2023: What a year!
And I wondered why I had no time!
The Ides of December (yes, I am writing on December 15) force a contemplation of my writing life since the beginning of the year. This Janus-like look is, admittedly a fortnight early, but my life in the next two weeks is going to be hectic. Better to look backward before I cannot.
Wait: that sounds like I am on Death’s door. On the contrary, every doctor I have seen has given me a clean bill! My wife Pam, though, is facing a revision of her knee replacement in a week, so I will be otherwise occupied. Hence, the review is now rather than later.
That said, I am rather proud of what I have accomplished in my Austenesque practice in 2023.
Publishing a new Pride and Prejudice/Persuasion crossover
Releasing a new Audible of the same
Releasing a Spanish translation (e-book) of the same
Remastering and Republishing my entire catalog after being released from my contracts (11 books)
Writing a short story for a Spanish holiday anthology
Writing ten blog posts for Always Austen
Writing a multitude of columns for Austenesque Thoughts
Learning that the P&P/P book is shortlisted for the Goethe Awards
Publishing a Holiday/Twelfth Night anthology
Normally I try to reserve Austenesque Thoughts for my musings on writing and things Austenesque. I cherish all your comments and thoughts. They help me become a better writer, I think.
This issue is a little different because I am sort of waving my own flag.
As such, I want to take a quick stroll down memory lane, looking at the year’s highlights—before I take a look at 2024.
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My most recent project is the release of the final remastered novel from my catalog—In Plain Sight. I am very happy with the final edit. The book is tighter and spotlights the love story, which begins as an unequal, no, forbidden love and blossoms into something transcending class. This is a Darcy and Elizabeth story with a difference.
The book is available worldwide at Amazon in Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, paperback, and Audible (with the great Amanda Berry performing).
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In a few hours, the 2023 Spanish and English Christmas story anthology edited by Cristy Huelsz will be released through Cristy’s blog. You may download a PDF there. Enjoy nine wonderful stories centered around the holiday season. The illustrations by @ladywithapug are not to be missed either! Please visit cristranslates.com/blog for your copy.
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Staying in the holiday mood, my Christmas/Twelfth Night anthology is available worldwide in Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and paperback. I discovered that my books were filled with holiday references…from Mary’s letter from her fiancé to the fabulous Madras House Twelfth Night ball. Of course, I also included A Thornhill Christmas, a look through the Bennet Wardrobe at life on the Derbyshire estates in the 1830s.
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Of my Fall 2023 releases, perhaps the most popular was the novella The Longbourn Quarantine. This was a classic Austenesque what-if. What if a small pox epidemic led Darcy, Bingley, Georgiana, and Caroline to flee town for Netherfield? What if a mob of frightened people had ransacked the estate, forcing the quartet to quarantine at Longbourn? How would all of the characters rub against one another? And so on. The book is available worldwide in Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, paperback, and Audible (with the remarkable Stevie Zimmerman performing).
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The entire year saw the editing and publication of my Pride and Prejudice/Persuasion crossover, The Sailor’s Rest. Two great Loves were tried by separation, battle, and deception. Set on the stage of Napoleon’s Hundred Days, relish the mystery, sea chase, and the satisfying finish as four yearning hearts—desperate to be reunited—draw closer together. Join Anne Elliot and Elizabeth Bennet as they search the tattered rooms of a waterfront inn for clues. Suffer with Darcy and Wentworth as their frigate engages in a deadly game of naval chess with the French. Finally, enter the gilded confines of London’s preeminent card room where the lovers’ revenge rides on one hand. Available worldwide in Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, paperback, and Audible (performed by the truly creative Benjamin Fife).
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The Bennet Wardrobe series (all eight volumes) has assumed its final form. Each book has gone under a microscope and emerged the way I imagined it. The journey through the Wardrobe’s Universe is complicated, but I feel that over the course of the eight volumes you will find, as the Guides told Lydia, Joy is in the Discovery. Available worldwide in Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, paperback, and Audible (again performed by the enchanting Amanda Berry).
Amazon USA series site:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CCN46XJF?ref_=dbs_p_pwh_rwt_anx_b_lnk&storeType=ebooks
Amazon UK series site:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0CCN46XJF?ref_=dbs_p_pwh_rwt_anx_a_lnk&storeType=ebooks
Amazon Australia series site:
https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B0CCN46XJF?ref_=dbs_p_pwh_rwt_anx_b_lnk&storeType=ebooks
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Our tour backward through the remastering world brings us to my Kitty Bennet/Colonel Fitzwilliam love story, Lessers and Betters. This book is made up of paired novellas that explore the same situation from two perspectives: that of the gentry and that of the servants. Available worldwide in Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, paperback, and Audible (performed by the talented Barbara Rich). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C7N6VGLY/ref=sr_1_52?crid=91O52TNP6F44&keywords=pride+and+prejudice+variations+colonel+fitzwilliam+kitty+bennet&qid=1686413685&sprefix=pride+and+prejudice+variations+colonel+fitzwilliam+kitty+bennet%2Caps%2C123&sr=8-52
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Whew! What a list, but I appreciate your patience. In recognition of that, please enjoy this early look at what I am working on right now…
This excerpt from Mrs. Bennet’s Daughters is © 2023 by Donald P. Jacobson. Reproduction is prohibited.
Mrs. Bennet’s Daughters is set before Charles Bingley leases Netherfield Park and thus before any encounters with Mr. Darcy, Caroline Bingley, George Wickham, and other canonical characters.
Prologue July 17, 1810
They thought she could not hear them: her little blackbirds clustered around the window seat. Their whispers were balm to her senses, at their rawest now that the hearse had rattled its mournful way down the drive and toward the chapel. The riverbed pebbles had been raked smooth this steamy morning. Mr. Hill had shooed away the grooms from their daily duty and took the tool himself. The chief servant painstakingly performed this final service before Thomas Bennet began his long journey to the high meadows.
Now, Longbourn’s ladies were alone in the front parlor. Mrs. Gardiner sagely had ushered the other women onto the veranda overlooking the rose beds. Their absence eliminated hospitality’s burden that would divert energies best employed navigating sorrow’s dark waters. In many ways, sadness was a dish shared only between intimates. Even then, each tasted the potage in her own way.
Jane, of course, took the tack that saw their bleak situation in the best light. “I do not doubt that once the men return from…from the funeral, they will have come up with a plan for our care and comfort. We are loved, and our family will take care of us.”
Lydia’s soft reply was nigh unto inaudible, but it brought tears to her mother’s eyes, reddened by three days of mourning. “Yes, Jane, but which family will that be? If I am sent away with Kitty to Aunt and Uncle Philips, how will I see you and Lizzy when you live in Gracechurch Street?
“And, what about poor Mary? She is always caught in between—neither fish nor fowl—where will she go?”
The rest of her thoughts were swept away in a hiccoughing cascade of fresh tears punctuated by words muffled into a sisterly shoulder. “I…miss…Papa. Why…did he…have…to…leave…us?”
Neither fish nor fowl, indeed! Who would have thought my fifteen-year-old listened to her father deeply enough to pick up one of his favorite catchphrases?
Lydia’s questioning lament began to chip away at Fanny Bennet’s decade-long defensive lines, her Linhas de Torres,[i] behind which she had hidden since her great disappointment in the year One. She had been unable to face any reduction in her children’s circumstances. Malicious gossip had it that she was frightened of her own poverty after years as queen of the manor. The entail and its faceless beneficiary had terrified her. Every evil she could imagine ate away at her spirit. To replace those fractured foundations, Fanny had built upon her dread and hid behind a haze of nervous prostration. She had had that luxury up to three mornings ago when a broken Mr. Hill knocked on her chamber door to whisper that Thomas had never awakened.
Now that she had met William Collins and suffered under his solicitous platitudes, oily and slick with salacious undertones, she knew they could never coexist beneath the manor’s slate roof. That he entertained the idea that a mother would willingly act as a procuress to guarantee her comfort, while one of her daughters ensured his, confirmed the worst. Their time at Longbourn would be brief after she delivered her coldest rejection.
The murmur from across the room broke through her reverie.
“Thankfully, we will be only as far apart as the King’s post,” ever-sensible Mary noted, “Lyddie, do not worry about me. If the Gardiners or Philipses can find a cupboard large enough for my bed and bookcase, I can find a way to be useful to them and myself.”
Lizzy chuckled, a rare sound in recent days. “I can just imagine you crawling out from beneath the stairs into Aunt Phillips’s front hall and scaring poor Mr. Benton out of a year’s growth.”
Mary genially retorted in a voice that had lost its preachiness after discovering that her favorite dour Scot was silent on real-world crises. “Now, Lizzy, I rise nearly as early as you, although I tend to remain above stairs while you tramp through the hills. Uncle Philips does not insist that Mr. Benton arrive at sunrise to light the office fire. It is not as if he is keeping the books at a counting house where poor wretches must pay weekly rent before they go to their employment!
“Mr. Benton has a fine future. I hear he is considering another clerkship in St. Albans with a solicitor who works with the new manufactories and other aspects of trade. Not that he disdains training under Uncle Philips, but he finds land law and wills a bit old-fashioned.”
Kitty jumped in. “You hear tell? And might I be so bold as to ask from whom do you hear? Hah, you are blushing. You are cherishing a tendre for Mr. Benton. Oh, how romantic: you will be the first of us to have her own home.”
Lizzy hissed, “Mary will not be settled in six months or even a year. We will be mourning for Papa, and even if Mr. Benton is her forever man, he is yet a clerk and, like militia officers, makes a pittance, certainly not enough to support our sister!”
The muted bickering went back and forth, creating a happy background for Fanny’s reflections.
How much time I wasted lamenting the future where Thomas had died, and we were thrown out of house and home. Of course, I was free to indulge myself because he was not dead, and we were secure at that moment.
Now he is gone, and I cannot have the luxury of worry. My girls are all alone, with nobody except me between them and the world. Time to dispose of the dithering woman who was neither wife nor mother and become the mama they will need.
Come one, come all, and see how fiercely this lioness will defend her cubs and prepare them to survive in this cruel world.
Gripped by a fierce resolve, Mrs. Bennet clapped her hands. Rising to her feet, the matron squared her shoulders and surveyed five pairs of widened eyes.
“Quickly now, girls: while the men are away at the chapel, you must pack one trunk with everything dearest to you. There is every chance that this will be all you can carry away once your cousin evicts us. I am preparing us against the storm that is sure to come when I have my interview with that man.
“Pack your sturdiest clothes and boots. We will have to anticipate a time of short commons. Be sensible. Ball gowns are an unnecessary extravagance because we will be in mourning for a year. You older girls should each pack one for yourselves and allow Kitty and Lydia, who are still growing, to select one that may be suitable next year.
“Lizzy: I forbid you to pack more than ten books. Jane: you must ignore Lizzy’s begging to pack a few extras in your case. Mary: I know that you have reams of copied extracts. I suggest you light the fire in your chamber and burn most of them. You might be able to secret some between your chemise and stays. Oh, pack whatever blank paper you can. You can share it with the rest of us.
“Kitty and Lydia: I have no directions for you except to repeat what I said to Jane. Of course, Lizzy will not ask you to pack her books but rather that you, Miss Lydia, must abandon your selfish ways and allow Kitty to pack her own things in her trunk. You already have taken enough of hers as it is.
“Be sure to gather all your jewelry and bring it to me. I defy anyone to rummage around my person trying to find treasure. Elizabeth: do not forget your Grandmother Bennet’s earbobs and Jane, the same for her silver and ebony ivory hair combs. Oh, collect any money you have. I am sure that your cousin has already rifled through Longbourn’s cash box. Until my dowery can be released, that may be all we have to live on.
“Once you are finished—take no more than thirty minutes; proper packing is less important than getting packed—I will have young James load your valises into the pony cart and run them to your aunt’s house. Hopefully, your uncles can take charge of the rest of our private things and move them out of the house within the next few days.
“For years, you heard me moaning about being thrown out of Longbourn. Sadly, that will come to pass, but the instrument of our pilgrimage will be the serpent and not the Good Lord.
“My brothers will protect what I brought into my marriage. I fear all we will be able to salvage will be what was listed in my settlement papers: the Gardiner silver and china, some family mementos, and my jewelry. Everything else will come under your cousin’s gimlet eye. I have managed to hide some of the gifts your father gave me over the years. Still, his lackadaisical attitude regarding record-keeping may well condemn everything else as property of the estate.”
She took in the pale faces peering back at her and understood that their carefree existence was over, yet their lives had only begun. They did not know what they did not know, so sheltered they had been. Now, it was up to her to bring her girls through this trial without harm.
“I am no longer a gentleman’s wife. I am the daughter of a solicitor by trade. I have spent more than twenty years above my sphere.
“But with feet in both worlds, I know how to survive.
“I promise each of you this: I will love you fiercely, defend you without quarter, and raise you to be the gentlewomen you were born to be.”
[i] Line of Torres Vedras, constructed in 1809-10 to deny the French Army Portugal’s capital Lisbon.
Great post! Love the book covers! You sure had a Lot of accomplishments this year!
Hi Don! Love the teaser from " Mrs. Bennet's Daughters " !! I can't wait to read it! Merry Christmas Charmaine ( aka Char)