Blog – Page 7 – Frances Duncan

Yoga by the Sea

I’ve never been fit but I have been flexible, at one point I was training to do the splits and I was pretty close. Then my back threw out, then it did it again, and again. The last four years I’ve done very little physical activity, terrified that my back would collapse again.

My chiropractor (David) suggested I try the Yoga Collective out in Paremata. They do things differently to other yoga studios; it’s about listening to your body, using props, taking things slow. It accessible for beginners or people with an injury. There’s even a free week to see if it suits you.

It doesn’t hurt that the location is beautiful. In the evenings it’s lit by (fake) candlelight. There’s herbal tea, a salt lamp and essential oils. All around beautiful.

I love yoga but I’m used to it hurting, to pushing myself. The most difficult part of this style is trying to calm your mind, and that’s something that I need. Even going to sleep I listen to something because I can’t take the quiet.

Initially I wanted to gain back some flexibility but now I’m hoping for some peace (as scary as that is).

Get your free week and check it out

Update (January 2019): my chiropractor is pleased with my progress, I only need to see him once every two months. My back only twinges if I’m doing something I know I shouldn’t.

Austen Times

The State of My Life is delayed. I got distracted with a side project and quite brutal with myself about the state of the manuscript. But the side project should be finished soon and I hope to publish by the end of the year.

This has been a busy year with a lot of Austen things going on. I spent two weeks in the UK, speaking at the Jane Austen Society of London, visiting museums, seeing Bath, Jane Austen’s house at Chawton…plus a Harry Potter Studio tour and Harry Potter and The Cursed Child. It was a breath of fresh air from my normal life.

People always ask if I’ve been to Chawton. Part of the reason for my trip was so I could feel “legitimate” running the Austen Society. So I stood in front of an audience in London with a green streak in my hair and managed not to swear. Then I went to Chawton and tried on a pelisse which makes me look like red riding hood. I am a consummate professional.

There have been two Austen meetings since then, and another coming up next month. There’s also been; an Austen play (each novel in 15 minutes!), an Austen afternoon tea (where I was the only one screaming the answers to questions), an Austen movie night with friends, taking a visiting speaking to Te Papa, and a free online Austen course (which I never completed). Upcoming is another night with Austen friends to prepare for the cards meeting next month and I still have a copy of What Kitty Did Next waiting for me to read and review.

My primary school principal, who I visited recently, asked if I had any hobbies or played any sports. His wife admonished him, “wasn’t she the kid you always found reading in the hallway?” Yeah, I haven’t changed that much.

I drove straight through my childhood town on my way to research New Plymouth for The State of My Life but I did stop at Cobb & Co with my road trip companions. We had a great time then the baby threw up on himself but still he managed to smile through the spew in his eye.

All I remember of New Plymouth, as a kid, was the mall. I somehow missed that it’s amazingly beautiful. When I was younger I wanted to get out, live somewhere else. But now I found myself drawn back, I like the pace of life.

My editor, and best friend, Cassie, drove me around telling about the city. Places have their own personalities and I want to capture that. She showed me a park, looking over the sea, I’m going to set a scene right here:

The State of My Life

“Here I am, the early hours of the morning in a strange apartment with a girl I barely know and I can’t sleep. When you factor in all the big unknowns; Sophie, Fred, New York, the state of my life, I suppose it’s not surprising that I can’t sleep.”

I’m pleased to announce my next project; The State of My Life. It’s currently in draft, I’m planning to publish in September.

You might have picked up that it’s set in America, at least part of it, but the main character is a kiwi. Austen influences this time are Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

Once I have a confirmed release date I’ll let you know.

A nomination, an interview and, a trip

A lot has been going on lately.

Beautiful Abomination got shortlisted for Best Novella in the Sir Julius Vogel awards.

cocktails with Austen

I’m preparing for my speech at the Jane Austen Society of New Zealand in Wellington this weekend while planning for my trip to the UK to give the same speech in London.

I did an interview for Ben Bulben Books, the publishers of Cocktails with Miss Austen. While I’m in London I’ll get to meet my publisher Caroline who is bringing copies of the book to sell at my talk.

I intend to visit Chawton and Bath as well as London, spend sometime with a cousin, see The Mousetrap (the longest running play on the West End) and Harry Potter and The Cursed Child.

Am I pretty enough to win the crown?

Remember how I published a book last year?

Yeah that one.

If you liked it (and I hope you did) you can now nominate it for a Sir Julius Vogel Award.

Alternately if you like the cover (it is so fucking pretty) you can nominate my cover artist Kate Strawbridge. (You can read my post about creating the cover.)

You can nominate here

Nomination details:

Title of Work or Name of Person: Beautiful Abomination

Author/Artist: Frances Duncan (or Kate Strawbridge)

Category: Best Novella (or best Artwork)

Publisher: Independent

Contact information for nominee: frances@francesduncanwrites.com

Other information: http://www.francesduncanwrites.com (or https://www.dwelldesignpress.com/)

Book nerd

Last week I spoke at a conference for English teachers, one book nerd to a classroom of others. Luckily I had a small audience, though ten people who assess speeches felt like plenty.

I talked about different ways that I enjoy literature:

movies (the obvious one)
web series (the more accessible and experimental video format)
fanfiction (reading or writing)
audio books (I find some books are even better in this format)

The purpose was to get them thinking about different ways their students could engage. I talked about the Austen society and confessed that, apart from Austen, I don’t read classics as I find them boring. I only read, watch, and talk about books that I love.

It seems revolutionary to me that teachers are putting their students at the centre of learning. They want to speak with students in a way they understand. One of the amazing things said again, and again, was that they wished they didn’t have to assess, that learning should not be based on preparing students for exams. I agree, learning enriches all parts of life and it should be about preparing for life long learning.

I’m a book nerd. I always will be. And I am so appreciative of all my teachers who helped instill my love of literature and learning.

Cocktails with Miss Austen

This beautiful thing is now out in the world and I helped make it happen. I contributed a short piece (no where near as witty as some of the others I’ve seen) about how Jane Austen influenced my life. She’s one of the reasons I write, without her I never would have created the Jane Austen Society of New Zealand, or met so many of my friends.

If you’re interested you can get your copy here.

Cover story

BA - Mockup 1 There’s an old maxim to not judge a book by its cover. But let’s be honest, we do.

My cover designer, Kate, talked about my latest cover at Lexicon. She used it to illustrate the journey from original cover (left – her design) to final cover (right – a collaborative effort).

The original is gorgeous but not really my style. I wanted something a little dark, a vampire that looked human, and an element to represent the earthquake.

You’ll notice the text remains, in fact the formatting for my name is the same as on my previous book giving a nice continuity (despite the very different genres).

Beautiful Abomination_ECover v2

The image on the left is one I took of the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament when I was in Christchurch for Word Christchurch last year. The cathedral appears in the book as a sanctuary so I wanted to include an image of its ruins.

The image on the right is one Kate found. It looks much more human than a similar image I found, especially when we removed the red eyes. I loved it so much I rewrote a couple of scenes to make reference to the pouty lips of the model/character.

This cover is perfect for my book and a great example of what you can create when you work together. (If you like the original, contact Kate, she intends to sell it as a pre-made.)

Jane Austen at Home

This book could be considered a companion piece to the BBC documentary Jane Austen: Behind Closed Doors.

“Young people reading Jane Austen for the first time think that the stories are about love and romance and finding a partner” (p.2) but Lucy argues that Jane “didn’t really believe that a man, on his own, could bring a happy ending,” (p.175) it’s the home he promises that’s important.

There is detail that the conservative Victorians tried to gloss over – that her family worked to keep a household running; they dug in the garden, they tended cows, they were not idle gentry. More attention is paid to Bath and Southampton, a period in her life that is often ignored perhaps because it’s not idyllic; it was an unsettled time. Cassandra was there when she died, but it’s never mentioned that her sister in law Mary was in attendance too.

Jane’s love life is explored in detail; it’s bigger than you’d think. There’s a doctor, a lawyer, a clergyman and her almost mythical romance at the seaside. Tom Lefroy based on his letters turned out to be a “pompous, Puritanical bore” (p.188). I always wondered if she was teasing about her relationship with him but everyone else takes it so seriously.

I found one mistake and I loved this book so much that I hate to say it. The text refers to Isabella Thorpe always wearing white in Northanger Abbey but this is incorrect, it’s Miss Tilney (p.91).

Jane comes across as a determined woman who recognised that “good fortune was not going to come knocking on her door, either in the form of a husband of a legacy. But she could go out looking for good fortune herself” (p.227). I recognise myself in Jane, like Lucy “I have found her to be simply a far, far better version of myself: clever, kind, funny but also angry at the restrictions of her life, someone tirelessly searching for ways to be free and creative” (p.4), someone “so private that even members of her own family did not know her” (p.26).

In the last poem Jane Austen wrote appears the line:

But behold me immortal!

It’s a loss that she didn’t live longer, that she didn’t write more. It’s been argued that people have children to achieve a form of immortality; for Jane her books are her children. She raised (wrote) them so well that 200 years later they still have an impact.

Also posted on the Jane Austen Society of NZ

Nights End

Nights End, the final in the Nights Champion trilogy, released the first day of Lexicon. I finished reading it the last day of Lexicon. This feels appropriate as the first two were shortlisted for the Sir Julius Vogel award for Best Novel.

The cast has grown over the series and it’s hard to keep track of everyone. At one point someone appeared and I had no idea who he was till the next scene. There’s someone for everyone; a tough female detective, a powerful young woman, a military woman…do you notice a theme here? There are some guys thrown in too; one of them is even a werewolf (don’t worry there’s a female werewolf too).

Coffee plays a big role in this book. It appears throughout to be argued about, savoured, and at one point it even appears without being ordered. I could bet a lot of coffee was consumed in the writing of this novel.

It’s about the same length as its predecessors but it feels less wordy, more concise. I found two typos (because I’m the sort of person that those things irritate) but I bet you won’t notice.

There are a lot of moving parts, it’s a complex story of a near apocalypse. It went into some interesting religious places which could have been explored more fully and the ending was almost too tidy. It unwittingly stumbles into other genres; there are two occurrences of instalove that trope of romance fiction.

Nights Favor, the first in the series, was Richard Parry’s first published work. As you’d expect he’s learnt a lot and it shows. I think it’s safe to say that Nights End will join the rest of the series on the nominee list.

(If you’d like you own copy you can get it here)

Also posted on specfic.nz