Category: Giveaways

Posts in which we or our guests offer a giveaway.

Send a partial, Jane

Updated on December 19, 2013 by Janet Mullany

One of the most agonizing experiences of a writer’s life is pitching to an editor or agent. In five minutes–or less–you must prove–coherently–what your book is about and how it’s the next best thing. Most writers find it difficult to talk about something that may have obsessed them for months or years, and Austen rarely talked about her writing to anyone except close family. Here’s my tribute to Jane Austen and the chance to win a prize: a set of postcards featuring the beautiful Jane Austen stamp designs from 2013 (a collector’s item!), and I’m throwing in a $10 Amazon Gift Certificate:

Editor: Hi Jane, take your time. What do you have for me?

Jane: It’s a Regency-set romance about two sisters whose family has fallen on hard times and they—

Editor: So they become courtesans to save the family? Are there dukes in it?

Jane: No. The younger sister falls in love with a rake but he has to leave her to fight a duel because–

Editor: Is that before or after they’ve had sex?

Jane: They don’t ever have sex, because he’s had sex with another girl and–

Editor: Oh, so she’s the heroine.

Jane: No, she’s the ward of Colonel Brandon, who’s in love with the youngest sister—

Editor: Oh great, readers love a damaged military hero.

Jane: He’s actually in quite good shape for his age, but—

Editor: How does the other sister play into it? It seems you have quite a few characters already.

Jane: She’s in love with a clergyman.

Editor: A clergyman! So he’s dying to get her into bed? That’s really sexy.

Jane: Not so you’d notice.

Editor: OK, send me a partial. What else do you have?

Jane: My next book is about five sisters.

Editor: A series?

Jane: No.

Editor: Then why are there five? Do you need them all?

Jane: Well, yes. Lizzie, the eldest, meets a gentleman, Darcy, at an assembly—

Editor: Would our readers know what that is? Is it a sex club?

Jane: It’s a dance. But–

Editor: Is he a duke?

Jane: No. But he has ten thousand a year.

Editor: Is that as much as a duke makes?

Jane: More or less. But the hero Darcy is too proud to dance with Lizzie and then his friend falls in love with her sister and Darcy opposes the match—

Editor: He’s jealous? Great, a m/m element. How graphic do you get?

Jane: They talk about money a lot.

Editor: OK, send me a partial. Anything else?

Jane: I have a book, Mansfield Park, which—

Editor: Is that the hero’s name?

Jane: No his name is Edmund. He’s the cousin of the heroine Fanny.

Editor: Her cousin? Sorry, we don’t publish that sort of book.

Jane: Oh dear. I have a romantic comedy that is also a gothic.

Editor: Are there dukes?

Jane: No.

Editor: Anything else?

Jane: My book Emma is about a woman who dominates her community.

Editor: BDSM?

Jane: No, Highbury.

Editor: Anything else?

Jane: My book Persuasion is about a second chance at love.

Editor: We see rather a lot of those. What’s your hook? Does your heroine or hero have agonizing emotional baggage, for instance?

Jane: She has trouble with her complexion, according to her father.

Editor: Is she a courtesan? I think the market is a little over-saturated but readers love them.

Jane: No, not really. The hero is a sailor.

Editor: Interesting. You could rewrite it as a contemporary and make him a Navy Seal.

Jane: I’ve just started a comedy about invalids.

Editor: I don’t think our readers would go for that. Unless they’re dukes who are soldiers who’ve been emotionally damaged by war. (Waving at someone across the room) Oh great, it’s lunchtime. Thanks, Jane.

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Posted in Giveaways, Jane Austen | 20 Replies

She Doesn’t Look A Day Over 230…

Updated on December 17, 2013 by Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee

Happy birthday week, Jane Austen!!! She would be 238, but I think she looks much, much younger–and so do her books. 🙂 All this week we’re going to be celebrating the big day with fun posts and great prizes. I have a set of Austen notebooks to give away, plus will throw in a copy of either my December Harlequin Historical release, Running From Scandal, or an ebook of my Regency Christmas novella A Partridge in a Pear Tree (or both!!)

December 16 is a big birthday in history. Not only was Austen born then, but so was Beethoven. And Katherine of Aragon. And my own mom! There were also two other English women authors, from around Austen’s time though not as well known as her.

Elizabeth Carter, poet, translator, and member of the Bluestocking Circle, was born Dec. 16, 1717. Like Jane, she was the daughter of a clergyman, from Deal. Her father encouraged her in her love of study, and she learned Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic and the sciences at a young age. She made a tidy little fortune on her translations, especially her 1756 Works of Epicetus, which earned her 1000 pounds on subscription. She was friends with Samuel Johnson, sometimes editing his periodical The Rambler, as well as sister bluestockings like Hannah More and Eliza Montagu. Emma Hamilton called her “[as] I imagine, the most learned female who ever lived”. But Francis, Lord Napier, wrote to Emma calling Carter “”a fine old Slut, though bearing not the least resemblance to a Woman. She had more the appearance of a fat Priest of the Church of Rome than an English woman.” (eek!) She died in 1806.

Mary Russell Mitford was also born December 16, 1787. Her life could almost have been the subject of a novel as well, since she was a put-upon, long-suffering heroine! Her father, a doctor, managed to blow through the fortune his parents left me, plus an astonishing 20,000 pounds Mary drew as a lottery prize when she was ten years old. They had to sell their comfortable properties and move from rental to rental, penniless, until Mary was old enough to make money on her writings. She worked in many mediums (drama, poetry, novels, translations), and was prolific and popular, but her earnings couldn’t keep up with her father’s spending.

Her most popular works were a series of stories called Our Village, published between 1824 and 1835. Lucky for her, her friends (among them the Brownings) secured a civil list pension for her in 1837 and her father died soon after, leaving her to retire to a comfortable cottage in Swallowfield. She died there in 1855.

Who are some of your favorite writers, besides Austen??? How would you celebrate her birthday this week??

Posted in Giveaways | 10 Replies

Happy Birthday, Jane Austen

Updated on December 14, 2013 by Diane Gaston

Today is Jane Austen’s 238th birthday and all this week Risky Regencies will be celebrating with special Jane Austen-themed blogs and giveaways. In fact, Myretta already started us off with a Jane Austen Gazetteer!

Today I’m giving away a set of Jane Austen notecards (shown right) to one lucky commenter, chosen at random. All you have to do is comment to this blog and answer this question: What birthday present would you give Jane Austen?

It can be something real, like a ream of writing paper and a lifetime supply of ink or something fanciful, like giving her her very own Darcy.

I tried to discover how Jane Austen might really have celebrated her birthday during her lifetime or even how her characters celebrated birthdays in her books. I could not find anything, except one blog by David W. Wilkin that basically said Austen never wrote about birthdays in her books or correspondence. Wilkin found only a few vague references to birthdays in Dickens.

I found references to music honoring the birthdays of royals, but not much else, so poor Jane probably did not have any birthday parties, like we celebrate birthdays in our families today. We need to really make it up to her. Let’s give her some really nice stuff.

And speaking of nice stuff, tomorrow is release day for A Marriage of Notoriety, book 2 in my Masquerade Club series. In fact, I’ll add a signed copy of A Marriage of Notoriety to the Jane Austen prize today. My little gift in honor of Jane’s birthday.

Don’t forget about the Harlequin Historical Authors Holiday Giveaway with daily prizes and a grand prize of a Kindle Fire HDX WiFi. Click HERE for the Advent calendar and HERE for how to enter my contest, which ends tomorrow night at midnight!

So…What would you give Jane Austen for her birthday?

Posted in Giveaways, Jane Austen | 45 Replies

Undressing Mr. Darcy! Karen Doornebos shows you how…

Updated on December 11, 2013 by Janet Mullany

Next week it’s all Austen all the time here at the Riskies as we celebrate Jane’s birthday (December 16) so we have a special guest to get you in the mood. We invited Karen Doornebos to talk about her release UNDRESSING MR. DARCY.
As an ice-breaker to each leg of my Blog Tour for UNDRESSING MR. DARCY, I’m taking you along for a ride to England, where I traveled during the summer of 2012 to do some research for the book.

Where am I on this stop? Today I’m providing you a smattering of some of my London shots that inspired, but didn’t make it directly into the book. Since I’m visiting Risky Regencies here, I thought you’d enjoy the pub sign for Ye Olde Cock Tavern, for obvious, middle-grade humorous reasons! I went into Fortnum & Mason, but my heroine’s friend Sherry, didn’t, and bemoaned the fact that my heroine wouldn’t let her! She certainly missed out.

He’s an old-fashioned, hardcover book reader who writes in quill pen and hails from England. She’s an American social media addict. Can he find his way to her heart without so much as a GPS?

You can read the first chapter here!

Buy now at Berkley Penguin – Indiebound – Amazon – B&N – Kobo – BAM – iTunes

I’d like to thank you, Janet, for having me back at Risky Regencies!

I learned from your bio that you used to work in advertising, and I’m wondering whether that inspired your heroine Vanessa Roberts. Do you identify with her?

Vanessa works in PR, that infinitely more glamorous cousin of advertising. PR girls get to go to all the galas, fundraisers and schmooze the media with wining and dining. But yes, working in the ad world did in part inspire Vanessa’s character. In the worlds of both advertising and PR, everything is very fleeting, deadlines are looming multiple times per day, and you’re always busy. Too busy. Work doesn’t stay in nice tidy boundaries, but overflows into nights and weekends. Since Vanessa is an * older * heroine at thirty-five, it made sense that her busy-ness would have distracted her from falling in love and settling down. I identify with Vanessa career-wise, but I happened to have gotten married at age twenty-six and had two kids by the time I was her age of thirty-five!

One thing I loved about the book was watching Vanessa become a Jane Austen fan. What was your Jane Austen journey?

Thank you, Janet, I’m so glad you enjoyed her coming around to the Jane side! Here was my journey: read about Mr. Darcy at age sixteen; smitten for life. Seriously, though, my journey to appreciating Austen was much more typical than Vanessa’s. P&P was assigned in high school, and I have to say, I really did fall for Darcy within Austen’s first few lines about him, but of course, she deliberately hooked us all. I became an English major, read more of Austen, but I have to say I didn’t come out of the Austen closet until the 1995 version of P&P and then the Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant version of Sense & Sensibility. I discovered Republic of Pemberley online and had already, by 1997, had the beginnings of my first book, DEFINITELY NOT MR. DARCY, written. By 2008 I had joined the Jane Austen Society of North America…and felt like I had found my tribe!

You include real places and real people, including events and speakers at JASNA (Jane Austen Society of North America) conferences. What’s your best JASNA experience?

I have to say my best JASNA experience happened to be my first in 2008, but they have all been great, really. The first conference I attended was in Chicago, my hometown, and I presented a larger than life academic poster called How Not to Write a Jane-Austen Inspired Novel that you can see on my website here. But that wasn’t even the best part. The best part happened to be joining in on the Regency promenade and then, without any lessons, getting pulled onto the ballroom dance floor. Janeites are all very friendly!

On your research trip last year did you learn anything about London that surprised you?

I learned that London is still one of my top three places in the world. I didn’t really know that until I went back. What surprised me was that I promised myself another return trip very soon because I didn’t get to do everything I wanted—restored Globe Theatre, anybody?! I also wanted to try and find Benedict Cumberbatch.

(Hmmm. She’s not telling us whether she did or not!) Who is your dreamteam cast for the movie version of the book?

I’ll be dating my * old * self here, but I always saw Julia Roberts as Vanessa…hence the name Roberts. She’s a little too old to be playing a thirty-five year old, though. I could see Henry Cavill as Julian, although he needs to be a little older! Hugh Grant would be wonderful if he were a little younger. Johnny Depp could still play Chase!!!

What do you think is the enduring appeal of Mr. Darcy and P&P?

Janet, I wrote an entire essay on that subject for the January 2012 issue of Jane Austen’s Regency World Magazine. It boiled down to the vast size of Mr. Darcy’s…library! Seriously, though, Darcy is an avid reader, with a large and growing library. As I say in UNDRESSING MR. DARCY, he’s the smart girl’s pin-up boy. How clever of Austen to snare her female readers with a man who values reading! Nothing better than the image of a gorgeous specimen of a man reading a book on the settee!

What are you working on next?

Laundry. Frantically getting ready for Christmas! Really, I have to say that once again I have too many ideas for my next project. I need to get serious about which one is worthy. Not sure yet. They’re duking it out in my head.

WIN!

Risky Regency readers, comment below for your chance to win one of TWO copies of UNDRESSING MR. DARCY. What do you think makes Darcy so enduring and…sexy?

To increase your chances of winning you can share this post on your Facebook page or Twitter via our nifty Rafflecopter widget and enhance your social media pleasure by following Risky Regencies, Karen, and Janet on Facebook or Twitter. Contest limited to US entrants only.

Mr. Darcy’s Stripping Off…

His other stocking. At each blog stop Mr. Darcy will strip off a piece of clothing. Keep track of each item in chronological order and at then end of the tour you can enter to win a GRAND PRIZE of the book, “DO NOT DISTURB I’m Undressing Mr. Darcy” door hangers for you and your friends, tea, and a bottle of wine (assuming I can legally ship it to your state). US entries only, please.

Karen Doornebos is the author of UNDRESSING MR. DARCY published by Berkley, Penguin and available here or at your favorite bookstore. Her first novel, DEFINITELY NOT MR. DARCY, has been published in three countries and was granted a starred review by Publisher’s Weekly. Karen lived and worked in London for a short time, but is now happy just being a lifelong member of the Jane Austen Society of North America and living in the Chicagoland area with her husband, two teenagers and various pets—including a bird. Speaking of birds, follow her on Twitter and Facebook! She hopes to see you there, on her website www.karendoornebos.com and her group blog Austen Authors. You can also check out the other stops on her Blog Tour.

WIN!

Risky Regency readers, comment below for your chance to win one of TWO copies of UNDRESSING MR. DARCY…

What do you think makes Darcy so enduring and…sexy?

To increase your chances of winning you can share this post on your Facebook page or Twitter via our nifty Rafflecopter widget below! You can also increase your odds by following Karen and Janet on Twitter or Facebook, or, if you’re not already, following Risky Regencies on Facebook. Contest limited to US entrants only.

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Posted in Giveaways, Guest, Interviews, Jane Austen, Risky Regencies | Tagged Karen Doornebos | 15 Replies

Winter Wonderland

Updated on December 9, 2013 by Diane Gaston

Last week I discoursed (i.e. complained) about dipping temperatures and the arrival of winter weather. Lest you think Virginia has gone into another Little Ice Age, we had temperatures near 70 F last week. This past Sunday, though, winter returned.

Like most of the Midwest and MidAtlantic, we had a winter storm. Sunday we had snow and freezing rain. Today it has turned to rain. Here’s the view of our deck. Icicles on the bird feeders!

Luckily we don’t have to leave the house. I did what all good Virginians do when winter weather is forecast. I went to the grocery store and stocked up on milk, toilet paper, cat food and assorted snacks, so we are free to hibernate–at least until the cat food runs out.

In the Regency, that is what people did in winter weather. They stayed at home and stayed as dry and warm as they could. Of course, not everyone could do that. Coaches did get caught in storms.

There are some wonderful blogs about Regency winters in Jane Austen’s World, one of my go-to sites for great information:
1. Snow Sports and Winter Transportation in the Regency Era
2. Keeping Warm in the Regency Part One and Part Two

If you are snowbound today (or even if you aren’t!) come to the Harlequin.com’s Holiday Open House. Today the Historical Authors are hosting a Holiday Ball. Come and see what refreshments are offered and what heroes are waiting to ask you to dance. There’s a chance to win prizes, too!

And don’t forget. The Harlequin Historical Authors Holiday Giveaway is still progressing. Access the Advent calendar here and see how to enter my part of the contest here.