The MP for Longbourn: A Profile of Elizabeth Bennet 

The Albion Courier, Features Desk 

[Elizabeth Bennet, Member of the House of Resources for Longbourn Mining Company, agreed to speak with the Courier via video conference. The resulting article has been lightly edited for length.] 

There are Members of the House of Resources who treat their Parliamentary seat as a burden, a necessary inconvenience attached to their family business. Elizabeth Bennet is not one of them. 

She is younger than you expect, dark-haired with lively brown eyes. She gives you her full attention without ever giving you the impression that she has forgotten you are a journalist. She answers questions directly and completely, and somehow by the end of the interview you find yourself with a thorough understanding of Longbourn Mining Company’s public position on every matter of policy and very little idea what Elizabeth Bennet thinks about any of it personally. It is, in its way, an impressive performance. She would almost certainly object to that word. 

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The Last Repose and Mr. Darcy: A Profile of Albion’s Most Private Marcher 

The Albion Courier, Features Desk 

[William Darcy, Marcher of the Last Repose, declined multiple requests for interview. This profile was assembled from public records, Parliamentary testimony, and conversations with crew members who asked not to be named.] 

There is a moment, when the Last Repose comes into view, when you understand why people find William Darcy difficult to ignore. 

The ship is enormous. That much you know from the figures. At somewhere north of thirty kilometers in diameter, this is the largest marcher-ship in active service in Albion Space, and one of the oldest. What the figures do not prepare you for is the Repose’s shape. Where every other marcher-ship in the family wears its asteroid origins plainly, that characteristic lumpen potato silhouette, the Last Repose is a sphere. Not by design: the original asteroid was simply, and unusually, spherical, a geological accident that the first Darcy to claim her evidently considered worth keeping. Generations of maintenance have preserved that shape, pitted and scarred and dark with age, but unmistakably round. 

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Video Thursday: All The Notebooks Edition

A tour of the notebooks I used while writing Pride & Planetoids, the first book in my Jane Austen space opera trilogy, The Stars By Degrees. Some were storebought. Many were handmade or hand-cased. All of them contain the slightly chaotic evidence of a novel being figured out one page at a time.https://youtube.com/shorts/FNEsweKdckQ?feature=share
Music composed with Suno.
Pride & Planetoids is available for preorder here:
Learn more about the world of The Stars By Degrees