When you create a space regency setting as kind of a joke about
Continue reading “That Horrifying Moment…”Category: Jane Austen
Midjourney Monday: The Bennets’ Drawing Room in the Space Regency
I have like one line in the space regency about Longbourn having a drawing room with turquoise walls and pink furniture, but Midjourney kind of ran amok with the idea when I prompted it.
Midjourney Monday: Reception Area aboard The Last Repose
From the space regency, a brief bit of scene setting and the image which helped me visualize it, although you can also see where I chose to ignore it:
Continue reading “Midjourney Monday: Reception Area aboard The Last Repose”Weird Wednesday: The Unfinished First Drafts of Jane Austen
The Watsons and Sanditon are generally published in a volume with either Jane Austen’s Lady Susan or her Juvenilia, but aren’t actually very much like either of them. The Juvenilia is a group of short, intentionally ridiculous pieces written “for the fun of it.” They don’t do much for me, but I find them easier to follow than what survives of the Brontes’ early fantasy worlds: Glass Town, Angria and Gondal. Lady Susan, on the other hand, is a complete novella, told mostly through letters, which was apparently circulated within the family for entertainment but not intended for publication.
The Watsons, meanwhile, is the opening of an unfinished novel,
Continue reading “Weird Wednesday: The Unfinished First Drafts of Jane Austen”Adapting Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility, the Rest of the Story
And now we enter the final stretch of this story: Marianne’s illness, Willoughby’s attempt to justify himself, the final shocking swerve in the saga of Lucy Steele.
Continue reading “Adapting Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility, the Rest of the Story”Adapting Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility, the Story in London
It’s been a few months since I’ve done one of these, so here’s the previous posts as a refresher course. New thoughts below the cut.
The Novels of Marie Belloc Lowndes: The Jane Austen Fanfics
(Note: As previously indicated, the Lowndes books I have read are mostly available on Gutenberg and/or Amazon. In past reviews of early 20th century books, I have not made any effort to offer content warnings, on the assumption that anybody reading these reviews knows better than to expect present-day attitudes on certain topics from books of this timeframe. I am continuing with that assumption here.)
“Fanfics” is maybe a strong word for it; “remixes” or “riffs” might be better. But there are definitely places where you can see kind of a Jane Austen strain in the Lowndes novels, both in their interest in the social order and their microscopically close study of the characters’ emotions, even though Lowndes is not remotely in Austen’s league as a writer. The title character in Heart of Penelope has something of an Elizabeth Bennet vibe – plus nicer parents and more money and a hundred years of progress in the status of women, but minus Mr. Darcy. The title character in Jane Oglander is a bit like the “people-pleaser” interpretations of Jane Bennet, although the situation she’s in during the later stages of the novel would look more familiar to Elinor Dashwood or Fanny Price.
The novels I discuss below have a stronger Jane Austen angle than usual; two of them namecheck Austen characters and one recognizably reworks the Henry Crawford subplot from Mansfield Park.
Continue reading “The Novels of Marie Belloc Lowndes: The Jane Austen Fanfics”State of the Author, Start of 2025
My plans for the New Year are always kind of vague, because “Mann tracht un Gott lacht” (Man plans, and God laughs).
Continue reading “State of the Author, Start of 2025”State of the Author, 4Q2024
-First off, I think my books are all in Kindle Unlimited now, free to anyone with a subscription to KU. If you see any sign that they are not in KU, please let me know in the comments.
–Undead Flight (Hunter Healer King Book 2) is now in the hands of my proofreaders. Barring complications, should be ready to publish by Christmas time. Ebook cover is done; blurb is done with AI help (stay tuned, my post on the blurbing process will be out tomorrow. Print cover is dependent on my final cleanup of the manuscript to determine page length.
-Also started Hunter Healer King Book 3 by writing a fairly dark and distressing scene from the last third of the book. This is kind of suboptimal, because stitching together scenes written out of order tends to add (wo)manhours to the first draft process, but I hadn’t figured out the opening scene at that point. I don’t know when it will be released but I know that I am aiming for Christmas of 2025.
-I have had a sci-fi Pride and Prejudice retelling in development for a long time; finally got the first scene down. No projected completion date at this time. My main inspiration for this concept was, weirdly enough, Star Wars: A New Hope. If you dig deep enough into the filmographies of the supporting cast, you will find one with a Pride and Prejudice connection in his earlier career. Regrettably, the catchy working title explicitly references Star Wars, so the official title will probably be something rather sedate of the “Pride and…” format.
-New ebook covers using AI art for Shadow Captain and Spider Star are done; still need to do new paperback covers for them, and ebook/hardcover for the 2 in 1 volume for the duology. Projected release date for the 2 in 1 is first/second quarter of 2025.
-Early stages of AI art covers for the Jaiya Series and Ancestors of Jaiya series. No text layout yet. A four in one of Ancestors might come out in third quarter of 2025; a seven in one of the full metaseries might be sometime in 2026 but a lot could go sideways between now and then.
Sign of the Times, Austen Edition…
(Disclaimer: I do have a Mr. Collins plot bunny I might write sometime, in which he commits Obfuscating Stupidity and is actually a pretty smart guy underneath, but I don’t intend to invalidate the Bennets’ experiences of him, or demonize Charlotte in the process.)
Rather than give us what would be the first traditional P&P adaptation in 20 years, and the first BBC adaptation in 30 years, the Beeb opts to adapt some fan novel that tries to nice-ify the self-centered hipster known as Mary Bennet, and the clueless buffoon known as Mr. Collins, at the expense of more interesting characters like Charlotte Lucas. And of course, flawed but self-aware Mr. Bennet has horns and a tail. (Although in fairness, it sounds like the author is an equal opportunity hater when it comes to the Bennet parents, which is a reasonable take). And somehow this deserves to be ten episodes(1) long, nearly twice as long as any actual P&P miniseries ever made? And it’s from the modern Dr. Who(2) people?
No, thank you.
(1) of an unspecified length, but it seems like the BBC’s norm in recent years has been for episodes to run about an hour.
(2) Disclaimer: am not a Doctor Who fan in general, so I generally don’t see the involvement of behind-the-scenes people from that franchise in other stuff as being a good thing.
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