This week is Austenfest at Brant Flakes, the blog of talented writer Marilyn Brant whose new novel, According to Jane, will be coming out this fall. She has interviewed several writers of Jane Austen-related books, including Syrie Jones (The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen), Kim Wilson (Tea with Jane Austen, In the Garden with Jane Austen), Laurie Viera Riegler (Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict) and me, and she’ll be posting all those interviews this week with free copies of all our books plus other prizes. I’m appearing on 6/26 and giving away copies of Pemberley by the Sea, Impulse & Initiative, and the elusive Without Reserve, which is finally available again from Amazon, Lulu, and other online booksellers. I hope you’ll stop by and join in the festivities!

Sorry to have disappeared for so long! I’ve been busy with final edits of Bounds of Decorum, and I think it’s stronger than it was before. Meantime, Morning Light is in my agent’s hands. And today I got a copy of the cover artwork for the formerly-named Last Man in the World. It’ll be available in bookstores this autumn.

I’ll be back with a longer post soon!

In From Lambton to Longbourn, Darcy and Elizabeth banter about practicing the virtues of self-control and charity. When it comes to each other, they’re both better at charity than self-control. That passage keeps coming back to me lately because I’ve been thinking a lot about self-discipline – specifically how to make myself sit down and write. I feel better when I write, but I’m having trouble finding the motivation and perseverence to actually do it. I think I’d better go back to setting concrete public goals, which has sometimes worked in the past. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been dealing with various technical issues about publication this week, including some of the residual issues from my original self-publishing. The only part that actually has to do with writing is some minor revisions to The Last Man in the World for the new edition being published this fall. Read the rest of this entry »

For anyone looking to purchase a copy of Without Reserve, the Sourcebooks edition is still inexplicably unavailable, and outside sellers are scalping the old edition for scary prices. Until the new edition becomes available, I’ve made the original edition temporarily available at Lulu. Sorry for the inconvenience!

I’ve been putting off writing a post, hoping that I’d have some news to report soon, and finally I do. I met with my editor ten days ago, and on Monday she filled me in on her grand scheme for my books. The big news is that she is buying Bounds of Decorum. It’s going to be a busy year for me, according to her. She’s scheduled Pemberley by the Sea and Impulse & Initiative to come out in mass market editions next spring, probably under different titles. Meantime, Bounds of Decorum will come out in trade paper in Fall 2010 along with a bookstore release of From Lambton to Longbourn, followed by By Force of Instinct and Without Reserve in Spring of 2011. By then, she hinted delicately, she expects me to have a new book for her. She hasn’t read Morning Light yet, so no news on that front. I have to finish copyedits for Last Man in the World this week, then I go straight into revisions for Bounds of Decorum and From Lambton to Longbourn.

So what’s next on the actual writing front? I’ve started plotting out a sequel to Bounds of Decorum which will follow the romantic adventures of Mary and Georgiana, with appearances by Mr & Mrs Darcy, Aunt Augusta, Charlie, the evil Earl, and two new original characters. Mary and Georgiana serve as natural foils for each other, and they each find love where they don’t expect it.

I’ve been stymied in the Woods Hole Quartet for a while. I have two books half-written, both with substantial flaws, but I had to get away from them for long enough to discover what the flaws were. In the first, Uncharted Waters, I tried to write a different kind of female protagonist, and it didn’t work. What kind of different? She wasn’t sassy, basically, and she ended up being a bit depressing, and her happy ending was largely about things other people did for her than what she accomplished for herself. A perfectly valid character, but not one I can write well, as it turns out. After trying to find ways to adjust the character, I finally realized I need to scrap her entirely and rebuild from scratch.

I’ve blogged about the other new modern before. I really like the story, but it suffers from boring characters. My characters in other books all had jobs they felt passionate about, not something practical to put bread on the table, which is where these two were. Now I have them each developing some new interests and friendships, and I’ll see if that helps. Although set on Cape Cod, I’d intended it to be separate from the Woods Hole Quartet, but the Woods Hole characters seem to keep showing up anyway. Maybe the quartet will have to become a quintet. As for the final book, it’s purely in my head at this point.

I think that should keep me busy for quite some time. Stay tuned for information about an online Austenfest with interviews and free book giveaways!