Touches of Austen – Page 2

George James Drummond’s Room at Oxford, 1853

By George Pyne (1800 – 1884) Details on Google Art Project – UwEQxfU8YqFodA at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21907517

The scene below takes place in a sitting room that is for the private use of Charlotte and her sister Louisa. I thought this picture looked like it could be such a room. I also liked that this room is in Oxford since that is location around which His Sensible Heart takes place. The hero is still in school at Oxford. The heroine is at her father’s estate a few miles outside of Oxford.

This book is the sixth and final book (so far) in my Touches of Austen series. It’s an almost forced betrothal and marriage sort of story, a he falls first story, a she doesn’t like him (or so she says) story, and a story about how utterly sacrificial true love can be. There are nods to and mentions of Sense and Sensibility in this book, but it is a completely original story (as are all the stories in this series).

I’m including a full chapter of the story in this post to hopefully give you a good feel for who each of the main characters are.

Enjoy!

Story Setting Collage: Bath, England

Her Secret Beau is the first of two stories in my Touches of Austen series that are set in Bath. So, I thought it’d be fun to gather a bunch of images from Deposit Photos (since I’ve never been to Bath, sadly) and make a setting collage.

I like having a few images in my mind when I am writing or reading a story, and these do relate to different scenes in the story as there are a few in gardens, one at the hero’s town home, and of course, the Assembly Rooms. There’s also a scene where the Abbey is mentioned. So, these all seemed to fit the theme.

I’ve selected to share chapter 10 in which you will find the scene where the Abbey is mentioned. We are about halfway through the story by this chapter, and the scheme that Grace is perpetrating is full swing. Here are the basics just so you’re not confused when you read the excerpt below.

Grace Love is secretly courting Mr. Blakesley (Walter). She is pretending to love Mr. Norman (of whom her mother does not really approve, though he’s a lovely fellow). the Claytons (Graeme and Bea) and the Sheltons (Roger and Victoria) know all about Grace’s scheme and why she deems it necessary. The reason behind the subterfuge: Felicity Love, Grace’s sister. I think that’s probably enough details to set you up to read what follows.

Enjoy!

Cottage at Le Pouldu (Władysław Ślewiński)

Cottage at Le Pouldu, ca. 1892. Władysław Ślewiński, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Her Convenient Forever is on sale this month, so I thought that today, I’d share an image that goes along with an excerpt from that book.

If you’ve read the first three books of my Touches of Austen series, you will have met Felicity Love, and you probably really don’t like her. She’s not nice in those stories. I did a good job of making her unlikable if I do say so myself. And then, while writing book three, I knew that I was going to have to write a story for her. I didn’t really want to. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to make her likeable. But it simply had to be done.

Her Convenient Forever is that story.

It is set near the sea in Kent where Mr. And Mrs. Love have rented a cottage for the summer and where Felicity is coming to terms with the mess she has made of her life through selfish living. In fact, the opening chapter shows her in the very deepest kind of despair. This somewhat lengthy excerpt is from that first chapter.

Sweet Solitude (Edmund Blair Leighton)

Sweet Solitude. Edmund Leighton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

When I saw this painting I thought of the heroine in His Beautiful Bea. She likes quiet escapes and books. So, I chose an excerpt from that book to share today, but it’s not from her perspective. It’s from the hero’s point of view.

This is the hero:

For those who don’t know:

His Beautiful Bea is book 1 in my Touches of Austen series of original sweet Regency romances with deliberate nods to Jane’s novels. This book pairs long-time friends and neighbors as the romantic interests. The heroine lost her father in the war, and his friend, the hero’s father, has promised to care for the heroine’s family.

Those sound like they could be things that nod to possibly Sense and Sensibility or Emma, but in fact, when I wrote this story, the nods I had in mind were to Mansfield Park. After all, our quiet and bookish heroine is infatuated with the younger son of her neighbour’s two sons, but he doesn’t see her as anything other than a friend. Does that sound a bit like a Fanny/Edmund situation?

There are other nods as well, but as you can see from the details that I have given, this is not a retelling or a variation. This story, while inspired by various bits of Austen stories, is completely original — characters, setting, and plot.

The High Oxford (Myles Birket Foster)

*A busy day on The High, Oxford with figures and a pony and trap near Queen’s College*. Myles Birket Foster, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Don’t you just love the activity in the street in this painting? I can almost hear the sounds and smell the aromas. The painting gives us a lovely little glimpse of what the daily life in the town of Oxford might have been like years ago.

My book His Sensible Heart, which is book 6 in my Touches of Austen series, is set in the town of Oxford because our hero is attending school there. He’s not been a very diligent student before the book began, but things in his life have changed. His father is no longer pleased to just let him float along in life, doing as he pleases. In fact, his father has cast him aside — all because he chose the wrong lady to fall in love with.

That young lady (a very sensible young miss) and her father (a kindly gentleman) require Miles to prove himself. That will mean applying himself to his studies. His friend Tom, as we can see below, has offered to help Miles learn what needs to be learned to succeed in the challenge set before him.

I’m sharing this particular story excerpt today because I think, like the painting above, it gives a glimpse of who our hero is by showing us a piece of his life in action.