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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.

Published
Categorised as Austen

Cover story

BA - Mockup 1There’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

Jane Austen at HomeThis 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

Lexicon 2017

lexicon

noun, plural lexica [lek-si-kuh], lexicons.
  1. a wordbook or dictionary, especially of Greek, Latin, or Hebrew.
  2. the vocabulary of a particular language, field, social class, person,etc.
  3. inventory or record:
    unparalleled in the lexicon of human relations.
  4. Linguistics.
    • a) the total inventory of morphemes in a given language.
    • b) the inventory of base morphemes plus their combinations with derivational morphemes.
[dictionary.com]

Though I’m not technically a SpecFic writer I somehow ended up at a SpecFic convention over Queens Birthday weekend. I spent most of my time anti-socially reading Nights End, the final in Richard Parry’s Night’s Champion series*, as it was released on Friday (you can read my review here).

The venue for Lexicon could not have been more perfect. The Suncourt Hotel was very accommodating (they let people bring rats!), could house most of the attendees and the bar/restaurant was right next to the convention rooms…not that anyone decided to forgo a talk for a coffee or beer at all. Also Taupo is ridiculously beautiful. I’m glad I had a day before the convention to enjoy it.

I managed to sunbathe on the second day of winter and even get a little writing done.

Other attendees read a lot more widely than I do so I got super excited when books or authors I was familiar with were mentioned. During the Crossing Genres panel I realised I know none of the rules of genre. During the Book Covers talk I realised I probably draw more attention to myself when I don’t want attention (my pretty, pretty book cover was mentioned – more on this later). During Publicity for Authors I realised at some point I’m going to pay someone to do marketing for me rather than do it myself.

During the Out of the Background panel Cassie Hart talked about how stage of life can influence your writing. How motherhood and pregnant women kept turning up in her writing. I recently realised that, although I lack a genre, themes appear in my writing. A central female character dealing with loss, trying to be independent at a transition point in their life.

There was a lovely community feeling; speakers were also attendees and therefore very approachable. Highlights of the weekend include; the multi-coloured “con hair” of many participants (and my jealousy of said hair), a very bad microphone which speakers had to get intimate with to be heard, but most of all, above all things was Seanan McGuire.

I hadn’t heard of Guest of Honour Seanan McGuire before this and even if I never read anything she’s published I’m a fan. She can speak eloquently on almost any topic, she’s generous, kind, funny, intelligent, widely read and multi talented.

I drove home with the co-chairs of the convention asking them what they’ll do differently when they never do it again and dreaming about how much I’d love an Austen convention just like it.

*The second in the series, Nights Fall, was shortlisted for an SJV. Richard was also shortlisted for best new talent.

A little Austen in your everyday life

I am wondering whether I need a tag line:

A little Austen in your everyday life

because, whether intentionally or not, she keeps popping up in my writing. People tell me it vaguely resembles hers, I borrow characters, concepts, plot lines. Being so immersed in Austen it makes sense that she would appear; she’s been a huge influence in my life.

If you read Alison’s the Sensible One then read Beautiful Abomination you may be asking “where’s the Austen?” There is one big intentional Austen reference, though there may be others even I didn’t pick up on.

At the end of Mansfield Park when Edmund finally breaks it off with Mary Crawford he realizes he’d never been in love with her, who she really was, but with the person he’d wanted her to be. He tells Fanny he would rather have all the pain of parting from Mary than the pain of knowing that she didn’t exist, so he could still hold on to a small part of her. There is something so beautiful, so vulnerable in this.

Who among us hasn’t been misled, or misled themselves, on the character of a partner or friend?

 

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