Author: Leenie Brown

Leenie Brown fell in love with Jane Austen's works when she first read Sense and Sensibility followed immediately by Pride and Prejudice in her early teens. As the second of five daughters and an avid reader, she has always loved to see where her imagination takes her and to play with and write about the characters she meets along the way. In 2013, these two loves collided when she stumbled upon the world of Jane Austen Fan Fiction. A year later, in 2014, she began writing her own Austen-inspired stories and began publishing them in 2015. Leenie lives in Nova Scotia, Canada with her two teenage boys and her very own Mr. Brown (a wonderful mix of all the best of Darcy, Bingley and Edmund with healthy dose of the teasing Mr. Tillney and just a dash of the scolding Mr. Knightley).

Music Monday: Song from a Secret Garden, Hauser

Happy second Monday of 2018! How was your first week? Mine was “interesting.” 🙂 My son and I resumed homeschool classes — sort of.  A winter storm altered our plans. The wind howled and rain (not snow for us) pelted the house. Then the rain stopped and the wind calmed, only to pick back up as the storm wrapped around, and the backside of it passed through. We were very fortunate. We sustained no damage and only lost power for a few hours.  So, I am not complaining. I’m just saying it created a week I wasn’t expecting.

Hauser. “HAUSER – Song from a Secret Garden.” YouTube, YouTube, 24 Nov. 2017, youtu.be/qZSJvyBag8A.

While the wind blew and the candles flickered on Thursday, I found it difficult to focus to write until I pulled out my mp3 player and turned on some music. Music plays such an important roll in my writing process. 🙂 The above song is not one I was listening to on Thursday but is one that I recently added to my Music to Write By playlist on YouTube which I have been using during my writing sessions this week (on days when there is power).

In writing news…

I have gotten One Winter’s Eve back from my first reader, made the necessary corrections, and sent it on to my second reader. I expect to have it back sometime this week so I can start final edits and get a preorder set up for January 15.  Release day is scheduled for January 25, 2018.

I have posted three chapters of Enticing Miss Darcy on Patreon and am halfway through writing chapter 4 (excerpted below). I plan to have that chapter completed and posted on Patreon by tomorrow evening.  I had hoped to get a full chapter written on Friday, but I ended up spending a good bit of time doing some research for the story.  The tentative release day for this book is March 6, 2018. (I did some planning this past week. 🙂 )

As part of my plan, I have switched up my writing schedule just slightly to fit in writing time for Confounding Caroline.  I am now doing Work In Progress writing M, T, W, and F, and giving Th over to my Thursday Three Hundred story writing.  I will say that, while the power was out on Thursday, I finally wrote the part of Confounding Caroline where we will first see Elizabeth.  Those two parts will post on the blog in the second half of February.

That, I believe, is all the writing news I have for you this week.  Now, to share a portion of what I wrote on Friday night.

AN EXCERPT FROM Enticing Miss Darcy:  Continue reading Music Monday: Song from a Secret Garden, Hauser


Music Monday: New Year’s Day, Pentatonix

Happy New Year! Is there any day of the year when introspection, gratitude, remembrance, and hopeful expectation collide quite as forcefully as January 1 when the blank page of a new year full of aspirations lies before us? Personally, I don’t think so.

SecondSoundLyrics. “PENTATONIX – NEW YEARS DAY (LYRICS).” YouTube, YouTube, 24 Oct. 2015, youtu.be/ZsJt7j96n0s.

For me, the end of one year and the beginning of another is a time to pause and look back at the year which has been before pushing forward with new plans and goals. I’ll limit this post to just looking back at my writing life, and still, this will likely be a longish post.

I tried some new things in 2017.

I wrote my first Touches of Austen novella, His Beautiful Bea. This was a personal success for me as I have always wanted to do Austenesque and original stories in addition to my Jane Austen Fan Fiction work.  From a business standpoint, the book was not a great success. It sold very few copies (only 72 copies) so far. However, it has 8 Amazon reviews and a perfect 5-star rating, so that’s pretty good.  And I know that new things take time to catch on. I’m not giving up on my Touches of Austen books. I have plans for another one to be published at some point this year.

I wrote my first JAFF non-Pride and Prejudice book this year. Henry: To Prove Himself Worthy is a Mansfield Park continuation and part of my Other Pens Collection. This story is the beginning of a short series of books that will use some Austen characters but will be rather original in their content with new characters and plots. I was quite pleased with this book. I never thought I could like Henry Crawford, but I changed my mind. I adore him in this book. He’s really turned himself around. However, he’s not all that popular with readers as he sold fewer copies than Bea’s story did (63 copies), and his story has only 7 Amazon reviews with a lower average rating score of 4.6. However, like the Touches of Austen stories, I am not giving up on this series either, and I do have plans to write the next book in the series this year.

I have also started a Patreon page and have a few supporters there. 🙂  I have just completed posting One Winter’s Eve there. One Winter’s Eve is currently with my first reader being checked for story element errors and is scheduled to be published in late January.

I have also begun a shop, Bonny Lass Creatives, at Society6 and have been slowly “filling the shelves.” I look forward to the creative outlet adding to my shop will provide.

Henry and Bea were not the only members in the Leenie B Books publishing class of 2017 🙂 It was a busy year!

I’ve already told you that my new venture books were not bestsellers — they kind of came in at the bottom of the sales list as in they were the two books that sold the least number of copies 🙂 But what about the books that sold the most this year? Which books did more readers decide to purchase? Well, I had a bit of fun with that and created this little video of the top ten bestsellers. You’ll notice that not all the bestsellers are members of the class of 2017, some are second-year books. 🙂

So that’s a little look back. Now, to look toward the year ahead.  I hope to publish 8 books this year (not counting any Thursday Three Hundred stories). Two of those will be the ones mentioned above (One Other Pens book, One Touches of Austen book) and then the others? Well, my imagination will lead me as I go. 🙂

One Winter’s Eve will be the first book published in 2018, and Enticing Miss Darcy will be the first book written in 2018. I hope that these and several other of my books will find their way to your reading list for the year. To help you create your reading list, I have written a fun little list of reading recommendations that I have always followed and will continue to follow called…

The Sassy Girl’s Definitive Guide to What to Read in 2018 and Every Year ThereAfter
[A little preface to the list: To be perfectly honest, this list was written in response to seeing one too many posts on Facebook one year such as “10 books you must read.” (Um, no I don’t have to read them.) OR “12 books that you won’t be able to put down because they’re that good.” (Um, are you gluing it to my hand?  How do you know I will like it beyond the first page?  Who are you to tell me what I will or won’t like — what I should or shouldn’t like?). Click-baity titles like this are a pet peeve of mine. 🙂 And occasionally, I put my thoughts (my admittedly sassy thoughts) about such things to paper. What follows is a result of one such time.]

  1. I recommend that you read a book if the content is of interest to you.
  2. I recommend that if you pick up a book, and you don’t like what you are reading, you put it down again. (Or you can do as I do and skip to the end just to make sure you know how it all resolves.)
  3. I recommend if you have a book on your real or virtual shelf that is particularly enjoyable to you that you reread it, at least once.
  4. I recommend that you challenge yourself to try something new — but — only if you want to and not because some “expert” tells you to. (Unless that expert is your teacher and your grade depends on it — then, I recommend you suck it up and do your best with it.)
  5. I recommend that when giving recommendations for books, you tell others why you liked a book — kind of like you were taught to do in book reports.  If you are going to be critical in your recommendation remember that “because it is stupid” is not really an evaluation.  It is just an opinion.
  6. I recommend that you realize that what someone else likes or dislikes and what you like or dislike will likely be different, and that’s ok.  They are not idiots if they don’t agree with you, nor are you an idiot for disagreeing with them. 🙂 (And name calling is mean and wrong.)
  7. This may be the most important recommendation of them all.  I recommend that you treat reading as the fun activity it is meant to be. Go on…enjoy it!

This list is by no means exhaustive. However, I am almost 100% certain that if you follow these recommendations, you should have a wonderful year of reading! 

Now, shall we begin our new year of blog posts and reading with the first scene of a new book? (It’s a longish scene.) If you answered yes, continue reading. If you answered no, well, don’t click that read more tag. 🙂

AN EXCERPT FROM Enticing Miss Darcy:  Continue reading Music Monday: New Year’s Day, Pentatonix