Mary Jane Hathaway is the pen name of an award-nominated writer who spends the majority of her literary energy on subjects un-related to Jane Austen. A homeschooling mother of six young children who rarely wear shoes, she’s madly in love with a man who has never read Pride and Prejudice. She holds degrees in Religious Studies and Theoretical Linguistics, and has a Jane Austen quote on the back of her van. She can be reached on facebook at her regular author page of Virginia Carmichael (which is another pen name, because she’s just that cool). She is here today to meet the readers of My Jane Austen Book Club and present her new "Pride, Prejudice and Cheese Grits!" Read her guest post and take your chances in the rafflecopter form below to win an e-book copy!
Hello, fellow friends of Miss Jane! I’m so excited
to be talking about my new book, “Pride, Prejudice and Cheese Grits”!
Wait, did the blogger reader count just slip? I
think I heard the sound of hundreds of people quietly clicking past this post.
But why, dear ones??
I hear a brave soul in the back yelling out
something about that title… I can’t quite catch it…
Blasphemy? How can cheese grits,
that so lowly of the Southern dishes, possibly occur in the same title with
Austen’s wit and genius?
Like any good visitor to My Jane Austen Book Club, I
am beyond obsessed with Jane Austen. Obsession is for amateurs. Napoleon was obsessed with Josephine. Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear for that
girl whose name nobody can recall.
None of them ended well because they were merely obsessed. (Okay, also a bit
nutso, to be honest.) Austen fans sprint past obsession and head for the kind
of clarity that comes from dedicating one’s entire life to the cause of all things Jane.
So, once
we’ve established that point of reference, you can start to see how everything
relates back to Jane. What Jane Austen thought of eating less than two courses
at meal times. What Jane Austen thought of when to wear white. What Jane
thought about refusing offers of marriage in a dignified way. (Maybe that last
one doesn’t come into play much for a lot of us. *sob*) But still, Jane becomes
a guiding force in our lives.
We whisper
her best lines when we’re too mad to make up our own vicious come-backs. We put
down that handful of frosted flakes and pick up a blushing red apple. We take
time out from the endless e-mail and Twitter and facebook to arrange some
flowers because that’s what Jane would do.
As I started
writing this book, I had a firm idea of my heroine and my hero and my cast of
characters and my plot. It was mine, mine, mine! I giddily wrote scene after
scene that made me laugh or cry or glare. (I’m one of those writers that makes
HERSELF laugh or cry, even re-reading it. I’m pretty easy that way.)
So, it was a little annoying to have Jane’s best
lines running on a loop in the background of my mind. I fought it mightily,
drowned it with noise, and doused it with scads of NYT bestselling historical
thrillers that made no sense and were completely inaccurate.
My brilliant heroine from a town named Flea Bite
Creek was good enough, right? Who needed Austen to muddy it up?
Nope.
She was still there. Sometimes arching a brow,
sometimes hiding behind a book, but mostly laughing at me.
So, I started to write each chapter by getting my
Jane quote out of my head and onto the page. I wanted hero and heroine to have
a great big nasty fight? “I could easily forgive
his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”Natch!
I needed the villain to be fooling the entire
world with his smarminess? “Mr. Wickham
is blessed with such happy manners as may ensure his making friends- whether he may be equally capable of retaining them is
less certain.”
How about our heroine seeing the injustice in the world and not
letting it pass without a comment?“My
dear Lizzy, do not give way to such feelings as these. They will ruin your
happiness.”
And
on it went until we’d finally reached the end of our tale of the heart, set in
Southern academia, with our hero realizing that his hopes were not dashed,
after all. “It taught me to hope,” said
he, “as I had scarcely ever allowed myself to hope before.”
Wonderful! The book was finished!! I promptly
removed all the Austen quotes and set about editing it. Polishing and cutting
and slicing and dicing. Ow. Owie. YOW. But it had to be done. Now it was a
nicely sized novel, 300 pages, fun to read and ready to be submitted.
But it was missing something. I fiddled and
rearranged and sulked and grumped.
The book was no good. Not without Jane. Not
without her subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) wit and sense of irony.
Certainly not without her as a compass for my story, when I use her as a
compass for my living.
So back in she went. And from there I heard
from dozens of agents, scores of editors and a handful of publishers that this
book would never sell.
Too weird. (Cheese
grits? What is that exactly? Nobody loves Southern culture, they said.)
Too complicated.
(Nobody can follow Civil War history, a fight for antebellum mansions, a family
drama, a mystery, a crime, and a romance all at once, they said.)
Too boring. (Nobody
reads about academics, they said. Academics are boring. They live in their own
little world, surrounded by imaginary and real-but-dead people.)
Too quiet. (Nobody
wants to read about people who love Austen when they can read about a hot
female bail bondsman in love with two even hotter men. Unless I could put some
of that in the book?they asked. I actually laughed at that because some day,
somewhere, maybe there will be a Jane Austen/ Stephanie Plum mash-up which will
sell like hotcakes. But I think that’s a bit more than I can pull off.)
And that’s when I
stopped listening. I love Southern culture! I love mysteries and crimes and
romances and family drama and Civil War history! I love academia and professors and
universities and memories of those all-night pizza parties when you’re a freshman
and gain forty pounds because your mother isn’t there to tell you to eat
something green and Twinkies aren’t breakfast food.. (Oh, maybe that was just
me? *cough, cough*)
And mostly, I love Austen. I love Pride and Prejudice. I’m beyond ‘love it’ all
the way into the ‘I think I would have to marry this book if it wasn’t illegal’.
So, that’s the story of how ‘Pride, Prejudice
and Cheese Grits’ came to be written, and rejected, and resurrected by the good
folks at Amazon. Bless their little hearts, letting us digitize any random
thing! Yee-haw, ladies, that means more books on Jane!
I hope you enjoy my little slice of Austen
mania. The next book in the series, ‘Emma, Mr. Knightley, and Chili-Slaw Dogs’
will be coming out in May 2013.
Until then, my sweets, stand tall in whatever
particular form of genius (not craziness, NOT!) your Austen obsession brings
you!
Mary Jane Hathaway
Shelby Roswell is a history professor on the fast track to tenure
until her new book is crushed in a review by the famous historian, Ransom
Fielding. She struggles to regain her momentum only to discover that Fielding
has taken a visiting professorship at her college. The place that was once a
refuge from the poverty of her past is now a battlefield of Civil War
proportions.
Ransom is still struggling with his role in his wife’s accidental death six years ago and was hoping a year at Shelby’s small college would be a respite from the reminders back home. He never bargained for falling in love with the one woman who would give anything to make him leave. Together Shelby and Ransom learn that home is never very far away, and when you least expect it, love arrives.
With a cast of Civil War re-enactors, an evil wedding planner, antebellum
mansions, and several mysterious diaries, 'Pride, Prejudice and Cheese Grits'
will take you on a touching and hilarious ride through a modern South you
haven't seen before.
16 comments:
awww what if you dont own a kindle?
Anything remotely "Austen-esque" is my obsession in books. I adore, now, period pieces on BBC
Hi, Patricia!
I actually don't have a Kindle, either!
But I did download the free 'Kindle for PC' on my computer. So it loads the Kindle books the same, I just can't lug my computer with me everywhere.
There are so many great e-books, I had to get the Kindle reader but hping to get the actual hand-held Kindle sometime soon!
Christine, are you watching 'Midwives' on BBC? I haven't started that one yet, but I admit to being just a bit smitten with Matthew from Downton Abbey. Those eyes!!
Kind Authoress, I am a proud antediluvian and do prefer to read novels on a printed page. Pray tell us when we can expect the printed version of your fine wordsmithing.
Dearest Julia, although it's one of the deepest desires of my heart, I cannot in good conscience advise you to wait for the print edition. Perhaps, in due time, there shall be such a thing. Alas, at this juncture, I am hobbled by the absence of a traditional publisher for this project. I do thank you for your kind attention!
Who says Austen doesn't sell? I think the people you talk to cannot afford to take the risks of publishing your book. Thank God you didn't listen to them because you have gifted the Austen community another Austenesque novel to read.
My personal Austen obsession has lead me to read more books, not just Austen type, and set up a blog to post my book reviews. Take a look @ http://forloveofausten.blogspot.com/
Hi Luthien! I'll have to pop over and check it out!
And the only people who think Austen doesn't sell are the ones who have never read a good Austen variation/ sequel/ spinoff/ inspired book. THOSE people see Austen as beneath them.
But we know dear Jane can turn the most boring plot into something daring and adventurous and romantic, no??
I love your site, and hope to be lucky enough to win this sweepstakes.
I love Jane Austen!
Lia Christo
www.docesletras.com.br
Hi, Lia! I love Miss Jane, too!
Can we be best friends?!?!?! :oD
But really ...
I LOVE cheese grits
I LOVE antebellum Southern grace
I LOVE academia and the academics therein
I LOVE Jane Austen
and
I LOVE that title!
(Also LOVE the Knightley title - I swoon, haha) ...
Seriously NEED to read this!
Thanks for the giveaway :o)
quarterback.girl[at]gmail[dot]com
Welcome! I adore Jane Austen so much, it's on my to do list to get Jane Austen knits and do it~
RivkaBelle-
YES! Let's be BFFs!!!
I have to admit I don't love cheese grits. Not really. But I love that it has survived in the South when the rest of the country has gone the way of the Big Mac and the crunchy taco.
I've had so many people tell me the title is HORRIBLE, but I think they're expecting the cheese grits to be a slam on Southern culture. And it's not. It's a celebration. And Jane sure knew how to celebrate (while poking a lot of fun with little snarky asides).
Hello, Margay!
I'm so glad Austenites can finally come out of the closet. When I was in high school, Jack Kerouac was all the rage. *sigh*
But our time has come, and a bicentennary, to boot!
Hi! I've recently noticed your book and I really would love to read it!!
My obsession? P&P variations! Love those! Regency and Modern of D and E meeting.
Thanks for the chance to win a copy!
~Candy
Hi Candy! Thanks for stopping by! Doesn't P&P just go with everything?? :D
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