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: Wind, Brian Crain

When I write, I like to have instrumental music playing. This is not news to those who have been following my blog for any length of time. 🙂  I have several playlists of music that I can choose from when I sit down to write. Often, I pick randomly.  However, for this last story — the one I just finished the first draft of this week — I couldn’t pick a random piece of music. This story demanded I listen to Brian Crain.

29briancrain. “Brian Crain – Wind.” YouTube, YouTube, 26 July 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfu6k8IGOXU.

There were two albums my brain favoured for this story.  One was Piano and Light. The other, which contains the above song, was Piano Opus. A few minutes of closing my eyes and listening to either of these albums seemed just the thing to let my brain know it was time to write. Even when I sat down to write this blog post, I put on “Wind” and before the song was half over, my brain had calmed and was focused on writing. I think it is amazing how our bodies can learn to react to signals like that!

Now that you know why I am sharing this particular piece of music, let’s move on to the writing news for the week and then enjoy a story excerpt.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, August 15 from 3-5 pm EST, Zoe Burton, Rose Fairbanks, and I are hosting an Austen in August Garden Party on Facebook. There will be opportunities to share some favourites, test your knowledge of Jane Austen’s novels in a scavenger hunt, and (hopefully) pick up one of our books in a giveaway. Giveaways (7 of them) will be scattered throughout the time, and you will have to be present to claim a book. You can join the party here:

Austen in August Garden Party.

Henry: To Prove Himself Worthy is now available for pre-orders with a release day scheduled for August 29.  You can pre-order that book at this link:

Henry: to Prove Himself Worthy.  

(Oh, by the way, this is one of the books I will be giving away at the party tomorrow.)

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I have completed the first draft of Unravelling Mr. Darcy.  I have let it sit for a couple of days, and will begin working my way through the first round of edits this week.

While it was sitting, I started writing what will be the next Thursday’s Three Hundred story which is called Confounding Caroline and is excerpted below.

AN EXCERPT from Confounding Caroline:  Continue reading Music Monday: Wind, Brian Crain


Music Monday: Saint-Saëns ~ The Swan

I’m sharing two stumbled upon videos today — one is a music video and the other is a talk about music. I know you may not have time for both videos, so go ahead and listen to the music video as you read my writing news and the story excerpt. Then, when you have time (about 21 minutes of time) come back and listen to the second video. The speaker has some very good points that he presents in an entertaining fashion.

Brooklyn Duo. “Saint-Saëns: The Swan (Cello and Piano) – Brooklyn Duo.” YouTube, YouTube, 29 May 2015.
TEDtalksDirector. “The Transformative Power of Classical Music | Benjamin Zander.”YouTube, YouTube, 27 June 2008.

I feel like I have a lot of “disjointed” material to cover today, so I think I will use sections and headers instead of attempting to make to flow together cohesively. Up first…

Music

Let me tell you how I came upon the first video since that is one that has been added to my Music to Write By Playlist.  I went out with a friend this week. We did some shopping and had lunch.  One of the places we stopped at was a thrift store. I always peruse the CD rack when I go into thrift shops. I have found lots of good music that way.  This time was no exception. I came out with five CDs — four for when I am writing and one for my husband — and they only cost me $2.50 total! (I know, that’s a great bargain!)

One of those CDs is called “Provence: A Romantic Journey” which is comprised of fifteen French classical pieces of music.  The first song on that CD is the one in today’s music video.

(By the way for those who do listen to the second video, which was a YouTube suggestion to me this week, track 5 on my CD is the piano piece he plays in the video.)

Next…

Writing News

I had a good writing week this last week. I did not get as many words written as I wanted to. However, I did get a good number of words added to Dash of Darcy #4 (which has a title now…see below), and I managed to get half way through final edits for Henry: To Prove Himself Worthy.  I call that a good productive week!

August is scheduled to be a busy month of Tuesdays for me.  It started with the release of His Beautiful Bea and an Austen Authors post last Tuesday and will continue with a couple of book sales, a Facebook Austen in August Garden Party (August 15th from 3 PM ET to 5 PM ET), and a book release on August 22nd before finishing up with another Austen Authors post on August 29th.

The first book sale will be this Tuesday. It will be a TWO-DAY Kindle sale (or just about a two-day sale as it does take a bit of time before and after to get prices adjusted). Watch for details about this sale on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as well as in your inbox if you are on my mailing list.

And now…

A STORY EXCERPT FROM Unravelling Mr. Darcy:   Continue reading Music Monday: Saint-Saëns ~ The Swan