FER96213 A Summer Shower, 1888 (oil on canvas) by Perugini, Charles Edward (1839-1918); 115.6×76.5 cm; Ferens Art Gallery, Hull Museums, UK; English, out of copyright. via Charles Edward Perugini, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
When I was scrolling through pictures on Wikimedia today, I came across this one and my mind immediately went to the scene below for Morning Mist — even if in that scene there are only two young ladies standing under a tree during a rain shower. 🙂
Morning Mist is one of my Nature’s Fury and Delights novelettes. This one, as you will see, is a variation on Sense and Sensibility. In this short, six-chapter variation, which tells how Marianne falls in love with the colonel, Marianne meets Colonel Brandon before she meets Mr. Willoughby, and she meets him in just the sort of setting to make her imagine him as a brave and noble knight. So, by the time she and her younger sister Margaret meet Mr. Willoughby, the colonel has already taken up a place of admiration in Marianne’s mind.
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.
Published to YouTube by ThePianoGuys on November 16, 2017.
I thought we should start this day before Christmas with a rousing, joyous song, and this arrangement of Ode to Joy and Joy to the World certainly fit that description! So click play and let your spirits be lifted as you read my writing news and enjoy a small excerpt from Tom’s story.
WRITING NEWS:
Frosted Windowpanes concludes this Thursday. I published this novelette along with two others last Thursday. (One is a Pride and Prejudice Variation and the second is a Sense and Sensibility Variation) This bundle of stories was also given out to my mailing list subscribers. If you wish to subscribe and get this collection of three novelettes as a gift, you can do that here:
Click the picture to be taken to the form to subscribe.
This mailing list offer is only good for another week. So if you’re a mailing list sort of person, sign up soon. If, however, you are not a mailing list sort of person and would prefer to purchase the book, you can do that here:
Here’s a little bonus info thing for the curious (like me 😉 ):
Wondering how long a novelette is? This handy chart can help. I got this one from Wikipedia. I use a slightly modified version of these numbers for classification purposes.I know that for one Romance Writers of America award (I think it is the RITA contest), they use 20,000 to 40,000 as the word count range for a novella. Therefore, since I write romance novellas, I use the RWA numbers for novellas, which means a novelette for me goes up to 19,999 words. The novelettes in my Nature's Fury and Delights book are between about 9,200 and 11,675 words. :)I think it is important to note that classifications can vary by genre. (The above chart is not a romance genre chart.) There is no one set guideline. I just thought you might like to know how I am classifying my stories. :)And one more thing I must include here before returning you to your regularly scheduled Music Monday post: Neither word count nor page count defines a good story -- story structure does that. ;) But that's a whole other discussion (and a topic I love discussing).
Ok, now back to my writing news:
Next Thursday, Loving Lydia will begin. I have written three Thursday posts of Loving Lydia so far, and hope to get another one written this week so that I am a month ahead of what is posting.
I have received the final edits for Delighting Mrs. Bennet back from my proofreader and will be starting on those this week. I hope to have the preorder set up for this book by next Monday — However, it is the holiday season so my plans may not go as scheduled. I’ll let you know next Monday. I still expect to have this book published on January 10, 2019.
My writing time was very limited this past week due to the book coming out on Thursday and Christmas preparations. However, I did manage to complete two chapters of Tom’s story. (I began one of those chapters last week, so really I only wrote one and two-thirds chapters. 🙂 ) I’m hoping to get at least that much written this week, but again, all story production plans are subject to change this week. [I will begin posting this on Patreon after the holidays are over.]
While working on Tom’s story this week, I discovered that dictation is a great way for me to do story brainstorming. There is something that happens when I talk out loud to myself that helps the ideas come together and start to connect better than any other method I have used previously. It was kind of exciting to see. I had noticed that using dictation when brainstorming for Lydia’s story had seemed to help, but I wasn’t sure if it was a fluke or not. It appears it is not. I think my brain works best this way. (And figuring out how my brain works best is exciting stuff to me.)
