Posts in which we or our guests offer a giveaway.
I’m closing out Jane Austen’s birthday week by offering copies of the Cozy Classics board book editions of Pride and Prejudice and Emma, along with my novella A Dream Defiant in your choice of electronic format. Comment by 9 PM Pacific Standard Time on Sunday (that’s midnight Eastern) for a chance to win!
I have a humiliating confession to make:
The first time I read Jane Austen, I got about a chapter in and then quit.
I was 14 or so, and I’d taken to reading my hometown library’s extensive collection of Georgette Heyer, Clare Darcy, and Marion Chesney. They were real, adult love stories I didn’t have to hide from my mom. Which wasn’t the case with historical romance in general. Anything with the lurid “bodice ripper” covers so prevalent in the 1980’s wasn’t quite forbidden to me, but they led to lectures on appropriate entertainment, the importance of waiting till marriage to have sex, etc. I occasionally snuck such books into the house regardless, but for the most part I just found ways to read what I liked that flew under Mom’s radar–e.g. you’d never guess how much sex is in the Earth’s Children series by the covers.
But I digress. Our librarian noticed me working my way through Heyer, Darcy, and Chesney and said I really MUST try this book called Pride and Prejudice.
So I checked it out, took it home, and tried to read it. But I couldn’t quite follow what was going on somehow, and the arch wit of the writing completely went over my earnest, angsty young head. So I gave up and set it aside.
I didn’t try Austen again until just after college, when I was 23 or 24. Again I started with Pride and Prejudice–and this time it instantly clicked. I plowed through all six of her novels one after the other, and I’ve re-read them more times than I can count in the years since.
I’m still baffled and not a little embarrassed by my adolescent self’s failure to Get It. It’s not like I was a poor reader–I loved Jane Eyre, and I read Romeo and Juliet for fun at 12, albeit an annotated version with footnotes clarifying all the language and references I didn’t yet have the maturity and experience to pick up on my own. Maybe I would’ve done better with an annotated Austen to explain the entail, the relative social positions of the Bennetts, Darcys, and Bingleys, and everything else that baffled me then but made perfect sense a decade later.
Or maybe I just wasn’t for anything that wry and subtle. Those Regencies I was plowing through were by far the least angsty and dramatic fiction I was reading at the time, and even Heyer isn’t quite in the same league as Austen for subtlety, IMHO.
What about you? How old were you when you got your first taste of Austen, and did you immediately connect to her stories? Do you have a favorite book by any author that didn’t work the first time you read it?
One of the most agonizing experiences of a writer’s life is pitching to an editor or agent. In five minutes–or less–you must prove–coherently–what your book is about and how it’s the next best thing. Most writers find it difficult to talk about something that may have obsessed them for months or years, and Austen rarely talked about her writing to anyone except close family. Here’s my tribute to Jane Austen and the chance to win a prize: a set of postcards featuring the beautiful Jane Austen stamp designs from 2013 (a collector’s item!), and I’m throwing in a $10 Amazon Gift Certificate:
Editor: Hi Jane, take your time. What do you have for me?
Jane: It’s a Regency-set romance about two sisters whose family has fallen on hard times and they—
Editor: So they become courtesans to save the family? Are there dukes in it?
Jane: No. The younger sister falls in love with a rake but he has to leave her to fight a duel because–
Editor: Is that before or after they’ve had sex?
Jane: They don’t ever have sex, because he’s had sex with another girl and–
Editor: Oh, so she’s the heroine.
Jane: No, she’s the ward of Colonel Brandon, who’s in love with the youngest sister—
Editor: Oh great, readers love a damaged military hero.
Jane: He’s actually in quite good shape for his age, but—
Editor: How does the other sister play into it? It seems you have quite a few characters already.
Jane: She’s in love with a clergyman.
Editor: A clergyman! So he’s dying to get her into bed? That’s really sexy.
Jane: Not so you’d notice.
Editor: OK, send me a partial. What else do you have?
Jane: My next book is about five sisters.
Editor: A series?
Jane: No.
Editor: Then why are there five? Do you need them all?
Jane: Well, yes. Lizzie, the eldest, meets a gentleman, Darcy, at an assembly—
Editor: Would our readers know what that is? Is it a sex club?
Jane: It’s a dance. But–
Editor: Is he a duke?
Jane: No. But he has ten thousand a year.
Editor: Is that as much as a duke makes?
Jane: More or less. But the hero Darcy is too proud to dance with Lizzie and then his friend falls in love with her sister and Darcy opposes the match—
Editor: He’s jealous? Great, a m/m element. How graphic do you get?
Jane: They talk about money a lot.
Editor: OK, send me a partial. Anything else?
Jane: I have a book, Mansfield Park, which—
Editor: Is that the hero’s name?
Jane: No his name is Edmund. He’s the cousin of the heroine Fanny.
Editor: Her cousin? Sorry, we don’t publish that sort of book.
Jane: Oh dear. I have a romantic comedy that is also a gothic.
Editor: Are there dukes?
Jane: No.
Editor: Anything else?
Jane: My book Emma is about a woman who dominates her community.
Editor: BDSM?
Jane: No, Highbury.
Editor: Anything else?
Jane: My book Persuasion is about a second chance at love.
Editor: We see rather a lot of those. What’s your hook? Does your heroine or hero have agonizing emotional baggage, for instance?
Jane: She has trouble with her complexion, according to her father.
Editor: Is she a courtesan? I think the market is a little over-saturated but readers love them.
Jane: No, not really. The hero is a sailor.
Editor: Interesting. You could rewrite it as a contemporary and make him a Navy Seal.
Jane: I’ve just started a comedy about invalids.
Editor: I don’t think our readers would go for that. Unless they’re dukes who are soldiers who’ve been emotionally damaged by war. (Waving at someone across the room) Oh great, it’s lunchtime. Thanks, Jane.
Today is Jane Austen’s 238th birthday and all this week Risky Regencies will be celebrating with special Jane Austen-themed blogs and giveaways. In fact, Myretta already started us off with a Jane Austen Gazetteer!
Today I’m giving away a set of Jane Austen notecards (shown right) to one lucky commenter, chosen at random. All you have to do is comment to this blog and answer this question: What birthday present would you give Jane Austen?
It can be something real, like a ream of writing paper and a lifetime supply of ink or something fanciful, like giving her her very own Darcy.
I tried to discover how Jane Austen might really have celebrated her birthday during her lifetime or even how her characters celebrated birthdays in her books. I could not find anything, except one blog by David W. Wilkin that basically said Austen never wrote about birthdays in her books or correspondence. Wilkin found only a few vague references to birthdays in Dickens.
I found references to music honoring the birthdays of royals, but not much else, so poor Jane probably did not have any birthday parties, like we celebrate birthdays in our families today. We need to really make it up to her. Let’s give her some really nice stuff.
And speaking of nice stuff, tomorrow is release day for A Marriage of Notoriety, book 2 in my Masquerade Club series. In fact, I’ll add a signed copy of A Marriage of Notoriety to the Jane Austen prize today. My little gift in honor of Jane’s birthday.
Don’t forget about the Harlequin Historical Authors Holiday Giveaway with daily prizes and a grand prize of a Kindle Fire HDX WiFi. Click HERE for the Advent calendar and HERE for how to enter my contest, which ends tomorrow night at midnight!
So…What would you give Jane Austen for her birthday?
Next week it’s all Austen all the time here at the Riskies as we celebrate Jane’s birthday (December 16) so we have a special guest to get you in the mood. We invited Karen Doornebos to talk about her release UNDRESSING MR. DARCY.
As an ice-breaker to each leg of my Blog Tour for UNDRESSING MR. DARCY, I’m taking you along for a ride to England, where I traveled during the summer of 2012 to do some research for the book.
Where am I on this stop? Today I’m providing you a smattering of some of my London shots that inspired, but didn’t make it directly into the book. Since I’m visiting Risky Regencies here, I thought you’d enjoy the pub sign for Ye Olde Cock Tavern, for obvious, middle-grade humorous reasons! 
I went into Fortnum & Mason, but my heroine’s friend Sherry, didn’t, and bemoaned the fact that my heroine wouldn’t let her! She certainly missed out.
He’s an old-fashioned, hardcover book reader who writes in quill pen and hails from England. She’s an American social media addict. Can he find his way to her heart without so much as a GPS?
You can read the first chapter here!
Buy now at Berkley Penguin – Indiebound – Amazon – B&N – Kobo – BAM – iTunes
I’d like to thank you, Janet, for having me back at Risky Regencies!
I learned from your bio that you used to work in advertising, and I’m wondering whether that inspired your heroine Vanessa Roberts. Do you identify with her?
Vanessa works in PR, that infinitely more glamorous cousin of advertising. PR girls get to go to all the galas, fundraisers and schmooze the media with wining and dining. But yes, working in the ad world did in part inspire Vanessa’s character. In the worlds of both advertising and PR, everything is very fleeting, deadlines are looming multiple times per day, and you’re always busy. Too busy. Work doesn’t stay in nice tidy boundaries, but overflows into nights and weekends. Since Vanessa is an * older * heroine at thirty-five, it made sense that her busy-ness would have distracted her from falling in love and settling down. I identify with Vanessa career-wise, but I happened to have gotten married at age twenty-six and had two kids by the time I was her age of thirty-five!
One thing I loved about the book was watching Vanessa become a Jane Austen fan. What was your Jane Austen journey?
Thank you, Janet, I’m so glad you enjoyed her coming around to the Jane side! Here was my journey: read about Mr. Darcy at age sixteen; smitten for life. Seriously, though, my journey to appreciating Austen was much more typical than Vanessa’s. P&P was assigned in high school, and I have to say, I really did fall for Darcy within Austen’s first few lines about him, but of course, she deliberately hooked us all. I became an English major, read more of Austen, but I have to say I didn’t come out of the Austen closet until the 1995 version of P&P and then the Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant version of Sense & Sensibility. I discovered Republic of Pemberley online and had already, by 1997, had the beginnings of my first book, DEFINITELY NOT MR. DARCY, written. By 2008 I had joined the Jane Austen Society of North America…and felt like I had found my tribe!
You include real places and real people, including events and speakers at JASNA (Jane Austen Society of North America) conferences. What’s your best JASNA experience?
I have to say my best JASNA experience happened to be my first in 2008, but they have all been great, really. The first conference I attended was in Chicago, my hometown, and I presented a larger than life academic poster called How Not to Write a Jane-Austen Inspired Novel that you can see on my website here. But that wasn’t even the best part. The best part happened to be joining in on the Regency promenade and then, without any lessons, getting pulled onto the ballroom dance floor. Janeites are all very friendly!
On your research trip last year did you learn anything about London that surprised you?
I learned that London is still one of my top three places in the world. I didn’t really know that until I went back. What surprised me was that I promised myself another return trip very soon because I didn’t get to do everything I wanted—restored Globe Theatre, anybody?! I also wanted to try and find Benedict Cumberbatch.
(Hmmm. She’s not telling us whether she did or not!) Who is your dreamteam cast for the movie version of the book?
I’ll be dating my * old * self here, but I always saw Julia Roberts as Vanessa…hence the name Roberts. She’s a little too old to be playing a thirty-five year old, though. I could see Henry Cavill as Julian, although he needs to be a little older! Hugh Grant would be wonderful if he were a little younger. Johnny Depp could still play Chase!!!
What do you think is the enduring appeal of Mr. Darcy and P&P?
Janet, I wrote an entire essay on that subject for the January 2012 issue of Jane Austen’s Regency World Magazine. It boiled down to the vast size of Mr. Darcy’s…library! Seriously, though, Darcy is an avid reader, with a large and growing library. As I say in UNDRESSING MR. DARCY, he’s the smart girl’s pin-up boy. How clever of Austen to snare her female readers with a man who values reading! Nothing better than the image of a gorgeous specimen of a man reading a book on the settee!
What are you working on next?
Laundry. Frantically getting ready for Christmas! Really, I have to say that once again I have too many ideas for my next project. I need to get serious about which one is worthy. Not sure yet. They’re duking it out in my head.
WIN!
Risky Regency readers, comment below for your chance to win one of TWO copies of UNDRESSING MR. DARCY. What do you think makes Darcy so enduring and…sexy?
To increase your chances of winning you can share this post on your Facebook page or Twitter via our nifty Rafflecopter widget and enhance your social media pleasure by following Risky Regencies, Karen, and Janet on Facebook or Twitter. Contest limited to US entrants only.
Mr. Darcy’s Stripping Off…
His other stocking. At each blog stop Mr. Darcy will strip off a piece of clothing. Keep track of each item in chronological order and at then end of the tour you can enter to win a GRAND PRIZE of the book, “DO NOT DISTURB I’m Undressing Mr. Darcy” door hangers for you and your friends, tea, and a bottle of wine (assuming I can legally ship it to your state). US entries only, please.
Karen Doornebos is the author of UNDRESSING MR. DARCY published by Berkley, Penguin and available here or at your favorite bookstore. Her first novel, DEFINITELY NOT MR. DARCY, has been published in three countries and was granted a starred review by Publisher’s Weekly. Karen lived and worked in London for a short time, but is now happy just being a lifelong member of the Jane Austen Society of North America and living in the Chicagoland area with her husband, two teenagers and various pets—including a bird. Speaking of birds, follow her on Twitter and Facebook! She hopes to see you there, on her website www.karendoornebos.com and her group blog Austen Authors. You can also check out the other stops on her Blog Tour.
WIN!
Risky Regency readers, comment below for your chance to win one of TWO copies of UNDRESSING MR. DARCY…
What do you think makes Darcy so enduring and…sexy?
To increase your chances of winning you can share this post on your Facebook page or Twitter via our nifty Rafflecopter widget below! You can also increase your odds by following Karen and Janet on Twitter or Facebook, or, if you’re not already, following Risky Regencies on Facebook. Contest limited to US entrants only.