Back when I first wrote To Conquer Mr. Darcy (first published as Impulse & Initiative) for a Jane Austen fanfic sites, I wrote two versions of the story, one with intimate scenes and one without. The two versions started off the same, but then the ‘PG’ version, The Rule of Reason, went off in a completely different direction, so I ended up with two different books that shared the same beginning. I could only choose one version to publish, but so many readers have requested copies of The Rule of Reason that I decided to make the pdf version available to everyone. How much does it cost? Whatever you want. You can get it for free, or you can pay what you wish.

Since I first announced this yesterday, there have been lots of questions. I’ll try to answer them all here.

1. Is it a Pride & Prejudice variation? – Yes.
2. How different is it from Impulse & Initiative? – The beginning third is close to identical, but contains a Caroline Bingley subplot that was cut from I&I. The stories diverge during the visit to Pemberley. One section of the later part was adapted into the short story, “Reason’s Rule”, published in my anthology A Pemberley Medley.
3.  Which is it – is it free or do I have to pay for it? It’s up to you. You name the price – anywhere from $0.00 on up. If you enter $0 in the price box, the part asking for your credit card info will disappear.
4. Why would I pay when I can have it for free? It’s totally fine to download it for free, but paying something encourages other authors to do the same thing with their unpublished work, or in my case, with the scenes that were cut from my published works. It also helps support Gumroad which is being kind enough to host this at their own expense.
5. Why did you write 2 versions of the same book anyway? I didn’t mean to. I was posting the story as I wrote it on two fanfic boards, one with a PG rating and one with an R rating. I planned for the story to have a PG rating, but as the characters developed, I realized that wasn’t what they had in mind. Rather than stop posting at the PG site and leave the readers there hanging, I decided to write an alternate chapter or two to avoid the intimate scenes, thinking the story lines would come together again after that. Unfortunately, I discovered that you can’t change a decision made by a character without altering the outcome. Elizabeth and Darcy’s decision to anticipate their wedding vows made them into different people, and the story lines never came together again.
6. Why didn’t you just publish The Rule of Reason? Because I couldn’t ask readers to pay twice for two books that shared the same beginning.  I had to choose between the two versions, and overall I thought Impulse & Initiative was the stronger story.
7. Gumroad wants my email address before I can download it. Am I going to get spam? No. At most you’ll receive a notification if another one of my stories becomes available at Gumroad, or a thank you from me if you decide to pay for it.
8. Wait a minute – why do you have other pdfs available for sale there? None of my usual outlets (Amazon, B&N and Kobo) sell pdf versions. Since some people prefer pdfs, I’ve made those available through my website via Gumroad.

I think that covers everything! You can get your copy here.