IN CONVERSATION WITH DON JACOBSON: DISCOVERING 'IN WESTMINSTER'S HALLS'

IN WESTMINSTER’S HALLS: DARCY’S ABOLITIONIST ROMANCE

 

What inspired you to set the characters of Pride and Prejudice against the backdrop of the British abolitionist movement?

I am one of those oddities: my favorite Austen book is Mansfield Park, at least when it comes to dealing with the social questions of Austen’s time. However, while I liked the thematics either overt or implied, in the book, I found the characters to be rather pale. However, that’s where P&P came in…Darcy and Elizabeth are dynamic. I also wanted to see how Mr. Bennet would act when principle forced him from his library. 

THE SAILOR'S REST, THE NAVAL ADVENTURE JANE AUSTEN MIGHT HAVE WRITTEN. GUEST POST & GIVEAWAY.

 

The Naval Adventure Jane Austen Might Have Written

 The Sailor’s Rest, the latest Austenesque novel by Don Jacobson, has been released worldwide on March 28, 2023. Published independently, this is the author’s twelfth variation using Austen’s Canon as a basis for the story. The book is a cross-over (not a mash-up) of Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion. For plot purposes, the novel (approx. 117,000 words) is set on the Persuasion timeline in 1815. However, the age and plot constructs from Pride and Prejudice have been maintained to establish context.

BLOG TOUR & GIVEAWAY - THE EXILE: THE COUNTESS VISITS LONGBOURN BY DON JACOBSON

The Language of the Back Cover

By Don Jacobson

With the advent of e-books, readers now no longer have to go to the bookstore or library to pull their favorite author’s work off the shelf. All they need to do is download a copy and immediately start flipping pages.

Oh, yes…and that flipping invariably happens on the first item nested in the Table of Contents. In most cases, that is Chapter 1. What is rarely seen is the front cover.

Well, not exactly. The reader certainly saw the cover when visiting the website from which the book was obtained. And, yes, the cover does appear in a thumbnail form in the e-book reader library. However, the postage stamp’s worth of color art does little to provide anything more than the barest sense of theme and message.

DON JACOBSON, LIZZY BENNET MEETS THE COUNTESS

The Process Behind the Cover of “Lizzy Bennet Meets the Countess”

By this point, Janet Taylor and I have firmly established the overall cover format for Bennet Wardrobe stories. There have been two in the “new style” –The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey and The Exile: Kitty Bennet and the Belle Époque. This latest novella will be the third utilizing the unifying “look.”  

One might suggest that if you have the frame, it is a relatively simple process to drop a picture into the hole. However, there is a peculiar zen behind an art director’s craft. As opposed to being almost incidental, what truly drives the underlying creative impulse for the cover design is the core visual. Even if Janet is not creating a new image, she derives the primary background color for the title block and then the complementary colors for the type itself. Wrong choices can have awful consequences.

THE EXILE BLOG TOUR & GIVEAWAY - DON JACOBSON, BENNET WARDROBE FAQS

Bennet Wardrobe FAQs

Why the Wardrobe as a device to create a story arc in the Pride & Prejudice Universe?

Through my years of reading Jane Austen’s fiction, I found myself gravitating toward the side characters—particularly those in the greatest novel…Mary the moralizing sister…Kitty who coughed and wilted in the glare of her younger sister’s boisterousness…Lydia who was, frankly, just this side of being a slut…Thomas who could have done so much more as a father. 

JAFF writers have sought to carry on the ODC saga by offering the younger sisters their own storylines. Epilogues usually place Mr. Bennet in the bowels of the Pemberley Library. Mrs. Bennet is rarely mentioned—and is often dispatched with a bout of apoplexy.