

The year is 1838, and seventeen-year-old Julia Elliston’s position has never been more fragile. Orphaned and unmarried in a time when women are legal property of their fathers, husbands, and guardians, she finds herself at the mercy of an anonymous guardian who plans to establish her as a servant in far-off Scotland.

With two months to devise a better plan, Julia’s first choice to marry her childhood sweetheart is denied. But when a titled dowager offers to introduce Julia into society, a realm of possibilities opens. However, treachery and deception are as much a part of Victorian society as titles and decorum, and Julia quickly discovers her present is deeply entangled with her mother’s mysterious past. Before she knows what’s happening, Julia finds herself a pawn in a deadly game between two of the country’s most powerful men. With no laws to protect her, she must unravel the secrets on her own. But sometimes truth is elusive and knowledge is deadly.

A Sneak Peek: Chapter 1

“I am quite vexed with you.” Mrs. Windham placed a slice of lard cake on a plate. She eyed my dress hanging loosely over my frame, then added another sliver alongside a gooseberry tart. “Why did you not tell us your mother was ailing? Had I knowledge, I would have visited before she passed; indeed, I would have.”

My hand faltered as I reached for the plate. While I’d known the topic of Mama’s death was unavoidable, I

AUSTEN IN AUGUST - MEET THE LATEST DARCYS

Today I'm a guest at Book Rat's Blog for the Austen in August Event. Thanks to Misty Braden for hosting the event and featuring my "Meet the latest Darcys". I'll wait for you there!

LONGBOURN: DOWNTON ABBEY - OR UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS, IF YOU PREFER - MEETS PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

Pride and Prejudice was only half the story ...

US cover

Downton Abbey meets Pride and Prejudice in this brilliant novel out today. Or if you prefer, Upstairs Downstairs. In Longbourn, Jo Baker gives respctful voice to those characters whom we have met only in passing on stairs or through commentary and dialogue from Austen’s much loved Bennet family.  While reading Longbourn you experience the opposite path: you’ll see the Bennets from a different point of view, that of their servants.

Sarah, the heroine of Jo Baker’s novel, is a maid servant at Longbourn. She is strong, brave and hardworking but ... does she like her job? She looks at the young ladies in the house with a sting of envy and admiration at the same time. Miss Jane, Miss Elizabeth, Kitty, Lydia and Mary ... 

She thinks  that if Elizabeth Bennet had the washing of her own petticoats, she would be more careful not to trudge through muddy fields.  

But when she thinks of Miss Elizabeth she sees her as so different from her sister, Jane, especially when it comes to dealing with gentlemen. Elizabeth is bright-eyed and quick and lovely, making the young men blush and stammer, and the old fellows smile and wish they are half their age, and that little bit scarpe in their wits.

Sarah has her own opinion on each one of the Bennet sisters, but as you can guess, Elizabeth is the one she admires the most. 

JANE, ACTUALLY. MEET AUTHOR JENNIFER PETKUS

Hello Jennifer and first of all let me welcome you back at My Jane Austen Book Club. 

Thanks very much, Maria, I really appreciate the support you’ve given me and other authors at your book club.

The Premise to your latest release Jane, Actually sounds really intriguing! Do you want to present it to our readers briefly?

Briefly? As my friends will attest, I never do anything briefly, but here goes. Because of an accidental discovery/invention, it’s possible for the dead to communicate with the living and with each other via the Internet. Basically everyone who ever died is now free to watch cat videos, criticize the government or in the case of Jane Austen, finally publish “Sanditon,” the book she was writing when she died.

Unfortunately it’s difficult for the dead, or the disembodied as they prefer to be called, to prove who they were when alive. And the longer ago you died and the more famous you were, the more difficult it is. Fortunately Austen’s agent has helped Jane prove her identity, so the famous Regency author has landed a book contract with Random House and is on a book tour that will culminate in the 2011 Annual General Meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America in Fort Worth, Texas.

TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... DEBORAH YAFFE, AUTHOR OF "AMONG THE JANEITES: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE WORLD OF JANE AUSTEN FANDOM"

First of all Deborah, welcome to our online book club. I’m really glad you’re here today to introduce yourself and your new book to our readers.
Thank  you for inviting me!

Of course, my first question is:  “How did it come that you  decided to write about  Austen  fans,  the so – called Janeites” ?

I’ve been an Austen fan since I was a child, and over the years I attended a couple of the Jane Austen Society of North America’s annual conferences, which I loved.  About eight years ago, I read Karen Joy Fowler’s novel The Jane Austen Book Club and decided it would be fun to found a book club like that, dedicated to reading all the novels in order. I roped several neighbors into the group, and during our Pride and Prejudice discussion, a question came up about the entail, that legal device that’s so important to the inheritance issues in P&P. The next day, trying to research this question online, I decided to drop in on the Republic of Pemberley, the largest online Austen fan site, which I’d vaguely heard of but never visited.  I fell instantly in love with this community of fellow Austen obsessives  and started spending inordinate amounts of time there, to the point that I would get embarrassed when my husband caught me at it – after all, I was supposed to be hard at work on a book on a completely different subject.  One day, I was telling him about this wonderful community and its many quirky personalities, and he said, “You should write a book about that.” It took me a few years, but eventually I did.

REBECCA H. JAMISON, EMMA: A LATTER-DAY TALE - BLOG TOUR, GUEST POST & GIVEAWAY

Emma and the Problem of Advice

Guest Post by Rebecca H. Jamison

In Jane Austen’s Emma, Harriet Smith would’ve been much better off if she’d listened to her heart. Instead, she listened to Emma and had to suffer the rejection of two different men before marrying Robert Martin, the man who asked her in the first place. Emma is certainly the worst advice-giver in the book, but she isn’t the only one. Mr. Woodhouse, Mrs. Weston, and Mr. Knightley all offer up plenty of opinions during the progress of the novel.

Mr. Woodhouse turns people off with his constant stream of health advice. He cautions against eating wedding cake and any other sort of tasty food. For the most part, the characters ignore the old man. But, on one occasion, his son-in-law loses patience when Mr. Woodhouse tells the young father not to listen to his own doctor. Mr. Woodhouse may think he’s helping people, but his words sometimes alienate him from those around him.

TALKING JANE AUSTEN WITH ... EMILY BRAND, AUTHOR OF MR DARCY'S GUIDE TO COURTSHIP

Thanks Emily for taking the time to answer my questions and agreeing to talk Jane Austen with me. This is my first curiosity:  when and how did you come to write a Jane Austen sequel?

Mr Darcy’s Guide to Courtship is more of a prequel: it is set shortly before the events of Pride and Prejudice, and imagines the advice that Darcy might have given Bingley on how to attract a suitable lady before he is let loose on Hertfordshire’s female population.

As an historian, my recent research has focused on the real seduction manuals – often just collections of what we’d now call ‘chat up lines’ – that were in circulation in and around Jane Austen’s lifetime. Many of them are really entertaining, and I wanted to bring them back into public view somehow. Austen’s books have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and it only seemed right to reveal how men really went about winning a lady’s affections through the medium of Regency England’s most eligible bachelor himself!

WHAT WOULD BE IN JANE AUSTEN'S iPOD?

 (by guest blogger Marcela De Vivo) 

Access to any kind of music during the Regency era was largely dependent on the abilities of amatuer musicians in a given household to play it on their own. There was no television or recording devices, and live music was generally limited to the cities and streets, where performers were easy to find, and the sounds of music were fairly commonplace. 

 However, in a household like the one Jane Austen grew up in, learning music was looked upon as a highly valuable and important aspect of life, thus every member of a family was expected to develop their skill with a particular instrument. In Austen’s case, the pianoforte was the most popular option.

 So, if Austen had an iPod during that time, she would have undoubtedly had music that was played by herself and her family members recorded and kept on one of her favorite playlists. Scotch and Irish Aires were popular during her time, as well as folk music and a variety of classical composers, many of which we would recognize today.   

THANK YOU, MISS AUSTEN! LEO CHARLES TAYLOR PRESENTS HIS "PRIDE AND PREJUDICE ASSASSINATIONS"

In February of 1813 Miss Jane Austen wrote a letter to her sister Cassandra. Pride & Prejudice had just been published and Miss Austen took the time to express her thoughts on the novel. On the whole she was pleased, although she did not care for her mother's audible presentation of the novel to their friends. Near the beginning of the letter Jane stated that the work was a little too bright and needed shade, perhaps a mention of Napoleon.

 It has now been 200 years since this wonderful novel has been printed and the letters of Miss Austen bring a sense of reality to her work and her character. She was not wholly pleased, but then again, are any of us ever satisfied with our work. A novel, which had taken the better part of two decades to get into print, was found to still contain an editing mistake, and while the reviews were favorable, Miss Austen had sold the copyright to a Mr. Egerton and signed away her rights for future financial gain. While Miss Austen may not have greatly profited from her novel, she did achieve a much more sought after goal. She is now known the world over and will continue to influence men and women in a positive way; Miss Austen achieved immortality. Whether Jane wanted this immortality we may not know, but it is hers and I wish to thank her for her influence.

MR DARCY'S GUIDE TO COURTSHIP - THE SECRETS OF SEDUCTION FROM JANE AUSTEN'S MOST ELIGIBLE BACHELOR

If I were a man, I'd ask him for advice in courtship, wouldn't you?  But since I am a woman, I'm  terribly curious to know what he would suggest to another man and what he really thinks about us.  Fitzwilliam Darcy has been so many women's dream man for 200 years now and he must know one or two secrets to  succeed with them.

Since the publication of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice in 1813, Mr Darcy has been the romantic hero par excellence, fancied by ladies of all ages all over the world. Who better than him could write a guide to the seduce the opposite sex?  

Now, in his Guide to Courtship,   he offers advice to make you successful in love but,  be warned, he wrote this book  before been mellowed by contact with Miss Elizabeth Bennet. So, please,  imagine the Darcy you met at Meriton Assembly, which means all pride and prejudice,  as the author of this little precious book.

AUTHOR GUEST POST - JANE LARK: JANE AUSTEN & ILLICIT LOVE - BLOG TOUR + HUGE GIVEAWAY

Jane Austen’s Visit To Her Ancestral Home and How It Inspired Her To Write By Jane Lark                                               Everyone knows Jane Austen had a family home at Chawton, few people know she was the descendent of an aristocratic family who had an amazing stately home called Stoneleigh Abbey, near Warwick. Jane’s mother had in fact married beneath her when she married a vicar and although she was happily married she regularly bragged about her aristocratic relations, and had brought Jane and her siblings up on tales of her ancestral family achievements. One of Jane’s ancestors had been the Lord Major of London in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It was a family joke that Jane’s mother had an aristocratic nose that she was very proud of. So can you imagine, after Jane had experienced the worst time of her life; through the period of her father’s illness and death, as her mother ran out of money, sending them firstly into cheap lodgings in Bath, and then to hit the height of humbleness and accept that they must live on the benefit of relations; how Jane felt to have an opportunity to visit the luxury of her ancestral home. It happened unexpectedly. 

JANE AUSTEN, SPELLING, GRAMMAR & ME

I'm terribly bad at self - correction, especially when it comes to typos and spelling. This is why  I used Grammarly to grammar check this post.

If I am correcting and assessing my students' works or papers, I am almost impeccable, but if it is myself, my own writing  I have to check ... no way: I'm almost blind to my own mispelling. This is why I have been very happy when I discovered I shared this problem with my beloved Jane Austen!

Apparently Jane Austen was bad at spelling and grammar and got a lot of help from her editor, but the fact didn't prevent her from becoming a cult writer and one of English classic literature most beloved authors.

AUSTEN ON SCREEN: AUSTENLAND, COMING VERY SOON!

The official trailer of Austenland has just been released (see below). I've also embedded a short clip from this long awaited for movie which has been out for some while.
Are you ready to have some fun in Austenland?
Unfortunately, Jerusha Hess's debut movie, produced by Stephanie Meyer,   will only hit selected theatres on August 16.
 How many of us will really manage to see it on big screen?

I doubt I will, for instance,  but I will keep my hopes high anyway and go on with my fingers crossed. No news of its release in Italy, yet! Actually, I've even received an invitation to participate to a preview screening in California but ... you know, that's really too distant (and expensive!)  a trip to just watch I movie. As much as you may wish to see it and love the genre, if you are a poor teacher like me, you can just kindly decline.

WHAT WOULD JANE AUSTEN EAT?

  

(from guest blogger Virginia Cunningham)

Jane Austen, the author of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey and Emma has become something of a symbol for old England to many people. The time Austen lived in was actually known as the Regency period or Regency era.

While much of what we consider to be part of traditional English culture was formed in this era, many of the customs and traditions of the time bear little resemblance to anything we might think of as traditionally English. Some food items, like the still-prepared roast beef and vegetables, were introduced during the Regency period, while others have long been forgotten. In fact, they might even be considered strange by today’s standards.

Jane Austen, who lived a relatively modest life, often would have prepared her own meals along with her family. To shed some light on this version of England that no longer exists, let’s take a look at some of the foods Austen and others would have eaten during that time.

Why Every Relationship is Like Elizabeth and Darcy’s

(by guest blogger Ken Meyers)  I have read and reread Pride and Prejudice. I just love it. I love it so much that I have also read many of the fan fiction based on the classic story, have seen all the film adaptations, and even checked out the YouTube videos about it. There is just something so compelling about the relationship between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. I mean, by all rights in this modern era there should not be that same draw, but there is. I think the story still holds true because our modern relationships have not really changed that much from theirs. Although we might not be dating to find a rich mate who can take care of us, we still have the same misunderstandings and miscommunication snag up our relationship progression. Here are a few reasons why I think that every relationship is, in some ways, like the one between Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy: