The Saturday Broadsheet, with all my writing life updates, is now available at the link at the bottom of this short post. In this issue of the Broadsheet you will find:
Info about what is posting (or not?) on my blog.
With Quill and Ink is on preorder! Release day is December 10. A sequel is under construction, and I have links to where you can download a review copy of With Quill and Ink if you are interested in reading and reviewing.
The books that I have on sale this month, plus a few from other sources.
A new month = a new music theme on Mondays. 🙂 For the month of April, all the music videos will be fan-created music homages to stories that have been put on film or were written for film. We’re starting with a montage of Austen characters. Therefore, I picked a line from a story of mine which pairs the same characters as Austen did in her work.
My choices were Darcy and Lizzy, Jane and Bingley, Lydia and Wickham, Marrianne and Colonel Brandon. I chose…
These four lines are from a novelette I wrote called Morning Mist which began with the questions: “What if Marianne met the colonel before she met Willoughby and what if the setting where they met played into Marianne’s love of the romantic?” The lines above are from that first meeting in a misty meadow one morning.
Morning Mist is currently only available in the anthology Thunder, Mist, and Frost. However, I have been contemplating breaking the anthology apart and making each title available separately, and I think this might happen later this year since it would give readers more options.
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The colonel had exceptional taste — likely in all things. How could he not if he could name a bird so well, like music, and recite poetry?
“About Colonel Brandon,” their mother prompted when Marianne did not continue speaking. “How did he come to be at our gate?”
Marianne lifted her eyes from the sheet of music on her lap. She would have to imagine how the colonel might sound singing this piece later when there were not so many inquisitive people around to interrupt her musings.
I thought we would start off the season of Christmas music with a bang! This song should do that quite well.
Heads up: This is not your sweet and soft Christmas carol, and if you are sensitive to flashes of light, you might want to listen and not watch. If you follow my Facebook page, I did share this video on there last week because I just really enjoy this fun take on this classic song.
PUBLISHED TO YOUTUBE BY FOR KING AND COUNTRY ON NOV 9, 2018.
I have very little writing news at this moment. I was able to get two more chapters of Kitty and Lorcan’s story written this week. I had hoped to get three done, but that just did not work out. 🙂
I did complete my final read-through of First Blooms and Second Chances. This project, while it is going to be published soon, was written with the intention of being a gift to my mailing list and Patreon subscribers. If you happen to fall into one of those groups, be watching for your copy of this book to show up in your inbox this week before it goes live on any publishing platform.
If you are not a Leenie B Book News mailing list subscriber and you’d like to be, there is a link at the bottom of this post where you can join. Until January 6, 2020, one of the thank you gifts for subscribing will be First Blooms and Second Chances. (Or it will be as soon as I get that set up to send out after I have emailed the current subscribers — so many little details.)
The only other thing I wished to mention in the writing news section today is that there is now a print version available of The Choices Series compilation, and it has been linked to the ebook sales page and has had the page count updated there to match for both books. (It used to list the book as 400 and some pages and the 5.5 in x 8.5 in paperback I submitted was over 600 pages — this is why it is not always safe to assume that the page count Amazon is showing you is correct or even close, in this case.)
Well, since I do not have anything new that I am writing and since my writing news was rather short, I think I will share the first chapter from “Morning Mist”, which is a Sense and Sensibility variation novelette and is part of last year’s mailing list Christmas gift, Thunder, Mist, and Frost (Nature’s Fury and Delights, book 1).
Anne looked at her aunt. “Did my mother ever love my father?”
Lady Sophia shook her head. “I do not know, my dear. I certainly never saw it. There was an admiration and concern, but nothing of the giving of one’s very soul to the other as I had with my husband.” She sighed. “That is where the issue lay — not with rank or fortune. Do you understand?”
Anne nodded.
“I do,” said Alex stepping around the hedge. “A man or woman who loves another completely would not allow harm to come to the one they love, no matter the source.”
Anne gasped, and her lips trembled as tears sprang to her eyes at the sight of him.
Lady Sophia stood and after a quick word of greeting and a whispered comment to Alex, left the two alone. Alex took the place on the bench which had just been vacated by Anne’s aunt.
Published to YouTube on June 29, 2018, by Home Free.
I have two “walking in” moments for you today to go with this song. The first one, above, comes nearly at the end of the story after it seems all hope of the hero and heroine ever getting together has been lost. The second, in the story excerpt at the end of this post, comes in the second chapter of the story when the hero first meets the heroine. There were many moments of meeting from previous stories that I could have shared. It was difficult to pick just one.
Now, before I get to sharing that second moment of meeting, I have some rather exciting story news for you.
First, I finished the first draft of my second short story. This one is an alternate first meeting between Marianne Dashwood and Colonel Brandon that has Marianne being rather smitten from the beginning. It is called Morning Mist, and I hope to have it ready to release with a couple of other stories in December. I just need to write a couple more before then. 😀
Second, Assessing Mr. Darcy will be on preorder before the day is out. It’s expected release date is October 25, 2018. The story will finish posting on Patreon this week, and I hope to start posting it on darcyandlizzy.com. I have just gotten my final edits back, and as soon as I have those taken care of, I will be sending out an email to my mailing list with a limited number of advance reader copies. Things were slowed down just a little as I was sick this past week and organizing a preorder and all those sorts of activities were not as easy as just sitting still and playing with my imaginary friends (aka writing). That’s why the short story is done already. 🙂 It also means I was able to make progress with Mary Crawford’s story. So, while some parts of being ill were not great (the watery eyes, runny nose, coughing, fever, and so on), others were rather pleasant as I am really enjoying getting into Mary’s story and telling Marianne’s story was a real treat.
I think that is all the news I have for you today, which means now it is time to meet the hero of Mary’s story and allow him to meet her in…
