My second book – Cause to Repine – is finally launching!
So, I owe you all an explanation. Nearly a year ago, I sent out the first set of ARCs for my second book, Cause to Repine. It was downloaded by more than 200 separate people, and read/reviewed on Goodreads. I thought I was done and only needed to do the interior design and set it up for distribution with my publishing group.
But I couldn’t. You see, I had compromised on the ending. The original ending I’d written had been taken out. I let my WONDERFUL, AMAZING, ALMOST ALWAY RIGHT developmental editor talk me out of my favorite scene.
The scene that had started it all.
As a general rule, I write my books backwards. I almost always have the final or penultimate scene of the book as my starting place, then I ask myself – “how do we all get here?”
And this scene was – to quote the words of our great muse, Jane Austen herself, when describing her most troublesome heroine, Emma – a scene only the author could love.
Maybe.
Hopefully not.
Because, I was so unhappy after sending out the ARCs without the ending I’d originally written that I had to redo it. I delayed my launch, rewrote the last three chapters of the book, added a prelude, and proceeded to get myself into a total panic.
I hope that I’ve done the right thing. I hope you will all forgive me for the delay. I hope that, now it’s printed and set to release everywhere indie books are sold on February 8th, I can finally let this story rest.
If you are interested in a new book, where Lizzy and Darcy are friends from the start, and the dynamics of money and class are at the center of their strife, maybe take a chance and pre-order my book.
Or if you like the cover, check out my fabulous and talented designer, Louisa Cannell at her website.
No matter if you’re a fan of mine, or just here for the drama, I really can’t say how deeply appreciative I am of this community. I started with the predecessor group to the Always Austen in 2021 and am so grateful for the supportive community Regina and my fellow bloggers have fostered here. There are very few places online where you can be yourself and get back nothing but support and love. The comment section here is never mean or hurtful, even when we don’t see eye to eye (and I know I’m an acquired taste with whom not everyone sees eye-to-eye).
Making art is so intensely personal and intimate. Sending it out into the world for other people to read and judge has been the most intimidating, scary and sometime nauseating thing I’ve ever done. Every word on the page is etched on my soul. Every line the measure of who I am at my most vulnerable.
My books aren’t likely to win any awards for story telling or change the course of a generation. But they are still mine.
Thank you for being a huge part of my journey.
So, to celebrate the upcoming launch of Cause to Repine, I offer to you a peek of the first few pages.
Cause to Repine
by: EM Storm-Smith
Prologue
The crunching of the gravel along the drive was unusually loud in the early predawn morning calm as a single carriage ambled away from Pemberley Manor. George Darcy stood on the front steps and watched as his son’s beautifully matched greys pulled him towards the road. Fitzwilliam Darcy, George’s oldest child and only son, had come home after the end of the London season in July, then stayed for two months complete.
It was a gift to have his son home for such extended time. When George’s great-aunt passed several years ago, leaving an independent estate in Wales for his son, the younger Darcy had started living most of the year at Cresselly Park. A naturally shy and unsociable young man, Fitzwilliam Darcy had been all too happy to bury himself into working on his new estate, learning all the tenants needs and taking his position as magistrate in the community seriously. It was extremely admirable. Everything that George had come to expect from his diligent, intelligent, and responsible son.
But it was also extremely lonely.
George was worried for his son. Approaching his twenty-seventh year, Fitzwilliam had few true friends and even fewer prospects for a bride. Though he professed a sincere desire for a wife and family, George had heard his son just the night before expressing lament over finding a woman with whom he wanted to spend his life. If the landscape of marriageable ladies and the London marriage mart did not change significantly in the next year, well, George did not want to think about alternatives. Fitzwilliam was tall, handsome, educated, and wealthy. Even without his eventual inheritance of Pemberley, Fitzwilliam Darcy was in the top one thousand landowners of the ton with just Cresselly Park. Once the estates were combined, Fitzwilliam would be wealthier than most of the earls with permanent seats in parliament, and maybe even some of the nonroyal dukes. There was no shortage of titled women who would cut off their own heels to become the next Mrs. Darcy, which was essentially the problem. Fitzwilliam was not interested in any of the mercenary women who pursued only money and status.
He was too much like his late mother.
Several moments after the carriage was firmly beyond the bend in the road, George sighed, then he reached into his front breast pocket and pulled out a stack of letters addressed to his son.
The first two were from George’s sisters-in-law, Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Lady Josephine Finch Fitzwilliam, Countess of Matlock. Having lost his Anne shortly after the birth of their daughter, Georgiana, Lady Catherine, as the elder sister of George’s late wife, deemed it her duty to provide motherly guidance to George’s children. Most of the time, her purposes were very well intended, even if her manner was always a bit intimidating. George had some disquiet about keeping her correspondence from his son and had even given Fitzwilliam one of the pages of the letter detailing Lady Catherine and her daughter’s, Anne de Bourgh, summer entertainments, claiming that she had included the page with a letter to the whole family.
Lady Matlock, however, was much less interested in the Darcy siblings’ general welfare and more interested in continuing to build her family’s importance. George had not one ounce of guilt for holding back her letter, along with the third letter in the stack, which was from Lady Matlock’s brother, the Earl of Nottingham.
George turned to go back through the large front manor doors and moved towards the master’s study. Habitually an early riser, he was not surprised to see a fire already in the grate and a tea tray on the corner of his large mahogany desk. Mrs. Reynolds certainly ran a tip-top household establishment. The confiscated letters were laid on a larger stack of correspondence delivered to Pemberley in the past few weeks, and George picked up his perfectly prepared tea before starting on his ledgers for the morning.
Though, even midsummer rents and wool poundage reports could not keep George’s attention for very long. Those dammed letters and his son’s defeated demeanour kept creeping into George’s mind. He glanced back at the stack of letters.
Am I doing the right thing, keeping the earl’s request from William?
Suddenly, the sun burst over the tree line, through the high windows, and into the master’s study, brilliantly illuminating two paintings hanging above the mantle. Many visitors to George’s study over the years had commented on those two paintings, as they were quite unusual for a man of George’s status and wealth.
The first was a small charcoal drawing of a modest tenant home. There were two stories, a thatched roof, only one window on the south-facing wall, and chickens roaming about the kitchen garden. Even without colour, George could easily make out the bright-vermilion front door and the dark-grey river-stone façade. Crushed, bright-white limestone circled the small drive, which led to a two-stall horse barn. One of the stalls always had at least three pigs living there, which the horses barely tolerated. The picture had originally been drawn on a piece of discarded butcher paper. But long ago, the drawing had been recreated using fine-point charcoal pencils from a very expensive art supplies dealer in London and preserved in gum wash. A beautiful cherry-wood frame and a fine piece of cut glass had been acquired when George’s father desired to have it hung in the study.
The second piece was a slightly larger oil painting showing a lane in the centre of Derby. Modest homes lined both sides of the street, and several carriages ambled down the dirt road. In the middle of the painting was the main subject, a three-story home with a blue door and a sign declaring that the solicitor’s office was open.
George stood from his chair and reclaimed the three letters. He strode confidently to the mantle with a merry fire fluttering in the grate. One long finger traced the bottom of the frame holding the charcoal drawing, and George smiled to himself.
He tossed the three letters into the fire and watched them turn to ash.
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2 responses to “It’s Finally Here!”
Congrats on the new book.
Congrats on your new book! You must be so excited! Love the excerpt and cover!