Audiobook giveaway winners

The winners of the new A Constant Love audiobook are...

• Anji Dee
• Anji (Goodreads)
• Bryanne Colvin
• Laura Sommo
• Tajana Centis

Congratulations! Please email me at sophieturner1805 AT gmail DOT com so I can get you your audiobooks.

A Constant Love audiobook giveaway, and Mistress update

I know I have been scarce around here lately, and the reason for that is I've been heavily engaged on multiple projects, one of which is now live, and the other soon to be.

I never thought I would be posting this, but A Constant Love is now available as an audiobook! It is through Audible, and is already available on Amazon, and will be making its way to iTunes, as well.

I had always said that if I did an audiobook of it, I would want it read in a British accent, which ruled me out. In came Verona Westbrook, with her lovely narration, to make both the characters and the setting come to life:



And what about Mistress? It is finally nearing publication, too, and will be out in March. Watch this space for much, much more as it's finally published.

For now, though, let's give away some audiobooks! I've got five audiobooks of A Constant Love to give to you, dear readers. Comment or message me below, comment on Facebook, DM me on Twitter, or email me at sophieturner1805 AT gmail DOT com to enter.

Entries will close at midnight USA Eastern time on February 28.

An honor for A Constant Love, and a new way to follow me

So I am tremendously excited and honored to tell you all that A Constant Love has been named Just Jane 1813's "Favorite New JAFF Series 2015!" in the blog's Reviewer's Favorite awards for 2015. And you'll have some fun things to look forward to on that blog in 2016, including a Constant Love supplement from a unique POV. I'll link to it here when it's posted.


I also wanted to let readers know that I've now set up a Facebook page, where I'll be posting links to new blog entries and announcing publication of at least two and possibly three stories in 2016, beginning with A Change of Legacies, once I'm finally done editing it. So if Facebook is an easier place for you to follow me, you'll now have that option.

Un amour constant

I'm not sure how many French readers I have, or those who are bilingual, but for those of you who speak French, I have some amazing news. One of my readers has translated A Constant Love!

This will not be published to Amazon or B&N, but will instead sit alongside the original on Fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own.

Readers who follow me at AHA may have noticed that the original version of A Constant Love was recently posted for removal from that site. I hope didn't seem like I'd gone back on my plan to have the original version of that still available online; the removal from that site was specific to some of its policies, and I do intend to continue to maintain it on FF.net and AoOO, now alongside its French sibling.

Guest post at More Agreeably Engaged

I'm rounding out my little blog tour with a guest post on More Agreeably Engaged, where you can read about the Constant Love series, and my role models for series writing. And there's another ebook giveaway!

Guest post at Austenesque Reviews

I know I haven't been keeping up very well with the blog lately (I've been writing the third book, I promise!), but you can head over to Austenesque Reviews for a guest post of mine, on how history has shaped my stories.

A Constant Love now available for Nook

So at some point recently, I asked myself, "Why didn't I publish A Constant Love to Nook?" And I didn't really have a very good answer for that question. I have a Kindle myself, and there's quite a thriving market for JAFF on Amazon, so I was much more focused there, but now that that's taken care of, I decided to look in to publishing for Nook.

As it turns out, it's not really any more difficult than Kindle or paperback publishing, and that is to say that all the difficulty lies in all the editing before you start getting serious about a platform or platforms.

So...there is now a Nook version available as well! Now that I've committed to Nook I will be making all of the stories in the series available in this format, too.

Would Elizabeth and Georgiana have been presented at court?

This was a question I asked myself as I was doing the edits for A Constant Love, because some readers had expressed doubt as to whether this would have been the case for two women who were not of noble birth, and particularly Elizabeth, whose father owns a fairly small estate.

The impression I had got from Georgette Heyer's Regency World was yes, if they were expecting to move in society during a London season. Particularly Georgiana, given her grandfather was an earl, and, at least in ACL, she has a close relationship with the current earl and countess. She had an aunt, Lady Brandon, who was familiar with court and would have wished to present her, and Georgiana is also the only female in this generation of her family healthy enough to come out into society (Mr. Collins certainly thinks Anne de Bourgh would have been presented, were she not so sickly).

Elizabeth is the trickier one. She has no noble connections, so who is to present her? Her mother and Mrs. Gardiner? Neither of them is of gentle or noble origins. And yet it also seemed to me the sort of reaching and perhaps inappropriate sort of thing Mrs. Bennet would have done, to present her daughters at court, no doubt with some degree of snickering from the other ladies there. Perhaps more significantly, Sir William Lucas indicates a familiarity with St. James's, which to me indicates Charlotte Lucas would have been presented, and if Charlotte Lucas was presented, I expect Mrs. Bennet would have then felt she needed to present her own daughters.

I also wanted to keep the story moving at the same pace. If Georgiana was to be presented, and Elizabeth had not been presented, Mr. Darcy might have presented her as his new bride, but that would have made that scene longer and more complicated than I wished to have. I also liked that this scene was exclusively female, and as much as I love Mr. Darcy, his presence would have changed it. And I did think it was necessary that they had already been presented before attending the ball at Carlton House later in the story.

So I kept it in, both because I thought it was a reasonable possibility, and to keep the story flowing as I wanted it to. There are other times when I had to sacrifice a bit of accuracy to do so -- for example, the Thames isn't nearly as straight as the sailing scene makes it out to be, but attempting to add that into the mix, while explaining sailing, was going to needlessly complicate things. Hopefully these little sacrifices have been worthwhile!

About the yellow dress

For those of you reading the new Kindle or paperback copies of A Constant Love who've been with me since the beginning, you may have been puzzled by this particular change:

"Elizabeth had been very pleased with how all of the dresses in her wedding trousseau had turned out, but among them she had a few favourites, and she was pleased to see when she went upstairs to change that Sarah had set one of them out. It was a lovely pale yellow muslin that flattered her complexion, and Jane – whose patience made her easily the best embroiderer of all the Bennet ladies – had done the trim. Sarah could not have known this, but Elizabeth was pleased her sister would be able to see the results of her handiwork."

In the original version of the story, Elizabeth was wearing a blue silk dress. I happened to think blue suited the Elizabeth in my head (who wavers between looking mostly like Jennifer Ehle and sort of like Jennifer Ehle), and was at the time under the mistaken impression that because silk is more of a luxury fabric today, it would have been so at that time, while muslin, being made of cotton, was popular, but more for day dresses. Further research showed that to not actually be the case -- Indian muslin was the hot new thing of fashion, and a fine, high-quality muslin would have been highly appropriate for a dinner dress and perhaps even worn by some women for balls. Other grades of cotton fabric, such as calico, would have been worn by lower classes of women.

So that explains the fabric change. But what about the color of the dress? Well, I read of one of Jane Austen's letters, written from London to Cassandra, in which she writes:

"I went the day before (Friday) to Layton's, as I proposed, and got my mother's gown -- seven yards at 6s. 6d. I then walked into No. 10, which is all dirt and confusion, but in a very promising way, and after being present at the opening of a new account, to my great amusement, Henry and I went to the exhibition in Spring Gardens. It is not thought a good collection, but I was very well pleased, particularly (pray tell Fanny) with a small portrait of Mrs. Bingley, excessively like her.

"I went in hopes of seeing one of her sister, but there was no Mrs. Darcy. Perhaps, however, I may find her in the great exhibition, which we shall go to if we have time. I have no chance of her in the collection of Sir Joshua Reynolds's paintings, which is now showing in Pall Mall, and which we are also to visit.

"Mrs. Bingley's is exactly herself -- size, shaped face, features, and sweetness; there never was a greater likeness. She is dressed in a white gown, with green ornaments, which convinces me of what I had always supposed, that green was a favourite colour with her. I dare say Mrs. D. will be in yellow."

And who am I to argue with that? After all, Mrs. Darcy is not my character, as much as I enjoy borrowing her. My stories have always been about honoring Austen's work and the real history of the time to the best of my abilities. So I decided she needed to wear yellow prominently in the story, and I thought this first time acting as hostess for a large dinner, her first time appearing in such a role as Mrs. Darcy, was the best time for Elizabeth to wear yellow.

GoodReads giveaway

I am giving away two paperback copies of A Constant Love on GoodReads. Feel free to join me there and check out my research list, as well.

And many thanks if any of you were behind the lovely review and ratings there so far! I have been amazed by the reception of ACL since I've published it.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

A Constant Love

by Sophie Turner

Giveaway ends June 01, 2015.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to Win

It's here!

So after a much longer delay than I expected, I am very pleased to announce that A Constant Love has finally been published!

You can find it here on Amazon.com, and it is also available in other Amazon stores worldwide (edit 5/19: and also on Nook). The Kindle edition is $2.99, and I intend to continue to keep the Kindle editions for the whole series at a low price. The paperback is $11.99 (but free shipping if you have Prime); I had wanted to set it lower, but the cost of printing and shipping just would not allow it. My goal in this has never been to make a lot of money, but to offset some of my research budget (if you've been watching my Goodreads feed, you can see there are a lot of books involved in making this series as historically accurate as possible). And I'm not going to lie, I got quite a rush when I first saw that Amazon page. A strange, surreal rush.

If you're reading this, I want to thank you for being a part of this journey with me. I'm here today because of the support, feedback, and encouragement of readers who told me it was worth publishing. I write these stories -- all right, I suppose it's probably time to start calling them novels -- because I love to do it. I love the research, and the planning, and the times when the plot just clicks into place, and when I finally put down all of those words in a way that honors Jane Austen's work as much as I'm able to. And I love to publish (although it is by far the most nerve-wracking process out of all of this), because it means I get to hear from people who are reading my work.

So thank you. A Constant Love and A Change of Legacies are the first of a planned six stories in this series (a few weeks ago, it was only five, so who knows how many it will actually be before I hit the end!). I hope you'll all be with me for the whole ride.

The era is the characters

So as much as I try to read and enjoy modern P&P fanfiction, I just can't wholly get into it. For me, the era in which they lived, the technological and societal limitations, are very much what make these characters who they are. To illustrate this contrast between the Regency world and the modern world, my brain has lately been playing with what-ifs that set various scenes from my stories in the modern era, where technology and communication are no longer limitations. Following are three examples, comprised wholly of text messages that would have been sent between the characters. Granted, some of these topics might better have merited a phone call, but then I could hardly write them so easily...

In "A Constant Love," Darcy learns of the Corn Bill riots:

Fitzwilliam Darcy: Bbc1 says there is rioting in the West End. You ok?

Elizabeth Darcy: Yes, Captains Stanton and Ramsey have some sailors here for our defense. We are keeping a close watch but so far everything is OK.

Fitzwilliam Darcy: Ok, am going to take the 7 36 from Derby to St Pancras. See you soon.

Elizabeth Darcy: Be careful about crossing town with the riot on!!! Have no idea what things are like on the Underground but please be careful if you take a cab. I would send the car, but don't want to put John at risk driving in this.

Fitzwilliam Darcy: Understood. Was going to Uber, anyway. Will have driver swing way around if needed or maybe take the tube if that seems better. Love you. See you soon.

Elizabeth Darcy: Love you too. Be careful.

In "A Constant Love," the Fitzwilliams send word of Edward's fate:

Andrew Brandon: We have come across your sister, Lydia. She has not had any success at finding her husband, but we are going to keep her with us in our search, now.

Elizabeth Darcy: Oh, thank God. I hope you are successful in both of your attempts. 

Andrew Brandon: Edward is alive!!! Has lost left arm but is otherwise well. Your aunt is a little upset, but bearing up fairly well, considering. No word on Wickham. Since he is yet to text or call Lydia I fear the worst, but it may be a month at least before they finish DNA testing on the remains of the battle, and she knows anything definitively.

Elizabeth Darcy: Oh, I am so glad to hear about Edward!!! Will tell Fitzwilliam and Georgiana now! Send him my love! Hoping for the best for Wickham, but fear the worst as you do. Am glad Lydia is at least with you.

Andrew Brandon: Had a smooth flight. Will stay a night or two in London and then on to Pemberley for Georgiana's ball. Very much looking forward to seeing you all and spending some time amongst society after all we have seen. Your sister still with us.

Elizabeth Darcy: We shall be so glad to see you all! Will let Georgiana know that BOTH her guardians will be here to give her away at her wedding. She shall be so pleased. :-) Give aunt Ellen and Lydia my love.

In "A Change of Legacies," Matthew responds to news of Georgiana's fall:

Matthew Stanton: Got your vm, tried to call back but reception here is horrible. Any update on her condition?

Fitzwilliam Darcy:  Wish I had some better news to give you, but she is still unconscious, and doctor confirms baby has most certainly been lost. She is due to get ct scan in half hour or so. Will update you as soon as I know anything.

Matthew Stanton: Pls do. Still 1 day out of copenhagen but have booked easyjet flight to manchester for tomorrow afternoon. Due to get in at 3 10, will grab cab to hospital.

Fitzwilliam Darcy: Ct confirms moderate concussion, no skull fracture, so at least she shall wake in due time. Dont worry about cab, will have car waiting for you.

Matthew Stanton: Thank God. Pls keep me updated if any changes. Thx for car, appreciate not having to waste a moment before seeing her.

Fitzwilliam Darcy: None so far. Elizabeth in labour. Fortunately things moving slowly, so should be time for her doula to drive here from Derby.

Fitzwilliam Darcy: Elizabeth has had her baby, James, and is well. No change in Georgiana's condition, she is still stable.

Matthew Stanton: Congratulations. Due to pick up harbour pilot soon. Wish I could be there now.

Fitzwilliam Darcy: Elizabeth still has not passed placenta. They are looking at options - may have to do procedure. But seems might be second child that did not show up on ultrasound. G still stable.

Fitzwilliam Darcy: Georgiana is awake!!! Fully cognizant, although quite aggrieved over the baby. She will be very glad to have you here. Second baby confirmed for Elizabeth, she is resting. If takes too long they might induce.

Matthew Stanton: Oh, thank God, tell her I will be there as soon as I can, and I love her.

So...

I know people were getting antsy in ACL2 over Captain Stanton's having been gone so long. I'll admit, I was a little antsy, too. but the truth is, that was reality. Think about the logistics of his sending a letter home from the Baltic. He was sent there specifically with despatches -- he was assigned to handle communication, in other words. In order for Matthew to get word back to Georgiana before his ship touches English soil, he must meet up either with another navy ship or a merchant ship which is bound for England, and given he is there during winter, there would not be a lot of ships risking that journey. To me, it's pretty miraculous that any mail managed to pass to and from naval ships at all.

So while I missed Captain Stanton as much as anyone, the fact that he was gone for so long, without word, was part of the story. Georgiana and Matthew's separation is painful, but realistic, and what a large number of naval wives must have gone through, for while some lived on board ship with their husbands, a far larger number would have remained at home.

So to me, the way that these characters communicated, the manners and the propriety of their day, and even their lack of understanding of modern medicine, are a large part of what makes them who they are. I know there are a large number of people who enjoy writing and reading modern stories, and I respect that, but personally it's just not my cup of tea.

Substituting Scarlatti

I've been of a mood to post some music today, but it's not the right time for some of the pieces I want to share. Here's a beautiful piece by Scarlatti, though, that shows why he ended up being a very fine substitute for Schubert (at least for now) in "A Constant Love". I make no claims that Georgiana plays nearly so well as Vladimir Horowitz, because, I mean, he's Vladimir Horowitz, but the level of difficulty indicates the skill level she's willing to attempt.


It also sounds completely reinvented on the piano, compared to how it would have sounded when first played, on harpsichord.

The Regency waltz

One of the things I wanted to do in the published version of "A Constant Love" is fix the waltz.

When I was researching the story, I did a fair amount of reading on balls and assemblies, and how the waltz had become an accepted dance in town. What I hadn't really realized, though, is how very different it is from the modern-day or even Victorian waltz. When I finally came across a depiction of the Regency waltz, it was too late to work in without causing confusion, so I left it for the initially published version.

The Regency waltz was in four distinct parts -- the Marche, Pirouette, Sauteuse, and Jetté, and it was positively racy for the time. Like, I am in perpetual shock that they danced their cotillions and quadrilles and then did this. It would have only been slightly less shocking if the master of ceremonies had announced, "And now, ladies and gentlemen, you shall be entertained by the musical stylings of one Mr. Jay-Z." But these were strange times, that period of time when the war was ending and the Prince Regent was leading the way in debauchery, before the Victorian era ushered in a whopping dose of prudishness, and so it seems this version of the dance could only live in that late Regency era.

This site describes it best, but what also fascinates me about the Regency version of the waltz is that it seems to be lost to time. We have descriptions of it, but in all the Regency dances and movies out there, no one has attempted this actual dance. I think it would take a certain amount of historical study just to figure out how it might have been done. There are waltzes with other dances or modern interpretations of the waltz done to them, but not this version of it. The closest thing I could find was one couple at one dance doing possibly the Pirouette during portions of it (make like Lydia Bennet and look for the gent in the red coat):



Austen never includes it in her work, so I think it unlikely we should see it in any movie adaptations, but even these are a often a little behind the times (as much as I love them). The highly popular "Mr. Beveridge's Maggot" really would have been a dance for a previous generation, and even then gets slowed down. I suspect it would have left the real Lydia Bennets of the world exclaiming: "Lord! Play something we can DANCE to!"


So I've decided to include the Regency version of the waltz, even if it is a bit of a mystery to me. I did have to make some interesting decisions regarding the waltz, though. Typically a lady would dance one set of two dances each with a gentleman, and if she danced two sets with him, that was a sign of some amount of attachment. Three sets wasn't done.

Yet ACL has multiple instances of ladies dancing a third time with a gentleman, with what is basically the fifth dance being a waltz. Everything I've read about it indicates it is special, and requires special approval from the lady's chaperone, and I can't see that approval being given unless the lady has danced at least one set with him already, or he is somehow otherwise known to their party. Particularly the racy Regency version of the dance; parents and guardians would not want a young lady dancing in this way with just anyone. So I decided on those grounds that it would be okay to have that additional third pairing, and that the waltz almost didn't "count," although it did in showing an even greater degree of supposed attachment.

Working cover

This is my working cover for ACL for Kindle. What do you think?

So very much editing

Welcome to my nascent blog! As I sometimes go away for very long periods of time to write, I wanted to create a place to post some updates on progress.

I am presently in that dull point of writing -- editing and publishing. I have my outline all ready to go for the third story in the "Constant Love" series, and really want to start writing, but am being responsible and working on my editing projects to stay on track.

Those are: editing and publishing the second story in the series, "A Change of Legacies," and... working on a Kindle and paperback edition of "A Constant Love"! I am both excited and terribly nervous about the latter, but so many people have encouraged me to publish it, and have said they've reread it, that I thought it a worthwhile endeavour to make it available in these more convenient formats.

But there's a lot of work to do. I made a number of errors in title and address that needed to be corrected, there were a few adjustments that I wanted to make to better foreshadow the later stories, and, sadly, I decided to remove Boccherini references from the story. Character copyright is a muddy area, and I did not want anything in the story to overlap too much with the character of Jack Aubrey, from Patrick O'Brian's novels and the movie (although anyone who has read the novels will know that the idea of Jack Aubrey serving as one of the romantic leads in a story called "A Constant Love" is completely laughable -- he and Captain Stanton are opposites in a number of particulars, although both successful fighting captains and players of stringed instruments). I had originally included Boccherini as an homage, but on the off chance that it would not be taken that way, I thought it best to remove.

This caused some frantic searching for replacement composers: Bach and Beethoven, for Captain Stanton (both have plenty of meaty cello parts), and Scarlatti replaces Schubert for Georgiana. The latter actually ended up being a pleasing change -- although I adore Schubert, he's really too early to be realistic (he'll certainly be making an appearance later in the series), and going with a much older composer created the possibility for a connection to Lady Anne Darcy. (Why would Lady Anne be a proficient harpsichord player, when Lady Catherine plays no instrument? I'm going to get to that eventually!) Critically, Scarlatti also had a Fandango -- although no Fandango to my mind replaces Boccherini's masterpiece, it was a suitable replacement so far as the plot for the story.

So, there are still more editing passes to go -- I want the published version of ACL to be really clean and error-free. But I am hoping to have it on an Amazon shelf near you by the end of the year!