Jane Odiwe Jane Austen Sequels

I'd like to wish you all a Happy Easter - I'm having a bit of a break from blogging to spend time with my family - I hope you all have a lovely holiday. This is quite a long post but one thing seemed to lead to another! I'm very busy writing another book at the moment and drawing on lots of research which is always lots of fun. A lot of the action takes place in Bath so I'm hoping to spend some time there over the holiday period. This week, one of the lovely things that happened was 'meeting' Jennifer Duke and discovering her blog. She was born in England and even attended the the Abbey school as Jane Austen did. Her time there sparked an interest in all things Regency and a love of Jane Austen. Jennifer lives in Australia now and told me that although she loves Sydney, she still gets homesick for England. She wrote to ask me if I would do a question and answer for her blog, which I was thrilled to do. Here's the link: The Bennet Sisters Thank you very muc...

Here are some more photos from my trip to Bakewell. The first shows a view of the church and the second shows some of the shops in the town. This small market town was known as Badequelle in the time of the Domesday survey, which is a reference to the mineral springs and an ancient bath in the vicinity. The name was later corrupted to Baquelle before it became Bakewell, the name that we recognise today. In the parish churchyard of All Saints there is the remains of an old Saxon cross, which has an interesting legend attached to it. In 1501 Arthur, Prince of Wales, son of King Henry VII was visiting Sir Henry Vernon at Haddon Hall. Beneath the cross he saw a woman in white who predicted an early marriage and early death for him. When the Prince returned to Haddon he heard that his Spanish bride-to-be was in England and that he was to be married immediately. Four months later he became ill and breathed his dying words: ‘O, the vision of the cross at Haddon!’ I love this extract from Prid...

I've started a new book - well, I've written a synopsis and a couple of chapters and am feeling really excited at the prospect of immersing myself in the world of another Jane Austen sequel. It does feel like escaping to another existence, albeit a fantasy one, and I must admit, I did have more than a little chuckle at the first episode of 'Lost in Austen', because I could identify so well with with the heroine, (even if we know deep inside that we all much prefer the time we live in). Of course nothing can equal Jane Austen's writing, but we sequel writers are compelled to carry on with the lives of her characters, inventing new stories, even if we know they are not exactly what she might have chosen to write about herself. Can we have too much Pride and Prejudice? I don't think so, or for that matter, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey or Persuasion. On my northern tour with my sister, (well, it was just a long weekend really,) we st...