A Season Lost Audiobook

Well dear readers (and listeners!), it's been down to the wire as to whether we'd be done with the A Season Lost audiobook, or the Kindle and paperback versions of A Generation's Secrets.

You can probably tell by the title and link which won the race!

Verona Westbrook is back for round three (and she's planning to be on board for AGS when it's ready!) and I am so grateful to her for being willing to stick with a long series.

Now I'm going to be devoting more of my focus to the final proofing and publishing of A Generation's Secrets. I'm hoping it's just a matter of weeks before its out.

But first I'm celebrating with an audiobook giveaway! I'm giving away five copies, and you can chose your pick of any book in the series, so feel free to enter even if you haven't got any of the audiobooks so far. Use the Rafflecopter below to enter, and do let me know if you run into any issues...this is the first time I've tried it.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I was languishing (a writing update)

If you are like a significant number of people I know, you have read this article, "There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing" and it resonated strongly with you.

It definitely did for me. Since around the beginning of the year, I've felt a sort of general malaise, a sort of "what's the purpose of anything, anyway" feeling, characterized by a lot of glazed-eyed doom-scrolling on my phone.

It took me a while to recognize it, and it took until I read that article to learn that there was a name for it, and I was not alone. But as someone who struggled with mental health when I was younger, it was a concerning feeling.

The pandemic hasn't always been like this, for me. When things began to shut down and I was home for longer periods of time, I was still in the thick of writing A Generation's Secrets, so while things were locking down, I was escaping away into Regency England to write. 

The trouble with AGS is it is LONG, now decidedly more than 300,000 words. While I have been getting closer to a publication-ready manuscript, it can take up to 2-3 weeks just to do a pass of the novel, reading through and making edits.

I have to confess, this is my very least favorite part of writing. I love the early part, the outlining, the initial draft, smoothing that draft into something better, something I'm excited about. Eventually, though, every book reaches a point where I am so. very. sick. and. tired. of. it. I. never. want. to. see. it. again.

I had told myself I was going to see it through and published before I started on my next project, one I've been excited about doing for what feels like years, now. But when I started to realise my mental health was slipping, I decided I needed to make a change.

What got me stabilised after my mental health issues in my 20s was learning about Flow, and understanding that the creative process of writing is the absolute very best Flow for me. And so I decided to make a compromise with myself, even though it meant A Generation's Secrets will be slower to get out as a published novel: I'm editing on weeknights, and writing on the weekends.

So far, that seems to be doing the trick. Knowing I get to spend my weekends in Flow gives me something to look forward to, and after going so long without writing I can almost feel the neurons buzzing while I work! As had been the plan, I'm taking a break from the series with this one, The Crimes of Elizabeth Darcy, and astonishingly I'm already at 20,000 words (alas, though, only page 14 of a 90-page outline, so this might be another long one).

I wanted to share because I think many people are at that point in the pandemic where they are languishing, too. And I wanted you all to know why AGS will be slow in publishing (and yes, we ARE still working on the audiobook for A Season Lost, as I know some folks have been wondering about that, too).

I always knew The Crimes of Elizabeth Darcy was going to be a fun one to write (I like to think of it as a guilty pleasure, both for readers and for the author), and I am having loads of fun with this one. I'm looking forward to sharing it in beta format, possibly sooner rather than later if I keep writing at this pace.

I hope you are all well, dear readers.

Historic Stories, Not Historic Values

This is something I've been thinking about for some time, and the events of the past days have made me want to revisit it. I have long avoided speaking about politics as an author, and have figured my work probably speaks for itself...after all, my last published work was a very long novel with a climate crisis as the central plot driver.

But racism isn't politics. Fighting against racism and for equality is a human rights issue, so lest anyone is in any doubt of where I stand, it's firmly in that fight.

 

Replica of Schooner Amistad

I've also been thinking about it because I write stories set 200 years in the past. At this time in Britain, the slave trade has been abolished but slavery is still legal. The British Empire has already been exploiting people in colonies around the world for wealth, and that exploitation will continue both for people of color and those of the lower classes in Britain who are forced to work in the factory conditions brought on by the Industrial Revolution. Women are the property of their husbands; paternalism is the way of the world.

How could I write stories set in such a world? I found out about the hashtag #vintagestylenotvintagevalues from posts by Zach Pinsent, who does amazing Georgian and Regency period tailoring. I think writers of JAFF and historical fiction need to embrace the same: Historic stories, not historic values.

I can't change the time period my characters live in. What I can do is show that these things are happening and as much as realistically possible, have my main characters react as we would want them to with modern values. I value historical accuracy in my work, but this is one area where I'm perfectly willing to depart.

I'd already been working on this in A Generation's Secrets. Like A Season Lost, it includes some heavy themes, among them slavery, racism, poverty, spousal and parental abuse. It also introduces a Black character; something else we're largely missing in the Regency historical world. Yes, the Sanditon miniseries had its flaws, but bringing Miss Lambe to our screens in Austen's world was sorely needed, and Sanditon deserves nothing but praise for that. I'm also very aware of the potential of getting this new character wrong, as a white female writer. I am committed to doing the work to avoid making her a stereotype, and to have the white characters around her act as allies to raise up her voice, rather than white saviors. Readers will see some of her in AGS, and I'm planning a bigger plotline for her in the fifth book, after I've had a chance to do more learning from sources I'm wishing I had discovered and followed earlier, like Not Your Momma's History.

I will admit, when I included the capture of the slave ship in A Season Lost, I was waiting in fear for a comment or review questioning what slavery was doing in a JAFF novel, or saying the reader didn't want to be reminded of it in a JAFF novel. That never came, and I was proud of the JAFF community. People can be afraid of speaking up for fear of reprisal, or afraid to include such scenes, but I honestly believe that people who read and love Jane Austen's close studies of humanity are far more likely to stand on the side of human rights. We shouldn't be so afraid, but even if we are, we should still speak up.

I know this is a difficult time, and readers often turn to fiction when they need a break from the real world. I have been doing the same. And I understand there is an element of escapism in Regency fiction like my works, that many readers like to put themselves in Elizabeth's ball slippers and dresses and enjoy the beautiful environs of those country houses I'm often providing you all pictures of. I once saw a good quote, that I think was from Sophie McShera, the actress from Downton Abbey, that we all like to pretend we're Lady Mary upstairs when we're watching the show, but the reality of it is most of us would have been Daisy in the kitchen. Not just Daisy, though...some would have been a paid servant in the kitchen, while others would have been working as slaves in the kitchen or the fields, and still others in the dangerous conditions of the industrial world. Even these situations were not remotely equal.

I think there's still room for escapism, but we need to escape without completely ignoring the greater context of the time period. We need to put ourselves in the slippers of characters who go to balls and fall in love, but also those who use their class and immense privilege for good. Doing good in that time period should be part of the fantasy. It's the most important part.

HMS Trincomalee tour

My latest Austen Authors post will be particularly apropos for those following the online beta for A Season Lost: we're continuing on my ship tours with HMS Trincomalee. This is a frigate a bit newer but of comparable size to HMS Caroline, and I've called out some things in the post so you can see visually elements from the story.