John Henry Dolph [Public domain]; via Wikimedia Commons
~*~*~
“Did I tell you I acquired a kitten for Miss Bennet?”
Darcy blinked and looked at Bingley. “You did what?”
“Before I left town, Miss Bennet was telling me about a cat she once had but that had run away during a storm. She seemed to miss it a great deal, so when I arrived, I sought out Sir William and inquired if he knew where I might find a grey tabby cat. As luck would have it, he knew precisely where I might find one.” Bingley lifted the drapes out of the way and scooped up a kitten. “This is Oliver. He has yet to learn not to push vases off tables.”
It’s hard to believe that another year has come and gone. Today, I’m going to take a little look back at 2018 as we “Let Her Go.” ( 🙂 I do love a good pun!)
Published to YouTube by The Piano Guys on February 19, 2014
It was a busy year!
Let’s begin by looking at the Class of 2018 books. 🙂 I have included the month in which they were published for those who might be curious about that sort of detail.
January
March
April
May
June
October
December
To go with this peek at the Class of 2018, I have created a quick three-question survey. I would love it if you would take a minute and answer these questions. I’ll post the results of the survey next week.
Recently published does not equal 2018 bestseller. The bestsellers for the year are on this graphic. Some of the new releases made the cut, but not all.
Here’s another interesting statistic from the year:
At the time of my writing this post on Saturday, December 29, 2018, my yearly word count total is
327,242 words
But…there is still today, and I am hoping to find time to write a little bit. I did not finish the fourth installment of Loving Lydia on Friday. I only got part way through it before I had to stop for the night. It needs to be done.
Speaking of Loving Lydia, it will be the first Thursday blog story of the year, and it starts posting this Thursday!
In that same vein of thought, you might like to know that Delighting Mrs. Bennet, which is the book that comes right before Loving Lydia in the Marrying Elizabeth series, is scheduled to be published NEXT Thursday, January 10, 2019, and will be the first book published in 2019. Preorder details should be arriving soon, I hope. (I still need to work on a few things for this.)
I am still working on Tom: To Secure His Legacy. This book will be the first book posted on Patreon for 2019 and hopefully, will be the second book published. (Fingers crossed — well, yours not mine. Typing is too difficult when you cross your fingers. LOL)
I have some other plans that I am trying to get nailed down better as this year ends and a new one begins. Hopefully, I will be able to share some of those plans with you in next Monday’s post.
For now, I will leave you with a small excerpt from Tom’s story (which I did not get to write on very much this week due to holidays and my husband being off work).
“What I would not give for a book or a bit of stitching,” Margaret said.
“I do not think I could enjoy either with all this rocking,” Mary said. She would do well to not become ill from the motion.
There was nothing to do besides pace their small confines in a staggering fashion as they attempted to grow accustomed to the motion of the ship or sleep. And so, they did one for a period of time, and then endeavoured to do the other when their legs grew weary. They huddled together as comfortably as they could in a corner they created by pushing around a couple of crates. It felt secluded and gave the illusion of being safe.
Published to YouTube on November 14, 2017, by Jennifer Thomas.
*music ends at about 3:30 with information about the performer after that mark
As I mentioned last week, we are on a short break from any work in progress excerpts on Mondays as I am just beginning some new stories and have nothing ready to share. However, when I found this music video I just couldn’t help using a small excerpt from Mary’s story to go with it. (And I’ll admit to wanting to tempt everyone into reading her story. 😉 ) Those few lines above are from when the real trouble (and danger) begin in the story.
Mary: To Protect Her Heart is on pre-order for a special price until December 10, 2018. After December 10, the price will go up. Henry’s and Charles’s stories are also on sale until Mary’s release day, so this is a great time to pick up all the books in the series.
During the pre-order period, I will be working on the print edition, making final corrections to commas and typos, working on promotional graphics, and sending out a limited number of advance reader copies to my mailing list as well as sharing some of those ARCs in my Leenie’s Sweeties Facebook Group.
But that’s not all I am working on. At the same time, I need to get Nature’s Fury and Delights: Thunder, Mist, and Frost ready to publish on December 18 (my next Austen Authors post day), and I am working my way through the first round of edits on Delighting Mrs. Bennet, which will be published in early January 2019 (probably January 3 or 10). It is a busy but exciting time of year in my writing world.
You would think that all those activities would be enough to keep me scurrying and wondering how I will get it all done — and you’d be right 🙂 However, I just don’t feel right when I don’t get to write. 😀
So, I have started Tom Bertram’s story. I’ve only written about 1000 words so far, but I have done many hours of research before I wrote any of those words. (Yes, I am once again pushing myself to explore new things with this story. I really don’t know why I do this to myself. 🙂 I guess I just like the challenge of learning.)
By the end of this week, I hope I might be ready to start writing Loving Lydia. I want to get my first read through/edit of Delighting Mrs. Bennet done first, and I think I can have that finished by about Thursday if my schedule works. I think you might have some idea from where part of the conflict in Loving Lydia might stem after seeing Wednesday and Thursday’s posts.
Delighting Mrs. Bennet will conclude this Thursday. I will be leaving it up for about a week (and a few days since I do my blog post work on Saturdays) before removing it from the blog. That means there will be a month between when this story ends and Loving Lydia begins. But don’t worry. I am not going to skip any Thursday posts. I just happen to have something else planned for the month of December — which you can find out about next week. 😉
One last little writing news item that is not so little to me. I have always sold all my books on as many sales platforms as possible. However, based on past experience and my analysis of previous sales numbers as well as the direction in which I would like to go with my writing career, I am going to be pulling Henry: To Prove Himself Worthy, Charles: To Discover His Purpose, and His Beautiful Bea off all of my vendors except for Amazon so that I can place these books in the Kindle Unlimited program for at least 90 days. My hope in doing this is to make the stories available to a large group of readers who might feel more willing to take a chance on a Mansfield Park-based story by borrowing and reading it rather than committing money to something they don’t realize they will enjoy. (I mean, they will enjoy the stories. I just need to give them the chance to discover that they will enjoy them, ya know what I mean?) It wasn’t an easy choice to make. I am not a fan of the exclusivity that Amazon demands to be part of the Kindle Unlimited program, but, after talking to several people I respect, it seemed that trying this approach is a good business decision. I will be asking to have them removed from other sellers after Wednesday this week since Charles’s story is still in the Kobo Plus program until that day.
I’ll share more about the direction I would like to go in my writing career later — probably in January. For now, I’ll just say that I have always said I was an author of Austen-inspired and original fiction, and I think it’s time to start working more original fiction into my catalog of books. Don’t worry. I don’t plan to stop writing sweet stories. I’m just shifting a bit. But, I’ll explain more when I have more of a plan in place. I’m just starting to attempt the planning part. 🙂
I think that’s all the writing news I have for now.
“I agree with Mary and your father,” said Mrs. Gardiner, climbing off the bed. “He cares for you.” She bent and kissed Elizabeth’s forehead. “It will be a good match. I believe that confused look on your face and that fluttering of your heart…” She smiled at the surprise on Elizabeth’s face. “I felt it myself many years ago,” she explained. “It is the beginnings of love. Be brave, my dear Lizzy. Do not let those feelings frighten you, for they can lead to a very happy life for you as they have for me.”
[from Her Father’s Choice]
Published to YouTube by Kane Brown on May 14, 2017.
One evening, a while back now, as I was pushing a lawnmower around my backyard, the song in the video above came on the radio station I was listening too as I mowed, and I knew as I listened to the lyrics that this was the song for Mary’s story. She was going to need a hero who would maybe appear to be a player but who wouldn’t be. He would be someone she would have to learn to trust. I hadn’t yet conceptualized Mr. Gabreil Durward as he appears in the story, but that moment with the lawnmower and this song was the beginning of that process.
There is an element of trust that accompanies accepting love from someone and giving it in return. One individual places their trust in another that either the love will not be taken away and so it is safe to accept it, or they place their trust in the fact that the person to whom they are offering their love will not disrespect it, crush it, misuse it, or reject it. In the excerpt above the video, Elizabeth is struggling with accepting that Darcy cares for her and that she cares for him.
In the excerpt below the writing news section of this post, Mary Crawford is just at the beginning of possibly trusting a gentleman, Mr. Gabriel Durward, with her heart. In this portion of the story that I am sharing today, we see part of why Mary is so reluctant to trust freely, and we hear Mr. Durward tell her for a second time that he will not let her take on water, which is his way of saying he’ll never hurt her and his way of asking for her trust.
As you read, I hope you can see how the what if questions in the lyrics of today’s song apply to Mary and Gabe.
I only have a little bit of writing news this week.
I have made a good amount of progress on Mary’s story and am continuing to post two chapters per week on Patreon. I am hoping to reach the end of the story this week (fingers crossed), since, on Friday, I put the full evil plan, which will put Mary’s trust to the test and provide our dark moment before the happy ending, into action. 🙂
I finished writing my third short story. This one is called Frosted Windowpanes and is an original story with a Persuasion sort of plot to it.
After some planning and thinking, I have come to the conclusion that the story to follow Delighting Mrs. Bennet will be called Loving Lydia because it is through loving Lydia that Darcy’s objectives (which I cannot fully share at this time although one of them is to help Lydia improve) will be met. Thank you all for leaving your comments last week as those did help me work through this in my mind. 🙂
