• Rare Books, Rare Writing

    Last time, I spoke of two books that give me joy in the New Year. Read about the first, Sarah Emsley’s The Austens, here. The second, by Rebecca Romney, is Jane Austen’s Bookshelf. Both works are part of the onslaught of at least twenty-five major Austen-related productions for the year 2025, the 250th anniversary of…

Rare Books, Rare Writing

Last time, I spoke of two books that give me joy in the New Year. Read about the first, Sarah Emsley’s The Austens, here. The second, by Rebecca Romney, is Jane Austen’s Bookshelf. Both works are part of the onslaught of at least twenty-five major Austen-related productions for the year 2025, the 250th anniversary of…

Keep reading

Looking Back, Looking On

As January 2026 comes to a close, I thought I’d take a moment to share a brief look back at my 2025 accomplishments. My YouTube content creator journey continued to take center stage throughout the year. While 2024 saw a plethora of full-length audiobook productions, both professionally narrated and author read, 2025 required an added…

Keep reading

“Darcy’s Passions” Excerpt – As Elizabeth’s Betrothed, Darcy Dines at Longbourn

Back in 2012, I was part of a project where a group of authors revisited Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and retold scenes from the points of view of the other characters. This excerpt revisits the later part of Austen’s classic. This is after the second proposal.  This excerpt comes from chapter 17 of my first Austen-inspired novel, Darcy’s…

Keep reading

Enjoy This Post from Chapter Four of “Darcy’s Passions” ~ We Are at Netherfield and Jane Bennet is Ill – Releasing 2/3/2026

Relive the witty and romantic story of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy once again in this charming Pride and Prejudice retelling from Darcy’s point of view. For fans of historical romance like the Bridgerton novels to lovers of alternative point-of-view books like E. L. James’ Grey and Stephenie Meyers’s Midnight Sun, Darcy’s Passions invites readers…

Keep reading

A Visit I Will Forever Remember Making: Part 1

There are times when everything goes according to plan. And times when what was unplanned makes one’s journey more memorable, as happened in my adventure this past September 2025. Having always centered vacations around theme parks for my daughter and golf for my husband, aka Marine (former), this past year he asked where I most…

Keep reading

A Soldier’s Tale – What the Colonel Did Next

It’s been a while since I’ve released a new JAFF novel. I’ve been busy writing, of course—in the past year I had JAFF short stories published in two terrific anthologies (Darcy Ever After and In the Path of Jane Austen) and released two non-JAFF novels as part of the multi-author Noble Hearts Historical Romance series.…

Keep reading

Austen and AI: Steak or Sausage

All actual or imaginary characters are treated as fiction. Any resemblance to people living or dead is coincidental. The author’s imagination and hard work brought this work of fiction to life. At no point in this body of work has Artificial Intelligence (AI) been employed to write it. Use of this work to train Artificial…

Keep reading

Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.

Literary academics cannot escape discussing the modern novel without presenting Jane Austen credit for the art form.

She is an established literary figure in English literature. Austen’s skillful use of mixing together the narrator’s telling the story with a character’s thoughts and emotions and dialogue was just catching on in the late 1700s and early 1800s, but it is a mainstay in modern fiction. She created literary realism.

People speak of the greatness of Shakespeare, but falter when asked to read or explain his works. Not so, with Jane Austen. Because her works have been so easily consumed for more than 200 years, some forget how groundbreaking the six novels of the daughter of a simple rector in rural Hampshire, England, can be. We on this blog have not forgotten.