A pained expression created a great furrow between Grace’s eyes. “Then, how is one ever to know if one is in love enough to marry?”
“That is an excellent question,” Roger replied, turning to Walter. “Do you have an explanation? You always had some reply when we pondered such impossible things in school.”
[from Her Secret Beau, Touches of Austen Book 3]
Published to YouTube by TheAlena31 on February 7, 2011.
Today marks the beginning of my husband’s vacation time, which means a reduced number of work hours for both him and me. There will be a full week of blog posts this week, but next week the blog will be rather bare with only a Monday post.
The song title for the video today, I think, goes well with both tomorrow’s chapter of Grace’s story and the excerpt from a previously published, currently being updated book at the end of this post because only time will tell how each of these situations is going to work out. (They will work out. That’s not the question really. It’s more how will they work out.)
Grace Love was not the sort of lady who sat on the side during dances. She was not the sort of lady who stayed at home when there was an outing to the park. She was not the sort of lady who avoided any sort of fun. Or, at least, she had not been such a lady until now. And all it had taken for Grace’s world to change had been one house party.
With eyes narrowed, she watched the progress of her sister’s hat as the carriage Felicity was perched in made its way down the street.
“Grace, dear, do not spill your tea on that chair.”
“Of course, Mama.” Grace pulled her attention back to the sitting room in the house they were renting for the season and away from her treacherous sister.
[from Her Secret Bea, Touches of Austen Book 3]
Provided to YouTube by CDBaby. Published on YouTube on July 5, 2015.
I had considered attempting to find songs with either the word secret or whisper in the title for each week that this story posts. However, I do not know how many weeks that will be, and I thought I might get bored of that. 😀 So, I might toss in a few secretively titled songs over the weeks but not every week. This week, I have selected a song that is on my Music to Write By playlist on Spotify that has a title which reflects what must happen as a story is being written. The imagination must dance! 🙂
And my imagination has been dancing. I am not sure how many conversations Mary and Wes have had in my mind this week. It all has to do with future possibilities, however, and not the portion of the story I am currently writing. They are even making it a bit of a challenge to focus on any other story but theirs. But then, we should expect Lord Westonbury to be a bit troublesome, shouldn’t we? LOL Continue reading Music Monday: Dance of the Imagination (Greg Maroney)
I’m sharing something a little different from my usual Monday Music selections. However, it is a song that I have been enjoying lately and it has a connection to my writing life at this moment in time.
Published to YouTube by Tenille Townes on March 18, 2019.
I have been doing a lot of thinking about Persuading Miss Mary this week because I’m struggling a bit with finding the answer to what I think is the major question of the story. How is Wes going to persuade Mary to love him when he represents something of which she very strongly disapproves? Continue reading Music Monday: White Horse, Tenille Townes
Happy Victoria Day! In honour of the day, I have found a music video with some scenes from one of my favourite movies — The Young Victoria.
I’m sure the Pride and Prejudice fans among us will recognize the actor who plays Prince Albert. 🙂 Who knew Wickham would rise so far! LOL 😉
I do not have a writing excerpt for you today, but I do have some writing news:
Here in Canada, the Victoria Day long weekend is the unofficial start to summer and the cottage season, and I know that Memorial Day is similar for those in the US. Spanning the time from Victoria Day to Memorial Day, Kobo is running a 40% off selected boxsets promotion, and one of my books is part of the “selected boxsets.” Just use the promo code 40MAY when purchasing A Dash of Darcy and Companions Cottage Collection 1 between now and May 28, 2018, to save 40% off the purchase price. The offer is good worldwide.
Click image to find this book on Kobo
This collection includes: Finally Mrs. Darcy, Waking to Mr. Darcy, A Very Mary Christmas, Discovering Mr. Darcy, and Not an Heiress.
On Thursday of this week…
Click image to find this book at your favourite store.
Confounding Caroline will be released. Those who have preordered will have the book delivered to them, and those who like to purchase after the release day can do just that.
Which brings me to the reason why there is no writing excerpt this week. Master of Longbourn has gone to my first editor, and hopefully by the end of the week will be with my second editor. I haven’t selected a definite release date yet, but I expect it will be about one month from today or just a few days after that. Therefore, since it is in editing, I do not have anything to share from it, and…
Delighting Mrs. Bennet, which I was working on last week and am continuing to work on this week, is our current Thursday story, and I don’t want to give anything away, so I do not have anything to share from it either.
I must say, I did not get a great deal of writing done on that story this week, but I did do some brainstorming about the plot and how things might play out for a couple of characters. You (and I) will have to wait to see what happens, but there is at least one interesting little idea that popped up while I was writing on Friday. It’s one of those “Oh! This could be fun!” ideas that is accompanied by a “I wonder how many readers will find it as fun as I do?” worry. I can’t say more than that right now, other than it is an unusual pairing idea that may or may not work as I am currently thinking. These characters do tend to change things as I settle into understanding them and figure out what they will and won’t do.
I hope you have a good week! I’m hoping that since I spent that time on doing some brainstorming this past week, this week will be a better word count week despite the few last things I need to get done before Confounding Caroline’s release day.
Welcome to the beginning of a new week full of possibilities. As I look forward to the week ahead, I like to start by taking inventory of where I am by looking back at what I accomplished last week. It’s a lot easier to know where you are going if you know where you are starting. 🙂
But first…
Some musical inspiration…
videosbyloo. “Period Dramas – At the Beginning (PDC).” YouTube, YouTube, 17 June 2011, youtu.be/jMLlkAMLV-Q.
And then…
Writing News:
Mr. Darcy’s Comfort released, successfully, last week on Thursday. 🙂 You can find out more about the book as well as a link that will provide all my vendor options at this link:
My writing time focused only on Master of Longbourn this week because I actually took two nights off from writing. I did not take them off completely. I still did some other book business work, but no story was written. Launching a book can be draining (so much excitement is tiring 🙂 ) and when I combined that with a lack of sleep (because my body does that sometimes), I ended up with a mushy, not terribly creative brain. And that is not good for writing. 🙂 So, after fighting the idea for a while (I’m no quitter, you see :D) I gave in and allowed the brain to do things other than create imaginary worlds. Hopefully, this week, I will get in all five writing sessions.
Because of the book release, I did not do my regular editing time. I gave that time to book release sorts of things such as creating a graphic, posting an excerpt (which I am using for marketing purposes), sending out an email to my mailing list, making sure I had the book added to my book page and a few other things like that. (I have a list. It’s rather long.)
But that was last week, and though I will need to keep doing some marketing work for the new book, this week during editing period, I plan to begin final edits on Confounding Caroline since I have them back from my editor. I should have a publication date firmed up by next Monday!
I have also begun a project of updating book covers and reorganizing some things. This project will not be completed any time soon, but it has begun. I started by updating the cover for Listen to Your Heart. The story inside has not changed, although I did update the book list in the backmatter and added an excerpt from And Then Love.
And lastly, I created a bundle of stories — a box set of Dash of Darcy and Companion Stories. This bundle contains Finally Mrs. Darcy, Waking to Mr. Darcy, A Very Mary Christmas, Discovering Mr. Darcy, and Not an Heiress.
I have only uploaded this bundle to Kobo so far since I wish to apply to have it included in a promotion in May, but this week, I will be attempting to add it to other vendors. In fact, between when I am writing this Saturday night and Monday when you are reading this, I might have gotten part of that done. There will be a print version eventually.
Phew! You know, now that I have listed all that out I can understand better why I was so tired by the end of the day on Thursday. When I’m just working on this and that steadily through a week, I don’t see how much I am actually doing. Little by little, consistent, steady effort adds up!
