Jane Odiwe Jane Austen Sequels

Happy Valentine's Day! We're celebrating over at Austen Variations with some writing - excerpts from our books and a poem by Diana Birchall, plus there are links to authors' websites for their special contributions! Here's an excerpt from Project Darcy which follows on from my piece at Austen Variations - I hope you enjoy it. Jane Austen and her friend, Tom Lefroy, are falling in love at the Manydown Ball! My spirits were dancing in silent rapture just as much as my feet when Tom escorted me to the dance floor. I think something of the joy we felt on the occasion pervaded the whole room like the fragrance lingering on the air as the atmosphere lightened. There was laughter and movement and flurries of white muslin as dashing young men spun their partners round, satin slippers kicking up the chalk. As the musicians played faster the handclaps and boot stomping grew louder. Everywhere looked a blaze of colour and sparkle under glittering chandeli...

I'm thrilled with this review from Laura Gerold of Laura's Reviews!  I read Project Darcy right before Christmas and it was a perfect book to read at that time of year.    Author Jane Odiwe is also a wonderful artist and I loved her illustration of an old-fashioned house in winter in a small circle on the cover.  Looking at that picture whenever I picked up the book, I found it southing and put me in the mood for the novel.  I wish I could actually get more copies of her artwork.  I need to look into this! Project Darcy is a time travels with Jane Austen novel. Ellie Bentley joins an archaeological dig at the childhood home (Steventon rectory) of Jane Austen for the summer while in college.   This isn’t really how she wanted to spend the summer, but her good friend Jess has survived cancer and this dig is one of her dreams.  Together with their other friends, Martha, Cara, and Liberty, they travel ...

It's Jane Austen's birthday today and over at My Jane Austen Book Club , there are books and prizes to be won, as well as contributions from authors, like myself, which will be posted over the next 24 hours - don't miss it ! In celebration, Project Darcy and Searching for Captain Wentworth are both on offer on Kindle, as well as Mr Darcy's Secret - I hope you'll enjoy them if you get a chance to read them!  This week I went to see the Georgians Revealed exhibition at the British Library. It's well worth going to see and imaginatively put together. Sadly, I was unable to take photos to give you a glimpse of what's on offer, but a plethora of imagery was used to illustrate the themes of Homes and Gardens, Shopping and Fashion, Culture and Ideas, Leisure and Pleasure. Some of my favourites included Humphry Repton's Sketches and Hints in Landscape Gardening, with examples from his 'red books' where he showed before and after images of how a...