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Guest Post: Lou Aronica on Running a Small vs. Big Press

March 15, 2011 by

You’re in for a real treat today because Story Plant publisher Lou Aronica has worked in big publishing houses and small ones, so he’s got a unique perspective on the whole issue.

Story Plant publishes a number of fiction novels, including those reviewed here on the blog:  When You Went Away and The Journey Home by Michael Baron (click his name to find guest post from the author about his path to publication and his writing space.)

Without further ado, let’s turn over the stage to Lou:

I spent the first twenty years of my career at big New York publishing houses. I was Deputy Publisher at Bantam, then Publisher of Berkley, and finally Publisher of Avon. When I switched my focus to writing, I always had in the back of my mind that I would go back to publishing at some point. However, I didn’t imagine myself ever going back to a large corporate entity. The scale was too big, and I found that the operation of a company was much less interesting to me than the development of writers and publishing programs. This is a reality of any big organization: if you want to have any level of influence, you need to spend a huge percentage of your time simply keeping the organization running.

When I finally did get back into publishing, I decided to do it at a much smaller scale than anything I’d been involved with before. Literary manager Peter Miller and I started The Story Plant, an independent house dedicated to developing commercial novelists. There have been things I’ve missed about having a large publisher behind me – the financial resources, for example, or the collegiality of a big staff, or having an IT department to address my latest computer malfunction. However, a small imprint has allowed me to concentrate on the books. Sure, I’m spending time on the kind of clerical work I haven’t done since my entry-level days, but I’m not spending my time in budget meetings, forty-person planning sessions, or dealing with myriad personnel issues. I see this as a net gain. The majority of the time I spend on The Story Plant is time spent directly affecting the books on our list.

There’s no question that I felt at a competitive disadvantage for the first few years. The big houses were getting all of the display and we had no muscle. However, the considerable digital shifts in the business have made the playing field more level.  I now feel that, if we can provide high editorial quality and do an effective job of drawing attention to our books, we can compete very effectively. Perhaps the biggest advantage of being a small house is that we can stick longer with writers we believe in. Big houses need to walk away quickly from writers that fail to immediately achieve certain sales because those houses need to keep the machine humming. Small houses can seek new ways to introduce good writers to the world if the first approach doesn’t work. This is beginning to bear fruit for us.

I think it’s a good time to be a small publisher. Scale is beginning to matter less in this business, and that hews to the benefit of the little guys. More than it has been in a long time, our business is all about the books. As a small publisher, I can maintain my focus on our titles and worry much, much less about our operation.

Thanks, Lou, for sharing your unique perspective with my readers.  Please check out this interview with Lou.

About the Publisher:

Lou Aronica, Publisher, spent twenty years at publishing houses, serving as Deputy Publisher at Bantam before becoming Publisher at Berkley and Avon. During this time, he edited and published numerous New York Times bestsellers. A New York Times bestselling author himself, Aronica has written two pseudonymous novels and coauthored eight works of nonfiction.

Filed Under: Events, guest post, Independent and Small Press Month, Publishers/Publicists, Story Plant Tagged With:

Interview With Margaret C. Sullivan, Author of The Jane Austen Handbook

March 11, 2011 by

I recently read and reviewed The Jane Austen Handbook by Margaret C. Sullivan (check out my review) by Quirk Books and adored the set up, the illustrations, and the information within its pages about the Regency period in England and the instances it plays a pivotal role in Jane Austen’s novels.

Author and Jane Austen blogger, Margaret C. Sullivan kindly agreed to answer a few questions about her book and her writing.  I’m happy to have this interview as part of the Celebration of Indie & Small Presses this month, and I hope you enjoy it.

1.  When did you begin to fall in love with Jane Austen and her writing and why?

I didn’t read Jane Austen’s novels until I was in my late 20s, and even then it took me a few years to work my way through them. I read Emma and Pride and Prejudice a year or so apart and liked them well enough to keep going. The third of her novels I read was Persuasion and I fell in love, hard. I loved the language and the dark humor and the intensity of feeling, not to mention the best love letter in the history of Western literature. “You pierce my soul.” All these years later those four words still make my toes curl.

2.  When did this love of Austen transform itself into more than just a hobby and into a passion with its own blog and other books?

Not long after I started becoming really enthusiastic about Austen’s work, we had the mid-1990s rush of film adaptations—first Sense and Sensibility, then Persuasion, then Emma (it actually took me a couple of years to get around to watching the 1995 Pride and Prejudice—I didn’t have cable, and was really intimidated by the idea of renting six videotapes). Around the same time there was a big rush of Austen biographies, and it was easy to feed the beast. Things calmed down around 1999, and then in early 2004 it started up again—a new film version of P&P was being planned, the producers were trying to get financing for Becoming Jane—and there was very little information, so rumors were being passed around as fact. I thought the fandom needed a news site, like the Harry Potter fandom site The Leaky Cauldron, dedicated to news about Jane Austen in popular culture, and I started AustenBlog. There is still a lot of interest in Austen-related films, despite the generally disappointing nature of the recent batch of films (in my opinion, which is not widely shared).

3.  Explain your thoughts on the phenomenon or retellings, sequels, and mashups with zombies that now attach themselves to Jane Austen’s novels?

I’ve been writing Austen fan fiction, some of which I have published, for more than ten years, so obviously I’m quite open to the idea in general. However, some of the quality of these productions is not good. Some are very well-written, but I personally prefer those that adhere more to the originals. There are some books that have been very popular that go far afield of the originals, but they are not to my own taste unless they are doing it for satire and humor.

Speaking of far-out satire, I thought the idea of the first monster mashup, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, was really funny, and I still do—and funny on many levels, not just the whole crazy juxtaposition of Austen and zombies, but the idea of repressed 19th-century British gentry being “zombies” like the suburbanites in the Living Dead movies. I also liked the presentation of the book as an edited “classic” novel—that kind of humor is very much to my taste, and I think would have been to Jane Austen’s taste as well, as she was a gifted satirist and understood a subtle, straight-faced approach to humor.

I had no idea it was going to be such a big hit, and I had no idea that it would create such a really nasty backlash against Jane Austen. The hipsters who hated being forced to read her books in school now had an excuse to trash her, and sometimes in a manner that showed the critics distressingly ignorant of the actual novels (“they’re all bonnets and tea-drinking!”). I realize Austen’s books are not to everyone’s taste, but she took the novel and dragged it into its modern form from a morass of 18th-century melodrama and overwritten romance (in the literary sense, meaning not reflecting real life) and showed that it was okay and even interesting to write about everyday people and events. A lot of the “rules” we now follow for writing fiction can be found in the way Austen shaped her books differently from her predecessors—write what you know, concentrate on your hero’s story, and leave out stuff that doesn’t move the plot along, however amusing or interesting. You don’t have to like or even read her books, but I submit that all those writing fiction today owe her a debt. We can draw a line in the development of the novel from Richardson, Burney, Radcliffe, and Fielding through Jane Austen to Dickens, Eliot, James, right up to the present. I doubt that in 2011 we would be writing 12-volume epistolary romances if Austen hadn’t published, but I think literature would be poorer for the loss.

4.  Do you have a retelling, sequel, or film adaptation?  Why do you enjoy those particular ones over others?

I don’t know if I have one over-arching item that stands out, but certainly within the individual categories I have favorites.

My favorite retelling is Colonel Brandon’s Diary by Amanda Grange. Brandon has a really romantic, dramatic backstory, and it’s all right there in Sense and Sensibility if you look carefully! But Grange did a great job not making it overly melodramatic and unAustenish. When Eliza died in Brandon’s arms, I cried; being on the train at the time, it was kind of embarrassing. But if you ever thought Marianne Dashwood should not have married Brandon because he was a boring old guy in a flannel waistcoat, read his backstory, because it’s as romantic as she could ever have wished. I mean, he fights a duel, for crying out loud!

A sequel I read a long time ago and then re-read quite recently for my Jane Austen book group is Pemberley Shades by D.A. Bonavia-Hunt. It is a really charming sequel to P&P, about four years after the Darcys are married. Lizzy is witty and amusing, just as she ought, and it’s fun to watch Darcy not only take her teasing but actually enjoy it and tease her back—clearly he has learned! Bonavia-Hunt obviously read J.E. Austen-Leigh’s Memoir of his aunt, in which he passed on some tidbits Jane herself let drop about the lives of her characters after the novel ended, and some whimsical bits in her letters about Mrs. Darcy’s and Mrs. Bingley’s favorite colors.

My favorite film adaptation is the 1995 Persuasion (which is also my favorite Austen novel). While not a perfect adaptation, it is beautiful and romantic and feels very real, and the cast is just marvelous. It’s the only adaptation of Persuasion that doesn’t mess up Captain Wentworth’s gorgeous letter to Anne. Also it makes me want to drink tea, and tea is good for you. They are forever drinking tea in that movie.

Some other books and films I’ve enjoyed that are not directly in those categories are The Jane Austen Book Club (both book and film), Michael Thomas Ford’s book Jane Bites Back, which is a hilarious sort of spoof of the worst excesses of Janeitism that I think Jane herself would have loved, and Laurie Viera Rigler’s books Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict and Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict. The thing all these have in common is that they celebrate our love of Jane Austen without being twee or overly sentimental.

5.  Beyond reading Austen-related materials, what other books have you read recently and would recommend to others?

Unfortunately I haven’t had much time to read non-Austen-related stuff lately! I read a lot of classics, but in many cases they are books that Austen would have read, so that makes them kind of Austen-related. However, I do recommend them on their own: anything by Fanny Burney, The Mysteries of Udolpho by Anne Radcliffe, and the rest of the “horrid novels” named in Northanger Abbey.

I’m a big fan of Elizabeth Gaskell’s work and there’s a Gaskell Blog that is running a reading challenge for 2011. Austen fans should check it out—I think they would like Gaskell’s work.

My favorite modern book that I’ve read in the last year or so was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. What a charming, thoroughly delightful book, sweet and romantic and heartbreaking. I just loved it. It’s not a very recent book, but I recommend it highly!

6.  Please describe your ideal writing space versus your current writing space or if you currently have your ideal writing space, please describe it (you can also include a few photos of your favorite aspects of that room).

I think my ideal writing space is in my head more than a physical place. It’s hard for me to write when I am busy and stressed out—there is too much furniture up there (as Gandalf said of Barliman Butterbur in The Lord of the Rings, my mind is like a lumber-room: thing wanted always buried). So anywhere where I am left alone and have time and space to clear out my head and concentrate on my task works for me. That can be anything from a busy coffee shop to the balcony of my apartment on a warm spring day. Lately I’ve been getting a lot done by getting up very early (5 a.m.). If I went to bed early and am well-rested, that’s the best time of day for me to write.

7.  What projects are you working on now? Could you provide my readers with a few hints?

A few years ago, I wrote a novella for the Jane Austen Centre at Bath’s online magazine, a sequel to Northanger Abbey called There Must Be Murder. It was serialized over a year. I had some requests for hard copy publication, so recently I published it as a paperback, and it’s also available as a free ebook—I’m very enthusiastic about ebooks and have four ebook readers, plus my smartphone! I also have a short story in an anthology being published by Ballantine later this year called Jane Austen Made Me Do It, edited by my friend and fellow Jane Austen blogger Laurel Ann Nattress. My story is a tidbit of backstory from Persuasion, inspired by my love for Age of Sail novels such as the Hornblower series.

I’m also working on a couple of things off and on, some Austen-related and some not. I don’t like to talk too much about stuff in progress, though, in case it goes pear-shaped, as it so often does. I have lots of concepts but they don’t often develop into actual plots. 😉

Thanks for having me! This was fun.

Thank you, Margaret, for being part of the March Celebration of Indie & Small Presses.

About Quirk Books:

An independent publisher from Philadelphia, Pa., Quirk Books/Classics blends the work of classic literary masters with new scenes of horrific creatures and gruesome action. The publisher strives to mesh class literature with pop culture with the hope of creating literary cult-classics.

Also from a publisher letter: “Quirk Books isn’t just a creative publishing company, it’s also a place where dreams come true (especially the ones involving monkeys), where there are no stupid ideas, where words and pictures live together in ironic bliss, and where bills are paid, invoices are sent, and numbers are crunched. In Quirk, you’ll find a publisher of impractical reference and irreverent nonfiction (probably the first ever). You’ll find a publisher of humor books, of pop culture books, of gift books, of reference books, and of hybrid books that cross over from market to market and genre to genre.”

Filed Under: Events, Independent and Small Press Month, Interviews, Publishers/Publicists, Quirk Classics Tagged With: ,

Guest Post: Bancroft Press’ Harrison Demchick on Small Press

March 9, 2011 by

Bancroft Press has Harrison Demchick on the front lines, and his press is another local one, situated in Baltimore, Md.  We’re going to be taking another Literary Road Trip of sorts today, as Harrison talks about being a small press and what that entails in the day and age of publishing battles in the media and beyond.

Anything you read most anywhere about the present state of publishing will dwell on the industry’s ongoing war, or transformation, or whatever you want to call it. They’ll talk of the trend toward self-publishing and the inevitable impact on the long-standing dominance of the New York super-publishers. They’ll talk of the eBook, and the way it’s changed the price of big press hardcovers from standard to outrageous.

In this narrative, the war has two combatants: the major publishers and the self-publishers.

Everyone forgets about the rest of us.

Bancroft Press represents the element you don’t hear about—the forgotten combatant, if you will. Between the big press and the no press is the small press, comprised of groups operating more or less in the mold of traditional publishing, but with a narrowed list of titles and authors. And what does that mean?

Well, if you’re only going to publish four, maybe six books a year, they’d better be books you believe in. This should be less a novelty than it is, but with the big publishers more and more focused on commercial appeal above all other considerations, and the self-published authors pretty much a total crapshoot in terms of quality, there aren’t many places left simply publishing good books they like.

Or maybe there are. Maybe you’re just not hearing about them.

It’s certainly not easy to be a small press. The major publishers monopolize the bookstore shelves—hell, Borders’ stock is under their control outright. Barnes and Noble won’t stock your book if they don’t like the cover. Most newspapers won’t read your book if they can instead read a HarperCollins book they know has the budget behind it to be a hit. Most don’t care about the diamond in the rough.

It’s a funny thing, actually. The major publishers have a huge budget and focus on only what their marketing departments believe they can sell. We have hardly any budget and no marketing department, and publish what we believe in regardless of perceived popularity.

If eBooks and the rise of self-publishing are evening things out a little, then all the better from our point of view. But that doesn’t necessarily make the invisible publishers visible—certainly not with the dichotomy most seem to believe exists. It’s a tough road, but the small presses wouldn’t be in the game at all if they didn’t believe their books deserved to make it.

So that’s small presses in general—but what’s Bancroft Press?

Our slogan is “Books That Enlighten.” If that seems very broad, it is. We publish a huge variety of books, the only determination being belief in the material. Bancroft began in 1995, founded by its publisher, Bruce Bortz. We’ve published Alex Award winners (Jonathon Scott Fuqua’s The Reappearance of Sam Webber), Edgar finalists (Libby Sternberg’s Uncovering Sadie’s Secrets), Pulitzer nominees (Gus Russo’s Live by the Sword), and also really great, even critically acclaimed books that didn’t sell the way they could have, and should have (Fuqua’s In the Wake of the Boatman, Ron Cooper’s Hume’s Fork, Elizabeth Leinkes’s The Sinful Life of Lucy Burns).

Right now, we’re focused on three particular projects.

Purple Jesus, which we published in mid-October, is the one you may have heard of. Ron Cooper’s second novel, a terrific Southern Gothic masterpiece, was called “a literary achievement of the first magnitude” by The Washington Post.

A small press literary novel with a major newspaper review, by the way, is an incredibly rare thing, and comes as a result mainly of persistent obnoxiousness.

You’re less likely to have heard of The Naperville White House: How One Man’s Fantasy Changed Government’s Reality, an offbeat and hugely inventive novel we published at the end of 2010. Jerome Bartels’s book, written as a nonfiction account, tells of a terrorist crisis resolved not by the real government, but by a fantasy government—think live-action role-playing meets fantasy football—comprised of a librarian secretary of state, a gas station owner director of national security, a customer service representative chief of staff, an obsessive gamer secretary of defense, and an insurance adjustor president.

There’s nothing quite like it. That makes it very, very hard to sell. We knew that going in—in fact, one New York publisher, which otherwise loved it, rejected it for explicitly that reason—but we believe in this book and published it anyway. We’re still pushing it and hoping it catches on.

Finally, there’s our upcoming foray into young adult adventure, The Atomic Weight of Secrets or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black, the first book in Eden Unger Bowditch’s Young Inventors Guild trilogy. It’s the story of five genius children in 1903 who seek to break free from their bizarre, black-clad kidnappers to find their missing parents, using the mysterious creation they have all, unbeknownst to one another, been inventing.

We see it as the scientific answer to Harry Potter, and we have high hopes for its release on March 15.

So this is Bancroft Press: a small publisher putting its minimal but determined weight behind some truly amazing books. The narrative of the industry’s transformation would render us nonexistent, but we’re here, and publishing books every bit as good as the larger publishers—and sometimes quite a bit better.

It’s all about what we believe in. How could it be anything else?

Thanks, Harrison, for sharing your thoughts on the publishing wars and on Bancroft Press’ mission.  You also catch Harrison at the Maryland Writers Conference on Saturday, April 2, 2011, at the University of Baltimore’s Thumel Business Center.

Filed Under: Bancroft Press, Events, guest post, Independent and Small Press Month, Publishers/Publicists, The Literary Road Trip Tagged With:

The Other Life by Ellen Meister

March 3, 2011 by

We’re taking a break today from the Celebrate! Indie & Small Press Month for a pre-scheduled TLC Book Tour into another world.

The Other Life by Ellen Meister chronicles the life of Quinn Braverman, a young married woman with one son and a caring husband, Lewis.  The suicide of her artist mother haunts her on a daily basis, but to cope, she enters into another life through a portal in her basement.  Her life with Eugene is without children and marriage, but is less mundane and best of all her mother is still alive.  Meister mixes a modern story line about family, suicide, and relationships with science fiction elements as Quinn travels through portals into parallel lives.

“But the important part of the secret — the part that terrified and thrilled her — was that she knew it was possible to cross from one life to the other.  There were portals.”  (page 5 of ARC)

Quinn’s life with Lewis is turned upside down when they learn that their unborn daughter’s life will not be as perfect as they imagined.  Although she’s always known that she could jump between her parallel lives, she has promised herself that she would not do it.  A promise that she cannot keep, and a promise that is quickly broken time and time again as she struggles to deal with her high-risk pregnancy, her inability to seek comfort from her mother, and the overwhelming desire to simply escape.

“She closed her hand into a fist and continued pushing.  The fissure became a hole, and the harder she pressed, the deeper it became, until her hand had disappeared up to her elbow.  She stuck her other hand inside and pressed her palms together.  Quinn closed her eyes and sensed Eugene’s energy, feeling as if the scent of his aftershave were lingering around her nostrils.”  (page 47 of ARC)

Readers who have read Linda Gray Sexton’s memoir about the legacy of suicide Half in Love (click for my review), will notice Quinn has a similar love-hate relationship with her mother and the legacy of suicide.  Her mother, Nan, has a similar artistic and impassioned charisma that Linda’s mother, Anne Sexton, had.  It is this combination that draws in the reader and the main character into Nan’s world of painting and deconstruction of her family in visual form.  Passages pepper the book with insight into Nan’s approach to her family and her work as an artist, but this pull doesn’t stop there.

“Her mother’s pull was just too strong for Quinn to float away and feel as if she were experiencing the shopping trip as an outsider looking in.”  (page 95 of ARC)

Drawn to her mother and a life where her presence is reassuring, Quinn struggles even more with her present life, and her brother’s inherited bipolar disorder only exacerbate her need for stability, which she believes can only be found in another life.  Meister does an excellent job of creating a sympathetic, mess of a character in Quinn and successfully weaves in the use of portals to demonstrate her anxiety.

Quinn is a mother wrought with anxiety, loneliness, and a forceful need to care for everyone in her life.  She’s constantly running from one crisis to another with her sword blazing, and while readers can feel for her and want her world to be right again, she can be frustrating as she jumps through portals to escape the hard decisions in her other life.  Overall, Meister’s writing is engaging, suspenseful, and easy to follow even as readers travel with Quinn between her two lives.  Readers hope that she will find the peace she is looking for and the love that she deserves, while at the same time confronting her past demons and moving into the future as a more confident woman and mother.  The Other Life by Ellen Meister would make an excellent book club selection.

About the Author:

Ellen Meister lives on Long Island with her husband and three children.

You can find out more about Ellen at her website, and you can also follow her blog and on Twitter.

 

 

Please check out the rest of the stops on the tour.

 

 

 

This is my 8th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

Filed Under: ARC, fiction, New Authors Challenge, Penguin, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2011, reviews, tlc book tours Tagged With: ,

An Interview With Dan Cafaro, Publisher of Atticus Books in Maryland

March 1, 2011 by

Today we’re kicking off Savvy Verse & Wit’s First Annual Indie & Small Press Month Celebration with Dan Cafaro from Maryland’s very own Atticus Books.  He was gracious enough to answer a few questions about his business, books, and some more personal matters, like obsessions.

Rather than provide you with all the connection details at the end of the interview, please check out their Facebook page, the Independent Book Sellers That Rock Our World Page, and Book Blogger Central (you may even find a picture of Dan on one of these pages).

1.  As founding publisher of Atticus Books in Maryland, how long has it taken to make a name for the publishing house in the industry, and what frustrations have you overcome to make it such a local success?

We haven’t yet made a name for ourselves, but writers, damn good writers, continue to find us and that’s more than half the battle for a small press in its infancy. We began in earnest less than a year ago when we signed our first novelist (Alex Kudera) to a book contract. I had just hung our shingle in Kensington when Alex took a leap of faith in me (and I in him).  I was a solo act with no staff support in sight. He was a former adjunct from Philly with a bitterly funny academic satire to sell.  I had worked in print media for 20 years and I had just ended a publishing consulting contract with an aerospace society; trade publishing was a far cry from rocket science; it was a whole new animal and I was elated to be in position to give it a whirl.

When the entrepreneurial muse came calling, little did I know what she had in store.  After exploring every conceivable hybrid book business model known to man and industry insiders—complete with storefront, café, antiques, wine, and/or an espresso book machine (to print books on site and on demand), I elected to conserve my capital, minimize the overhead, mitigate the out-of-pocket risk, and focus my energies on the writing.  My goal became an all-consuming, wildly passionate ambition—to find the greatest writers out there who simply are not getting the attention they deserve. I wake up equally frustrated and intrinsically rewarded every day, knowing in my old-school bohemian bones that I’m driven by a desire that defies all monetary-minded rationale.  If I somehow can make a living at doing what I love by 1.) forming micro-literary villages of likeminded souls online, and 2.) helping innovate a long established (some say, struggling if not dying) profession, then I’ll be the happiest working man-child alive.

2.  What’s the breakdown of books you publish (i.e. how many poetry books, fiction, etc.)?  How many are written by local authors?

We currently have produced three titles of fiction, including two novels and one novella (The Absent Traveler & Other Stories).  In 2011, we have five titles of fiction planned for release, all novels, with other book proposals pending and in development.  We’re taking a serious look at publishing more collections of short stories (a terrific weakness of mine) as I truly admire those who can say more with less, and I believe that the short story form is due a cultural revival. Short stories often provide a taste of better things to come from developing writers, so it excites me to think that I’m supporting a fertile mind from the beginning of its artistic bell curve.  Not that all writers follow this path, but those who have mastered the short form sometimes go on to use those same characters and charming turn-of-phrase aptitude in longer, more fully layered works of magnificence.

Our writers, more than half of whom are college English professors, scatter the map, from Massachusetts, New York (3), and Maryland to South Carolina, Tennessee, and Oklahoma. Eric D. Goodman, whose debut novel, Tracks, comes out in the summer, resides in Baltimore. Tracks contains a thread of stories told by characters traveling on a train from Baltimore to Chicago. It’s richly laced with colorful descriptions and insights of the city of Baltimore. Eric is heavily involved in Baltimore’s literary scene and supports the arts regionally through his participation in DelMarVa events, readings on NPR-Baltimore, and his blog.  His dedication to the area and involvement with the Maryland Writers’ Association, the CityLit Project in Baltimore, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference in Rockville, Md., factored in my wanting him in our camp.

3.  From the list of authors, online contributors, editors, etc. listed on Atticus Books Website, it seems as though the working environment at the publishing house is very collaborative, almost like a large family.  Was this environment intentional, and how well does it work when deadlines arise?

In an effort to keep this answer short, let’s just say, we’re one happy, dysfunctional family—and the dysfunction comes from none other than the patriarch.  One rule, besides unceremoniously leaving the seat down in the bathroom for Libby and Lindsey (my part-time, guardian angels), is to not take ourselves (and myself) too seriously.  As a former daily news schlep, I work better under deadline, particularly when that deadline is self-imposed and I get to revise it.  Once you’ve survived the pressure of filing stories on time, within length constraints, and without typos under the watchful eye of a half-crazed editor breathing down your neck in a noisy newsroom, a mostly quiet and serene book publishing environment is a piece of cake (filled with buttercream and surprise).

4.  Atticus also has an aggressive environmental policy against using paper from endangered forests, using at least 30 percent recycled fiber, and more.  Some publishers have said adopting an aggressive stance will increase costs so much that making a profit is nearly impossible.  What prompted your decision to adopt the policy, how did you justify it, and has it been as costly as other publishers have indicated it would be?

To be honest, I’m not sure we currently print enough books to know how much impact this is having (or will inevitably have) on our bottom line.  Our books are printed on recycled paper; we’re living in environmentally conscious (and limited natural resource-sensitive, i.e., tree-hugging) times and that practice doesn’t seem to be too much to ask of any business or individual, no matter how cynical or mercenary.  Perhaps if I pinched nickels and was hyper vigilant about economies of scale, I might care to calculate the loss of margin, but that’s not how I operate.  In poetic step and verse with Oscar Wilde’s definition of a cynic, I’ve never set out to be a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.  That statement someday may spell my financial ruin, but for now, it’s part of how Atticus Books says grace and carries on.

5.  In these tough economic times, do you think small publishers can make their mark on literature and the book selling market?  How best can small presses accomplish their goals?

If I didn’t think small presses and indie booksellers could make a mark on literature—I mean a real whale of a red-wine, dark chocolate-stain doozy, then I wouldn’t be in this Goethe-forsaken business.  I chose this vocation and lifestyle, partly because my selfless, well-compensated wife and a string of lucky breaks have afforded me the opportunity.  I believe in giving back to society when your circumstances grant you the luxury.  Will I always be in this fortuitous position?  Hell, if I know.  Will I fight the noble fight to the last breath to preserve the legacy of my authors?  You bet your life.

Small presses possess the opportunity to upset the landscape, upend the apple cart, tilt the paradigm, cloud the prism, and spoil the harvest of large publishers just by being.  Existing.  Resisting.  Insisting.  This is a game of Darwinian perseverance and as the inimitable Billie Holiday sang in “God Bless the Child”: “The strong survive while the weak ones fade.”  What makes the strong, strong and the weak, weak?  Beats the Oliver Twist out of me.  I’d rather leave that to sideline prognosticators and armchair quarterbacks.  Small presses need to rattle the right cages and make enough noise or create stirring silence to demand attention.  It won’t be easy, but there’s no such thing as impossible.

6.  Online reviewers, such as book bloggers, have gained additional recognition at Book Expo America and with publishers and PR staff.  Has Atticus Books tapped this market of reviewers to spread the word about its books and how formal or informal and/or important are these relationships?

We (staff aides Lindsey, Libby & I) love bloggers and I say that as a fan of anyone who has the wherewithal to post religiously without monetizing their effort.  Book Blogger Central, a page that we created on Facebook, is a service to those who blog and is a tribute to the work that book bloggers tirelessly perform.  And I say that not in the “brown-nosing, gosh, we need you to like us” sort of way, but more in the respectful, compassionate way that only a blogger (a fellow writer with far more faults and insecurities than time or patience) could understand.

I write (inconsistently).  I blog (just as inconsistently).  And I publish (consistently, I hope, though that’s a relative measurement).  What separates me, besides discipline, from those who do the first two things, but not the third?  Not much, really.  Do I have a pedigree in marketing or a Ph.D. in public relations?  No.  What I do have is instincts that I trust, authors whose abilities I believe in enough to invest hard-earned cash, and relations with individual media of which I’m just beginning to form.  Do I consider the opinion of bloggers as vital as the third rail of publishing (e.g., the New York Times Book Review section, Publishers Weekly, and/or Kirkus Reviews)?  Yes, without hesitation or fear of retribution, I can say I do.  Bloggers have their fingers pressed firmly on the pulse of contemporary culture as much as—if not more than—the establishment. In sum, bloggers, on the whole, are thoughtful, voracious readers who immeasurably influence their loyal, fast growing flock of followers as much as—and increasingly more than—those who represent the view of far-reaching institutions.

Now for a couple of fun questions:

7.  You’ve become a publisher to sift new writers into the market.  Who helped guide you to where you are today and has writing or reading  been a driving force in your own life?

Not to sound cliché  or patronizing, but I’ve been guided mostly by my parents to work hard and believe in myself, and I’ve been guided creatively by my friends and peers, particularly my best friend and contemporary—my beacon of a wife, to follow my dream.  I’ve also been guided by countless teachers, writers, artists, and people of unmistakable (though sometimes misunderstood) honor to pursue an honest living.

As an undisciplined writer and reader with undiagnosed ADD and an aversion to truthiness (vs. truth), I am driven by the responsibility of raising the clout and visibility of this generation’s unrecognized seers—i.e., the distinct, undiscovered voices of meaningful prose and poetry with unpublished works tucked away in the recesses of their underwear drawer.  My hope is that I forever keep in mind the indelible impressions left by those who’ve suffered for art and justice, the proverbial (but oft times, literal) starving artist, who personifies our best-in-class and highest-in-integrity ancestors.

8.  Do you have any particular obsessions, literary or otherwise, that help reduce your stress levels or ensure you remain on track?

My main obsessions are the Mets, Jets, pasta, single-malt scotch, and the security and well-being of my family, not necessarily in that order. These all prove to consume my time, passion, and addictions, usually more so than any Anne Sexton stanza or Edward Abbey diatribe, though I have to admit I’m affected daily by the things I haphazardly pick up to read.  One of the benefits of dropping out of the corporate world is being able to justify just about any casual reading or new literary discovery with research.

9.  When you were a young man, what was your dream job?  What’s your dream job now?

Heavy question, but definitely fun to consider.  I dreamed of being a baseball player and a doctor, but mostly, I dreamed of being a writer because it was the only vocation I thought suited me.  Writers (those who prefer words to just about anything else) are traditionally ill-suited for most conventional careers, not to mention situations.  As I grow older and make compromises (not of integrity, but age- and lifestyle-related), I realize now I’d probably make a good government worker (e.g., contract consultant) who happens to own both a funky small press and a minor league baseball franchise that barely make a profit between them.  As long as I can keep the two businesses in the black, afford to buy a round of hot dogs with relish, and support the career of the next John Steinbeck, then I’m not only living the dream, I’m creating it, too.  And that’s a dream worth pursuing.

10.  If you could give new and local writers one piece of advice about finding a publisher, particularly a small press, to publish their work, what would that be and why?

Explore and loiter on websites and blogs that speak your language; travel in the same circles as the writers and indie presses you admire.  There’s little good in being a lone wolf; run with the pack.  Find a community, a tribe that’s rightfully yours, and claim your stake in it.  Read works (and reviews of books) by small presses of kindred spirits and burrow in their collective skulls a while; plant your thoughts there; read between the lines of their fictional characters; see if you’re cut out of the same tapered cloth.  Then introduce yourself.  Howl at the yellow moon.  Play nice and bare your crooked smile.  Compliment your peer’s efforts.  (We’re all in need of a hug.)  Think of the publishing world as one large playground and the kindergartners have turned it upside down.  The runts of the litter are beginning to twist the upturned noses of the intellectually stunted bullies.  Take part in this leveling of the landscape.  Celebrate the renaissance.  Join the indie movement.

Instead of closing with a shameless plug about Atticus, let’s close with this piece of advice from E.B. White whose writing has inspired me a great deal over the years: “Advice to young writers who want to get ahead without annoying delays:  don’t write about Man, write about ‘a’ man.”

Read E.B. White.   There’s more wisdom in that man’s one pinkie (on his writing hand, of course) than I have in my entire body.

So, what did we learn today from this interview?

I can tell you what I learned:  First and foremost that there is a Indie/Small Press publisher in my own backyard!  How fantastic is that! And this big publisher (at least in my mind because of its ideals) loves bloggers.  What else do we need to know?!

I hope you enjoyed the first stop as we celebrate Indie and Small Press this month, and if you couldn’t have guessed, this was another stop on the Literary Road Trip.

Filed Under: Atticus Books, Events, Independent and Small Press Month, Interviews, Publishers/Publicists, The Literary Road Trip Tagged With:

The Jane Austen Handbook by Margaret C. Sullivan

February 22, 2011 by

The Jane Austen Handbook:  Proper Life Skills from Regency England by Margaret C. Sullivan, which Quirk Books will publish on March 8, is a nonfiction step-by-step guide on how to live in Regency England as a young lady or young man, though most of the advice pertains to women.  Chock full of illustrations of common dress for men and women, among other traditions, the handbook is practical and fun.  Humor is not forgotten either, as Jane Austen would have poked fun at certain traditions, so too does Sullivan.

For instance in the section “How to Raise Your Children,” among the tips listed to maintain decorum and sanity in the household is to provide children with cake!  “If all else fails, liberal slices of cake solve many a child-rearing problems.” (page 72)

The book is divided into three sections:  logistics of life among the gentry in Regency England; the ins and outs of daily life; and the rules for choosing a prospective husband.  Readers interested to learn how much Mr. Darcy is worth today should check out the handbook because apparently there is some controversy in the matter.

Each chapter contains a quote from one of Austen’s novels that applies to the contents of each chapter, and readers new to classic Austen books can rely on this handbook to understand the differences between a port-chaise, a hack, and other forms of transportation as well as the differences between various dresses worn by young ladies.  There is a schedule of a woman’s typical day running a household, the responsibilities of gentleman, what these people did in their leisure time, and how to recognize the gentry from royalty and more.

The appendix contains synopses of Jane Austen’s novels and other works, plus a list of film adaptations, sequels, retellings, and other “paraliterature.”  There are a number of other resources, a glossary, and selected bibliography as well.  The Jane Austen Handbook:  Proper Life Skills from Regency England by Margaret C. Sullivan is a great companion for the Jane Austen fanatic and fan because it offers guidance on how young men and women navigated a complex set of social rules and even broke them at times.  As each moment in life is addressed, Sullivan also offers moments in Austen’s work where traditions are bent.  Overall, a fantastic guide to a time period that many modern readers have a hard time imagining but will have fun navigating in not only Austen’s novels but also in the handbook.  It gives new meaning to role-playing.

About the Author:

Margaret C. Sullivan is the editrix of Austenblog.com. She lives in Philadelphia.

This is my 7th book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

Filed Under: New Authors Challenge, nonfiction, Publishers/Publicists, Quirk Classics, Read in 2011, review copy, reviews Tagged With: ,

Giveaway: Sins of the House of Borgia by Sarah Bower

February 9, 2011 by

Sourcebooks has found some additional galleys of Sarah Bower’s Sins of the House of Borgia and is offering one of my US/Canada readers a copy.

The book comes out March 8, 2011, and I’m sure you would love to know what the book is about.  Courtesy of the publisher:

“Violante isn’t supposed to be here, in one of the grandest courts of Renaissance Italy. She isn’t supposed to be a lady-in-waiting to the beautiful Lucrezia Borgia. But the same secretive politics that pushed Lucrezia’s father to the Vatican have landed Violante deep in a lavish landscape of passion and ambition.”

About the Author:

Sarah Bower is a novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, The Needle in the Blood, was Susan Hill’s Book of the Year 2007. Her short stories have appeared in magazines including QWF, Buzzwords and The Yellow Room. She completed an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia in 2002. She teaches creative writing at UEA and for the Open University. She also works as a mentor and manuscript reader for leading literary consultancies.

To enter:

1.  Comment about what political or religious intrigues would you like to be embroiled in if you had the chance.

2.  For a second entry, blog, tweet, Facebook, etc. the giveaway.

Deadline Feb. 14, 2010, at 11:59 PM EST

Filed Under: giveaway, Publishers/Publicists, sourcebooks Tagged With: ,

Lady Susan by Jane Austen

February 1, 2011 by

Lady Susan by Jane Austen is a short novel written in the form of letters until the conclusion where the author takes over.  Lady Susan is the widow of Mr. Vernon’s brother, and she has a daughter named, Frederica, whom Lady Susan believes needs more schooling and is better off in the care of others.  Lady Susan has a rather sultry reputation in society as a woman who flirts relentlessly and may even take it too far for polite society.

“She is really excessively pretty.  However you may choose to question the allurements of a lady no longer young, I must for my own part declare that I have seldom seen so lovely a woman as Lady Susan.”  (page 49)

What is truth and what is fiction about Lady Susan is tough to discern as each character’s opinion of her becomes more fluid, changing as new situations and information come to light.  She comes to live with her brother-in-law and his wife, Catherine, whom she tried to prevent from marrying her husband’s brother.  Once in Churchill, she meets Catherine’s brother Reginald, who already has a negative opinion of her, and she takes on the challenge of changing his mind, though to outsiders it looks as though she is flirting and making romantic inroads with him.  Enter Frederica, and her “lover” Sir James Martin.  The stage is set for great drama and entanglements.

“Her behavior to him, independent of her general character, has been so inexcusably artful and ungenerous since out marriage was first in agitation, that no one less amiable and mild than himself could have overlooked it at all; and though as his brother’s widow and in narrow circumstances it was proper to render her pecuniary assistance, I cannot help thinking his pressing invitation to her to visit us at Churchill perfectly unnecessary.”  (page 46)

Unlike Austen’s other novels and unfinished pieces, Lady Susan is not the typical heroine because she lives on the outskirts of society and enjoys herself in many ways.  She’s conniving in her machinations to find a match for her daughter, convince others of her propriety and social graces, and rightness of her decisions.  She is not a character that many readers will like or even come to like, but Austen seems to be using her negative personality traits to illustrate the machinations that are often done behind the scenes in Regency society as mothers seek husbands for their daughters and widows seeks to find another husband at an advanced age.

Overall, Lady Susan is an ambitious short novel that attempts to tackle society from a different angle.  Rather than place the young ladies eligible for husbands at the center of a (sort-of) conceit in which Lady Susan is the opposite of well-mannered society women and the men in her life are not in control of the situation nor their emotions.  Austen has tackled another difficult aspect of Regency society.

***I’ve wanted to read this novel since Anna embarked on her journey to read all of Austen’s works.***

This is my 2nd book for the 2011 Wish I’d Read That Challenge.

Interested in my other reviews of Austen’s unfinished novels, check out The Watsons and Sanditon.

Filed Under: borrowed copy, classic fiction, Penguin, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2011, reviews, Wish I'd Read That Challenge 2011 Tagged With: ,

The Tapestry of Love by Rosy Thornton

January 21, 2011 by

Rosy Thornton‘s The Tapestry of Love follows 48-year-old Catherine Parkstone as she makes her way through the French countryside after leaving her home in England following her divorce.  She has bought Les Fenils in the Cevennes Mountains where she gets to know her quirky neighbors and learns how to navigate an unfamiliar culture with her amateur French-speaking skills.  Her initial plans are to establish a business as a needlewoman, but also to return to a place she remembers enjoying from her childhood.

Catherine loves working with her hands whether it is on cushions or tapestry or in the garden.  The lush scenery and sweet smells of food (check out Thornton’s recipes) serve as the backdrop of this woman’s journey as she learns to cook French cuisine, stand on her own, and carve out a life she can enjoy.  Although she is away from her grown children and her sister, Bryony, Catherine begins to make the transition into the community, providing them with well-crafted cushions and other items and companionship.

“It was the view from her kitchen window, the view from the place at the table where she generally sat to work.  She knew it so well now by all its lights and moods that she had no need to look up from her tapestry frame; on these quiet midnights she sat and worked from memory in front of the rectangle of black.  In her emerging picture, it was morning:  not first light but the soft luminosity of a breakfast time in spring, the sun breaking over the head of the valley to the left and outlining every leaf in gold.”  (page 232)

From the Bouschets and the Meriels to Madame Volpiliere and Patrick Castagnol, Thornton creates a rounded set of characters to interact with Catherine and bring out some of her best traits, including generosity and compassion.  Although Catherine was adventurous enough to leave England and move to the mountains of France, she still has to find her spontaneity and carefree nature, while navigating the bureaucracy of the French government.

Overall, The Tapestry of Love by Rosy Thornton is a novel about living one’s dreams, making new friends, and enjoying life.  While there is romance, a love triangle, divorce, and other typical “women’s fiction” topics, Rosy Thornton takes these topics and makes them new by setting them in rural France among quirky farmers and business men and women.  Her prose is engaging and detailed, weaving a tapestry of community that readers will want to immerse themselves in for hours.

About the Author:

Rosy Thornton is an author of contemporary fiction, published by Headline Review. Her novels could perhaps be described as romantic comedy with a touch of satire – or possibly social satire with a hint of romance. In real life she lectures in Law at the University of Cambridge, where she is a Fellow of Emmanuel College. She shares her home with her partner, two daughters and two lunatic spaniels.  Visit her Website.

This is my 3rd book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

Filed Under: fiction, Hachette Books, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2011, review copy, reviews Tagged With: ,

Half in Love by Linda Gray Sexton

January 17, 2011 by

Linda Gray Sexton, an author of memoir and fiction, tackles the issues of depression, suicide, and family legacies in her latest memoir, Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide.  In case you haven’t deduced on your own who her famous mother is, it is Anne Sexton one of the greatest American confessional poets, who successfully committed suicide in October 1974 after battling depression for years by locking herself in the garage and dying from carbon monoxide poisoning.

“The other families in our neighborhood looked nothing like my own family.  My father did not run the family, nor did my mother.  It was my mother’s illness that had seized control.  My adulation of her was not tempered by the fact that she was mentally ill.  We never used the word ‘crazy’ — though when the ambulance arrived in the driveway to take her away, the neighborhood children whispered that Mrs. Sexton was nuts again.”  (page 59)

Half in Love is far from an easy read as Linda details not only her mother’s struggles with depression and suicide, but also the violent and sometimes inappropriate relationships within the family.  The legacy of suicide is clear as Linda discusses her college years, her marriage, and the birth of her children.  The “rabbit hole” is often used to describe the downward spiral Linda and her mother descend into without necessarily being triggered by a specific event.  Some of the details about institutionalization, attempts at suicide are detailed and will make readers turn away from the page, but they are necessary to convey the depth at which these women fell away from the real world into the darkness that obscured their reasons for hope.

“Unconsciously, my mother had bequeathed to me two entirely unique legacies, and they were inextricably and mysteriously entwined:  the compulsion to create with words, as well as the compulsion to stare down into the abyss of suicide.  Both compulsions have been with me for as long as I can remember.”  (page 23)

Despite a carefully outlined plan to avoid her mother’s fate, Linda finds that she has unwittingly stepped on the same path to suicide and also has become a confessional fiction author rather than confessional poet.  When Linda becomes a mother herself and realizes just how much she inherited from her mother in terms of mental illness, she becomes concerned and wonders how much she should tell her sons about the family legacy, while her husband wishes to shield them from “prophecies” that may or may not come true.

Half in Love is about the struggle with depression and suicide, but it also is about falling “half in love” with the idea of a famous poet and her legacy in spite of the rational reasons to distance oneself from that dangerous family legacy and live a “normal” life.   Readers will be absorbed in the author’s struggles and the struggles of her mother, but in spite of these struggles there is something to “love” about these women.  In a way larger parallels between a young Linda and the greater society can be drawn about falling in love with the darker sides of life that enabled her mother, Anne Sexton, to become one of the most famous poets of her time.  But this is not just Anne’s story, but a story of a family continuously torn apart, repaired, and fragmented — possibly irreparably.

***Reading this memoir prompted me to highlight one of Anne Sexton’s poems during the Virtual Poetry Circle last week.  Please feel free to join the continued discussion.***

About the Author:

Linda Gray Sexton was born in Newton, Massachusetts in 1953 and graduated from Harvard University in 1975. She is the daughter of the Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Anne Sexton, and has edited several books of her mother’s poetry and a book of her mother’s letters, as well as writing a memoir about her life with her mother, “Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back To My Mother, Anne Sexton.” “Rituals,” “Mirror Images,” “Points of Light,” and “Private Acts” are her four published and widely read novels. “Points of Light” was made into a Hallmark Hall of Fame Special for television.

Check out the other stops on The TLC Book Tour.

This is my 2nd book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

Filed Under: memoir, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2011, review copy, reviews, tlc book tours Tagged With: ,

Stiltsville by Susanna Daniel

January 12, 2011 by

Stiltsville by Susanna Daniel was the December book club selection from Everyday I Write the Book, but I ran out of time in 2010 to read it.  Click here if you want to read the discussion.

Frances Ellerby is a young 20-something with her whole life ahead of her in 1969 when she heads to Miami for a wedding, meets a spontaneous young woman named Marse, and finds the love of her life, Dennis.  She makes a major decision and moves from Georgia to Miami to be with Dennis, and while she is uncertain about her life choices sometimes, for the most part she realizes she has chosen the right path.

“The pink undulated and shimmered in the sunlight, fading and brightening.  It was like nothing I’d ever imagined.  Like so much of Miami, the islands were vain, gaudy, and glorious — and in this way they belonged there, undeniably, and I hoped unrealistically that their pink skirts would stay fastened forever.”  (Page 147)

Frances is a young woman who is moored to Miami by her love of one man, but her friendships with Marse and others seem to come in and out of the storyline.  There are moments of utter joy, heartache, and humor, but there also are moments when the story line takes predictable turns as many plots about marriages over time turn to possible affairs and other heart breaks.

“‘Oh, God, I know — they botched her face-lift.’  One of Elanor’s cheeks drooped considerably, and the eyelid on the same side drooped as well, as if she’d been stuck with something and deflated.  ‘She’s going to that guy in Naples to fix it, but they can’t get her in for six months.  You’d think this would qualify as an emergency.'”  (page 194)

Although Daniel sets up the landscape of Miami as over-the-top and gaudy in many ways, readers may be unprepared for the dramatic bombshells dropped on top of one another in the last 100 pages.   Readers may find these sections unbelievable or too much to lump together near the end of a novel, especially one that up until this point had been very predictable.

Frances was too hard to connect with on many levels because she’s so unpredictable in her relationships and she second guesses her decisions at every turn.  Her deep love of Dennis is often questionable.  Overall, Stiltsville‘s setting in Miami grows with each passing decade, but the relationships between Frances and her family often seem stagnant or underdeveloped, though the introduction of Margo, her daughter, is a compelling element that should have been explored more fully.

This is my 1st book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.

Filed Under: ARC, fiction, Harper Collins, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2011, reviews Tagged With: ,

The Perfect Bride for Mr. Darcy by Mary Lydon Simonsen

January 11, 2011 by

Mary Lydon Simonsen‘s The Perfect Bride for Mr. Darcy re-imagines Pride & Prejudice in such a way that Darcy and Elizabeth cannot get past their misunderstandings and disagreements without a little help from two matchmakers — Georgiana Darcy and Anne de Bourgh.  Anne takes the reins for much of the book after she learns her cousin Darcy has proposed marriage to Elizabeth at Rosings and failed miserably at gaining her hand and love.

The main plot points of Lizzy’s visit to Pemberley, Lydia’s downfall with Wickham, and Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s visit to Hertfordshire are all present, but Anne helps convince Lizzy to visit Pemberley and prompts her mother to visit Hertfordshire.  Georgiana is a secondary matchmaker in this novel, but she’s witty and grows into her role as mistress of Pemberley by ensuring her guests are comfortable and do not annoy one another, especially since Caroline Bingley and Elizabeth are in the same room vying for the same man’s affections.

“And, yet, Anne was saying that Mr. Darcy went with his sister to the milliner’s shop.  Lizzy could just picture him, crossing and uncrossing his legs, and drumming his fingers on top of his hat, when he was not pacing the floor.”  (page 56)

Simonsen has sketched a strong Anne and Georgiana, women who are more modern than convention dictates, but who are well aware of society’s expectations for their behavior.  Georgiana is about to come out into society when things go awry in the Bennet family, but she unselfishly tells her brother to right the wrongs and go to his love to ease her pain.  Unlike Austen’s minimal sketch of Georgiana as a beloved sister, Simonsen creates a strong young woman with romantic notions and a penchant for writing.

Not to worry because Jane and Mr. Bingley’s romance is not forgotten, but there is more than one obstacle thrown in their way after Bingley is convinced by Darcy and the Bingley sisters to cease his courtship of Jane.  Enter Mr. Nesbitt, a solicitor with a odd sense of courtship and love.  This subplot is delightful, serves to increase the suspense in the Darcy-Lizzy romance, and is full of twists and turns.

“While Mary was croaking out a lullaby, the youngster had put his hands over his cousin’s mouth and had asked her not to sing.  Everyone in the family now owed a debt of gratitude to a four-year-old boy.”  (page 161)

“‘I am not angry with either of you.  I am, however, a little disconcerted that you embarked on such an elaborate scheme after I told you I already had a plan in place.’

‘Your plan was terrible.  I have saved you weeks of anxiety about Elizabeth.  You must own to it, Will.  My plan was better than yours.”  (page 204)

The Perfect Bride for Mr. Darcy by Mary Lydon Simonsen is engaging and funny.  The interactions between Anne and Darcy are often filled with playful jabs between cousin, and the dialogue between Jane and Lizzy are not only sisterly but full of sweet teasing.  Another fun re-imagining of Pride & Prejudice that delves deeper into the secondary characters of Austen’s novel.

If you missed Mary Lydon Simonsen’s guest post and the chance to win one of two copies of The Perfect Bride for Mr. Darcy, there’s still time to check them out.

About the Author:

Mary Lydon Simonsen’s first book, Searching for Pemberley, was acclaimed by Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and RT Book Reviews. She is well loved and widely followed on all the Jane Austen fanfic sites, with tens of thousands of hits and hundreds of reviews whenever she posts. She lives in Peoria, Arizona where she is working on her next Jane Austen novel. For more information, please visit http://marysimonsenfanfiction.blogspot.com/ and http://www.austenauthors.com/, where she regularly contributes.

Filed Under: ARC, fiction, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2011, reviews, sourcebooks Tagged With: ,