Hello and welcome to March!
I have some bad news and some good news this month. I do not have an excerpt for you from An Interrupted Proposal, but I have just finished my last class for a few months and will be focusing on getting that book finished, edited, and ready for publication. Instead, I thought I would share an event that I have been anticipating for years.
Many of you may remember me talking about my daughter’s Jane Austen journey. I started reading Jane Austen and JAFF in 2008 (yes, I was introduced to Austen later in life and am not sure how I avoided her as long as I did). My daughter was around six years old at the time. I published my first novella, The Ball at Meryton, in 2015 when she was twelve. In her own words, she decided to hate Pride and Prejudice as “an act of rebellion.” Since that time, I have tried to introduce her to the comic book version, the graphic novel version, and the 2005 movie.
Nothing worked, so I gave her a mother’s curse. “By refusing to have anything to do with Pride and Prejudice, one day you will have to either read it for a class, or you will have to act in a performance of it.” (My daughter has been acting at our regional theater since she was nine.)
Again, if you have been following this minor drama in my household via my older blogs, you know that she finally came around a few years ago. While in college, she called me up one day and asked what my favorite version of P&P was. I immediately told her it was the 1995 because, as a mini-series, it was able to include more of the story than the shorter movies (plus it was how I first found Colin Firth). When she came home for Christmas that year, she admitted that she had watched the 2005 version and asked to watch the 1995 with me.
After I came to, I couldn’t stop smiling. We watched 2 episodes during her break and finished it when she came home for the summer, 5 months later. But she watched it!
Fastforward to last spring. I received a text from her then boyfriend:
I called my daughter and found out that she had been selected to design the lighting for the show and, needless to say, began planning my trip immediately.
So, after nearly a year of waiting, I am now just returned home from my 3-day trip to Nashville.
In truth, I had seen this version of the show before at our local university and it was not my all-time favorite, but I was not passing this up for a second. (I actually had a Janeite moment when I saw it before as it is a bit irreverent and very abridged but has some really funny bits in it.)
My daughter kept talking about “the designer’s board” in the lobby and insisted that I had to look at it when we went to see the show.
I did and ran over to where she was talking to a friend, dragging her back to show her that one of the pictures that inspired the set designer was the picture I had put on the original cover of my first book.
She laughed at me but then encouraged me to finish looking at the board. Finally, at the other end of the board, I reached her section and found this.
I almost cried. (Yes, I know she spelled Bennet wrong, but wasn’t that the sweetest thing?) Here are her inspiration boards:
So, it took ten years and all four years of college, but the mother’s curse finally struck. For the other mothers and fathers out there waiting patiently for their children to come around on some subject, just be patient.
I will see you next month and there will definitely be a new excerpt for An Interrupted Proposal.
16 responses to “News Update”
Congrats!!!! That’s a lovely dedication to you as a mom/mum!!!!
Thank you. She is such a sweetheart.
What a sweet and heartfelt tribute to you her Mom! It looks like beautiful production!
The lighting was amazing, of course. It did just what she wanted, directing your eye to where the action was. It is VERY fast paced and the lighting definitely helped the audience to keep up. lol
How very sweet for you.
Thank you.
Excellent! And what a lovely thing for her to do. May the Mother’s Curse always work.
I remember when my daughter first asked to watch one of the Austen adaptations with me. Oh… my heart! <3
Doesn’t it feel good? The Mother’s Curse rules! 😉
Talk about perseverance! I’m so glad she finally learned the pleasure of P&P. I’m very impressed with her display, such a tribute to you. I’m afraid my daughter has yet to love it but she’s only in her forties so there’s still time. 😉
Definitely! Plenty of time. I was 40 when I was first introduced to P&P and fell in love with it. When my parents passed and we were going through their books, I found a copy of it. I truly have no idea how I didn’t read it when I was growing up.
Awesome! It’s almost as if your mother’s work is done here.
I have to ask about the last picture that you’ve included: WHAT is going on there?! How is that related to P&P?
Ginna, you know a mother’s work is never done. 😉
The inspiration was an attic – a mixture of old and new and varying quality of things. When they switched scenes, the actors would pull out chairs that were leaning against the “attic” wall to make the new location.
This rendition is VERY irreverent. Bingley acts like a puppy following Darcy and Jane around, there is no Kitty (the only portrait on stage was of Kitty since she wasn’t in the cast), and Lady Catherine takes Elizabeth and the Collins to Pemberley. An Austen purist would hate it, but it was very funny at times. I loved Collins – wouldn’t want our Lizzy to marry him, but he was sooo funny. He probably has some of the best lines.
What a wonderful tale. Makes my heart sing.
It reminds me, when my son needed a book report…tells me on Friday, due Monday. I shake my head. He wants my help. So I said, that the 1995 P&P was the closes to a book that I knew of. He suffered thru.
Teacher called me to tell me how impressed she was that he made a hundred on the test, and then she laughed. She asked him what he did not like about the book…He said the long pauses.
Great memories.
Oh, I can completely relate. Both of my kids had a habit of waiting to the last moment for things (still do) but never reading. They always were reading, but that doesn’t mean they actually got the book report done on time. lol
What a great idea to have him watch the mini-series. I bet he never forgets it and picks a book ahead of time from now on. 😀
Love this story! What a special memory this will be! My own daughter is about the same age as yours but not much of a reader (she’s neurodivergent). She probably won’t ever truly be a Janeite. But when she was very young, she enjoyed watching portions of the adaptations with me — would even ask to watch them! She had her own names for each, according to her favorite scenes. “The Dancing One” was P&P. “The One Where The Girl Falls and Hurts Her Head” — Persuasion. 😂 Should I have been concerned that my 4-yr-old thought poor Louisa’s fall at Lyme to be hilarious? 🤦♀️😂 Quite different than your story, obviously, but that’s where my mind went when I read it.
Oh, that is fabulous! Does she like comic books or graphic novels? 🙂