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Friday, September 29, 2017

A Heart-to-Heart with Nicole--Author of 'These Dreams'

 A Heart-to-Heart with Nicole--

Author of 'These Dreams'

By Barbara Tiller Cole


Hi Nicole Clarkston. Welcome to Darcyholic Diversions.  I am glad that you had the time to drop by during your blog tour.  I am very glad to get a chance to meet you and read your novel, These Dreams.  It is an intriguing and fresh variation and I enjoyed it.  Thanks for allowing me a chance to get to know you and your latest book.

Tell us a little bit about you...


I have been married 16 years, with 3 kids. I homeschool them (and I am ignoring “school” at the moment! Naughty mom!). My husband is an engineer, and we live on a quasi-farm in Oregon.

What is a quasi Farm exactly?

Haha! Well, it was the shortest description I can come up with. We have a small equine facility, and we care for a few horses who board here, as well as our own. I grew up with that rather lamentable addiction, and now it’s a joy to share it with my family. We only bought this place in May, after house hunting for well over a year, and the property was in a state of neglect (which is why we were able to purchase it). It’s quite a little bit of work to get everything cleaned up again!

Did you have a career before writing?

I went to Oregon State University for agriculture, and my degree is in Animal Sciences with a poultry emphasis. I joke that I got the degree that was on sale, because there was a discount on tuition for choosing that emphasis rather than Dairy or Horse, etc. I also wanted a job, so poultry seemed a logical choice. As a consequence, I went to work for Foster Farms, a west coast poultry corporation. I held a couple of different positions there, but my last was as a hatchery supervisor. I loved that job in many ways. It was a small group, about 24 employees in all at that location, so I did everything from scheduling chick deliveries to planning egg settings and reporting quality control, overseeing health and safety concerns, employee relations, and planning my boss’ backyard barbecues… he was computer illiterate  .  I did that until our daughter was born, and I was blessed to stay home with her. We have since had two more, both boys.

While I was pregnant with our third child, my husband and I started an RV rental business. That’s not common knowledge in the JAFF world, but we did that for 5 years. We rented toyhauler RV trailers, and we were an instant success because those trailers are hard to find as rentals. Another popular service was that I would deliver the trailers and pick them up at the customers’ houses. We got a loan through the Small Business Administration, and it was a great business for a few years. After the trailers started wearing out (they do that) and we could not replace them due to the structure of our loan, we made the decision to sell them off, pay off our loan, and close the business. That was a relief, because by then I had nursed one infant and potty-trained all three toddlers while spending most of the summers in the big Excursion, driving trailers around town! The good news is that I met a lot of wonderful people and we listened to a lot of audiobooks.

Did you discover Jane Austen on audiobooks?  Or was it a different way?  I am always intrigued to discover how people initially find Jane Austen's works.

You know, I took all the “hard” English and literature classes, and not one of them introduced me to Jane. Sadness! I was a mom of three and starting preschool with the eldest when some of the mom-friends I was starting to make would name-drop P&P. I decided it was above time to find out about it, so I got hold of the 1980 version on Netflix, as well as the Gwyneth Paltrow version of S&S. I am glad I did that, because I always love the book more. After waiting a month on a library hold for both books, I took them camping and read both books twice in three days. I was hooked!

Was it love at first site?  When you discovered Austen?  Or was it an acquired taste?


When I found Pride and Prejudice, I was smitten. Darcy and Elizabeth possessed my imagination completely, until, one fateful day, I stumbled upon North and South. That clinched it. I spent over two years and could not get those couples out of my head during my waking moments. I was obsessed! I read fanfic nonstop, even hiding under the blankets to finish any particularly good stories, but I kept wanting to write my own. One sleepless night, I simply couldn’t stand it any longer. I resolved to use a pen name and just start writing. I had no idea if anyone would read them, but I had to do it. I snuck out of bed and had the first chapter written in two hours!

Do you have a favorite of Jane Austen's books and her characters you would like to share with us?

She’s not flashy, but I adore Mrs Gardiner. She is grace personified. She finds tactful ways to shepherd and guide these girls, even the Lydias who do not wish to be guided. She is the kind of woman we would all wish for a friend, and she’s who I want to be when I grow up. We writers love characters who lend themselves well to drama—Elizabeth Bennet, with her sparkling wit and her propensity to leap to conclusions; Mr Darcy, with his massive wealth and ability to change to please a woman beneath his station; Eleanor and Marianne, with their tragic backstory and their wildly different approaches to love. Still, I think it is the Mrs Gardiners (and Fanny Prices) of the world who make it a better place and who inspire us all to grow into functional, rational people.

What inspired you to write an Austen inspired novel of your own?

I always wanted to write, but I thought I couldn’t. As a kid, I always had my spiral notebook of very badly written stories, and I wouldn’t let anyone see them. As an adult, I just kept them stored in my head, along with special turns of phrase which struck my fancy. I never dared publish them, though. The stories I kept wanting to write were too mushy for me to be comfortable sharing with my family. I think you could say I always loved dreaming up spin-offs, because whenever a story would touch my heart, I couldn’t help tweaking it in my mind, imagining how future events would play out, etc.

Is "These Dreams" your first novel?  

It is my fifth completed novel. I started on No Such Thing As Luck almost exactly three years ago. About a month after that, I got the idea for Rumours and Recklessness, and I wrote them both tag-team style for several months. Whenever I would get stuck, I’d switch stories. I do that less and less now, partly because I’ve gotten a little more practiced at keeping things moving in my head, but I do have a half-finished N&S story to complete. I’ve vowed this time that I won’t start a second (or a third) until I finish it, but it’s going to be difficult!

What inspired the idea for 'These Dreams'?

I am an angst weenie as a reader, but as a writer, I wanted to challenge myself. I started wondering “What is the worst thing that could happen to D&E, but could still be redeemable in the end?” A kidnapping and presumed death seemed an interesting premise. Darcy was a man of sufficient influence to make him a worthy target, and the timing of the story’s beginning (after Elizabeth had acknowledged her feeings but not confessed them) lent an extra degree of heartbreak.
Rita Deodato had mentioned to me that she always wished someone would write about Colonel Fitzwilliam finding a love in Portugal, and as I began researching the history, I learned that it was, in fact, very possible. In addition, I needed Darcy to be completely beyond reach, so sending him to Portugal was a fortuitous notion.
The dreams aspect was my solution to the problem of creating a link between Darcy and Elizabeth. We all want to see them together, and I can only imagine how they would cry out in their grief in such a situation. For Elizabeth, it is the lashings of guilt and loss which torment her. For Darcy, it is his last thread to sanity. He endures quite a bit of trauma, and even when he returns to England and all he holds dear, he spends some time learning to trust again.
THIS is a big question between me and you...Nicole.... Many people just won't read a story where Darcy dies.  Do you want to share anything as a hint that he lives?   It’s not too much of a spoiler, because even in the book blurb, Darcy is “presumed” dead and unable to do anything to help himself but to dream of Elizabeth.

If there anything you would like to share with readers about your latest book?


PTSD is an underlying theme in this book. Darcy could not endure what he did, return to his home, and have everything go back to the way it was. Anyone would be shaken. Naturally, I did some academic research on the topic, but the most valuable insights I gained were personal. I spent some time talking to a dear friend about the effects of trauma on a family and on relationships. I hope I have done justice to Darcy’s recovery, making it as authentic as possible, without allowing it to dominate the story.

Do you have anything else that you are currently writing?  Want to give us any hints?


I am working on another North and South book currently titled Nowhere But North. I began it in July of 2016 and had a good bit of it complete when These Dreams took over and stole my laptop. I’m eager to get back to it, because it will be wildly different from anything else I have written. While TD dwells on a dream aspect which links the characters together, NBN is written along two separate timelines. It’s a tricky format, because I have two different story arcs (three, actually, since both John and Margaret had a past which led them to their present point). The “main” story begins with a marriage of convenience because Margaret’s father has died, and, in my version of a twist, all her family are still out traveling the world. She appears to have nowhere else to go, so John offers again and she accepts. Their relationship develops as it is reflected off their experiences in the past.  It’s a bit of a risky premise, but I am loving it so far. I hope others do as well!
After that N&S story is finished, I have two more P&P books rattling around in my brain. One is a pure romantic comedy, which is something else I have never done. It will be novella length. The other will be darker in tone, with plenty of angsty longing. It will be set in the early 1900’s, and Elizabeth is a *gasp* American! The horrors, I know.

Anything else that you would like to share with the readers here at Darcyholic Diversions?

The release of These Dreams ended up being more akin to a nightmare. The pre-sale version had a placeholder file while the book underwent final chapter updates and revisions, so the file was not only unedited, but incomplete. There was an error in processing when the CORRECT book was approved for release, and several hundred of the wrong files went out. It was TWO WEEKS before Amazon sent the automated update.
I have stopped receiving questions and head-scratching emails about it now, so I believe almost everyone has their correct book, but during those first two weeks, I had an opportunity to appreciate the JAFF community. Everyone was so perfectly lovely through the whole affair! I cannot describe how that touched me, because that would not happen in any other genre. Perhaps something of Jane Austen’s generous spirit lives on in her fans, because I can even say I survived the experience having made a few friends I hadn’t known before. What a joy you all are!

Thanks again for taking your time to visit us here.  For those that are following the blog tour, be sure to follow the give away links and comment in the comment section here as well.  


All About These Dreams 
By Nicole Clarkston
Book Blurb:

An abandoned bride
            A missing man
                        And a dream that refuses to die...

Pride and patriotism lend fervor to greed and cruelty, and Fitzwilliam Darcy
is caught at the centre of a decades-old international feud. Taken far
from England, presumed dead by his family, and lost to all he holds dear, 
only one name remains as his beacon in the darkness: Elizabeth.

Georgiana Darcy is now the reluctant, heartbroken heiress to Pemberley,
and Colonel Fitwilliam her bewildered guardian. Vulnerable and unprepared,
Georgiana desperately longs for a friend, while Fitzwilliam seeks to protect her
from his own family. As the conspiracy around Darcy's death widens and 
questions mount, Colonel Fitzwilliam must confront his own past. 
An impossible dream, long ago sacrificed for duty, may become his only hope.

Newly married Lydia Wickham returns to Longbourn- alone and under
mysterious circumstances. Elizabeth Bennet watches one sister suffer and
another find joy, while she lives her own days in empty regrets over what might
have been. Believing Darcy lost forever, she closes her heart against both pain
and happiness, but finds no escape from her dreams of him.

Author Bio:

Nicole Clarkston is a book lover and a happily married mom of three. Originally from Idaho, she now lives in Oregon with her own romantic hero, several horses, and one very fat dog. She has loved crafting alternate stories and sequels since she was a child watching Disney’s Robin Hood, and she is never found sitting quietly without a book of some sort.

Nicole discovered Jane Austen rather by guilt in her early thirties―how does any book worm really live that long without a little P&P? She has never looked back. A year or so later, during a major house renovation project, she discovered Elizabeth Gaskell and fell completely in love. Her need for more time with these characters led her to simultaneously write Rumours & Recklessness, a P&P inspired novel, and No Such Thing as Luck, a N&S inspired novel. Both immediately became best selling books. The success she had with her first attempt at writing led her to write three other novels that are her pitiful homage to two authors who have so deeply inspired her.

Nicole was recently invited to join Austenvariations.com, a group of talented authors in the Jane Austen Fiction genre. In addition to her work with the Austen Variations blog, Nicole can be reached through Facebook at http://fb.me/NicoleClarkstonAuthor, Twitter @N_Clarkston, her blog at Goodreads.com, or her personal blog and website, NicoleClarkson.com.

Contact Info: (Link is embedded in the name)


Buy Links:


Buy Links for Nicole’s other books:

CreateSpace:



Amazon:


Blog Tour Schedule:

09/19   So little time…; Guest Post, Excerpt, Giveaway
09/20   My Jane Austen Book Club; Vignette, GA
09/21   From Pemberley to Milton; Review, GA
09/22   Interests of a Jane Austen Girl; Review, Excerpt, Giveaway
09/23   Just Jane 1813; Review, GA
09/24   My Vices and Weaknesses; Excerpt, GA
09/25   Babblings of a Bookworm;  Guest Post or Vignette, GA
09/26   Diary of an Eccentric; Review, Giveaway
09/27   Half Agony, Half Hope; Review, Excerpt
09/28   Darcyholic Diversions; Author Interview, GA
09/29   My Love for Jane Austen; Charcter Interview, GA
09/30   Margie’s Must Reads; Guest Post, Excerpt, GA
10/01   Savvy Verse and Wit; Review, GA
10/02   Austenesque Reviews; Character Interview, GA
10/03   Obsessed with Mr. Darcy; Review, GA
10/04   From Pemberley to Milton; Guest Post, GA

Giveaway:

The giveaway will consist of 10 eBooks and is international. For bloggers hosting a giveaway, paste one of the following Rafflecopter links into your blog. If you do not have GA by your date and want to participate, please include the Rafflecopter in your post. Reviews may include a GA.
Terms and Conditions:

Readers may enter the drawing by tweeting once a day and daily commenting on a blog post or review that has a giveaway attached for the tour. Entrants must provide the name of the blog where they commented. Remember: Tweet and comment once daily to earn extra entries.
A winner may win ONLY 1 (ONE) eBook of These Dreams by Nicole Clarkston. Each winner will be randomly selected by Rafflecopter and the giveaway is international.

Sunday, September 3, 2017

A Cheerful Chat with Catherine Lodge

A ReVisit with Catherine Lodge
Catherine Lodge's book is now available on Amazon!  Great news.  So she is dropping back by with that news and another chance to read her interview here at Darcyholic Diversions.

Catherine Lodge:  It all started on my birthday in 2015 and, however much one claims that one doesn't care about birthdays, there is still a lingering feeling that nasty surprises shouldn't happen on that day of all days.

We are having cake, Happy Birthday had been sung and the children had gone off to run round the garden and I got the ping of email arrived.  I thought it was someone wishing me Many Happy  Returns - it wasn't.
"Hi," it said.   "Thanks for publishing your story." The only trouble was, I hadn't.
With only a smart phone and a small tablet, I scoured Amazon and there it was, or rather there they were.  Two of my stories, packed into an "anthology" with an ugly cover and an illiterate title:  but worst of all under the pen name I had used while posting on the forums at meryton.com.  Someone from what I had assumed was a safe space, someone I might even have interacted and corresponded with, had stolen my stories to make money from them.  They hadn't even bothered to correct my mistakes - I don't tend to use a beta or editor when posting on-line so there were more than a few misspelt words and odd grammatical constructions.
After a couple of days frantic emailing, I managed to get first Amazon and then Google books and the Nook people to take the nasty thing down.  I didn't see a sniff of the money people had spent on it, but I thought it likely that the plagiarist hadn't either and that Amazon had just kept it.
Then I forgot about it. 
Flash forward a couple of years,  I was encouraged to submit "Fair Stands the Wind" to The Meryton Press and they accepted it.  It was edited to within an inch of its life and the published.  The paperback was there for all to see, with a gorgeous cover by the way, but there was no sign of the ebook.  Enquiries by the Press revealed that they thought that Amazon thought this submission was another attempt to plagiarise.  Amazon refused to sort it out with Meryton Press because the published wasn't one of the parties to the original dispute.
So I started emailing Amazon.  I emailed the department I'd dealt with over the plagiarism. 
Nothing for four days then a reference to another department.  So I wrote again.
Nothing for four days then a request for the information I'd already sent them.  So I sent it again.
Meanwhile, the blog tour had been and gone and the people asking when they could buy it had been told "We don't know."
Once again, nothing for four days then, stuck at a bus stop, I thought I'd check Amazon and there, at last,  was the Kindle edition of my book. In all its glory, complete with the gorgeous cover,  I never did hear from Amazon again
I've been spamming the hosts of the blog tour in the hope that people who were interested in  buying have been contacted.  I hope I haven't annoyed anyone.
And I've been left with an odd feeling.  Quite apart from the disappointment and worry, how could he or she do it?  What do you get from passing someone else's work of as your own?  Other than a very few dollars and the knowledge that you are a thief, that is.

 A Cheerful Chat with Catherine Lodge
 
Interviewed by Barbara Tiller Cole

BTCole:  UPDATE---September 20, 2017--Amazon NOW has Catherine's book AND the drawings have already been held, but if you missed the interview before, please take the time to read now...

I have had a few technical issues with Darcyholic Diversions but am very grateful that I managed to save my blog with the help from a few friends.  

Today I am interviewing Catherine Lodge as she celebrates her new book, Fair Stands the Wind.  Please be sure to read to the end to learn about the give-aways available.  Catherine is having her own technical issues as the soft cover of her new book is available at Amazon but not the Kindle version.  Keep an eye out for it though as many 'elves' are working behind the scene to be sure that you get to read her novel soon!  And without further delay, I present Catherine Lodge...

BTCole:  Catherine, I am so glad to have you here with us at Darcyholic Diversions!  Welcome!  So tell us, who is Catherine Lodge?
CLodge:  Thanks for having me, Barbara!  Catherine Lodge is a pseudonym as I am incredibly shy about people I know, knowing what I write.  I've always been worried that my writing reveals more about me that I am comfortable with my family and friends knowing about - I suspect this is mere vanity since probably no one would care to do the dissection, but there it is
BTCole:  I do understand that Catherine as I initially developed my penname to be sure that people in my real life would never know that I had written a sex scene lol.  In fact more Austen writers know my real name than the other way around.    Where are you from Catherine?
CLodge:   I live in Yorkshire in the UK, an impossibly beautiful part of the world - in fact I live quite near to the Pemberley of my imagination, Fountains Hall near Ripon - only my imaginary one is a bit bigger :D
Inline image 1
BTCole:  Do you have a picture of your Pemberley that you would like to share with us?  Would love to know more about your about your Pemberley inspiration?
CLodge:  There that should give you an idea. My Pemberley would look that that but a little larger.  You can't tell from the photo but behind the house there is a very steep hillside so the house is only a couple of rooms wide, mine is a little wider, perhaps a square with a central courtyard.
BTCole:  I understand that your profession was as an attorney.  Tell us a little bit about that. 
CLodge:   I am a more or less retired now.  I trained and worked as a lawyer, prosecuting corporate crime mostly until my health forced me to look for something a bit less stressful and I took to lecturing, mainly for a training company specializing in Environmental Law for Business and Industry.  Since a lot of my work arose about the time that the Water Industry was privatised in the UK, I have an encyclopedic knowledge of the development of Britain's sewerage system.  You must let me tell you about The Great Stink sometime, when the Thames was so smelly they nearly moved Parliament to Oxford.  Or the day the River Fleet exploded.
BTCole:  Well now you have gotten my attention!  You have to tell us about The Great Stink!  What a name!
CLodge:  Well, in the mid-19thC London grew at a phenomenal rate and the fact that there was no sewerage system soon became apparently to every nose for miles around.  So, in an effort to deal with it, the Government decreed that all houses should be plumbed into the existing surface water drains, the ones that were supposed to just deal with rainwater by funnelling into the Thames and then out to sea.  In the Summer of 1858, two hot months and some high tides on the Thames had the effect of keeping the er..... contents in the river, right in the bit where a lot of people lived and the Houses of Parliament were sitting.  It was so ghastly that they considered moving Parliament to Oxford until the Summer Recess happened and the reliable old English Rain arrived to flush everything out.  This led to the construction of Bazelgette's great interceptor sewer, which goes all the way down the North Bank, picking up the sewers, drains and rivers that used to go into the Thames - frequently within feet of where drinking water was extracted - and funnelling them all so far downstream that the tide had to take them out. It's why The Thames has a road beside the river called "The Embankment" - underneath is still Bazelgette's great sewer.
BTCole:  This reminds me that I have been checking in with my Austen inspired friends that live in Texas. Grateful that Maria Grace, Jan Hahn and Janet Taylor are all well and dry.  All had a little damage to deal with in their yards but their houses were spared from the flood and winds.    Well, now you need to tell us about the day that River Fleet exploded?
CLodge:  By the mid-19thC the River Fleet which used to run above ground into the Thames, was almost entirely build over and enclosed.  It was also full of er..... waste.  One dry month in the 1830s the contents fermented, exploded and the explosion was channelled down the river into the Thames where it flattened two houses and swamped a boat.  I tried to find newspaper reports but it's too early to find anything easily and I've never been able to visit the National Newspaper Archive at Collingdale.
BTCole:  What else would you like to share with the readers here so that they get to know a little bit more about you.
CLodge:  Um what else.  Never married, never met the right man. Oh, once won a five figure sum on a TV quiz show in the middle of the night, which is why my house is now paid off.  Winnings aren't taxed in the UK so that was nice.
BTCole:  Winning the lottery!  Now I envy you there!    What do you do with your time other than write now?
CLodge:   I like the Opera and taking the children in my family - I have 9 niblings and two great-nieces - out and about.  I volunteer at the local library giving computer classes to people who are stuck.  I specialise in the even-older-than-me category.  My record is a 93 year old nun I taught to use the Internet so she could learn Spanish on-line.  
BTCole:  How did you discover Jane Austen's works?  Was it love at first site?  Or did you give it a studied air, like Mr. Collins did his delicate compliments?
CLodge:  I was always a voracious reader, in the 60s and 70s it was either reading or the TV and I didn't enjoy much of that.  There were 5 secondhand bookshops where I lived, so for a pound or so you could pick up all sorts.  I read a huge amount of 19thC literature, starting with Dickens and the Brontes (they were local lasses, you see) and then Jane Austen.  Starting with Pride and Prejudice and then  Sense and Sensibility and then on and on.  The only one I can't say I really like is Northanger Abbey, which I put down to being made to read it in High School but an unsympathetic teacher.  Every time I think, "I really must give it another go," the voice of Mr Sessions starts droning on and on and I lose the will to live. 

Now I come to think about it, he had some really odd ideas about what to give to 14 year olds - what the heck were we supposed to make of Sons and Lovers?
Full Book Cover for Catherine's New Book
BTCole:  No Wonder you wanted a penname!  I read in one of your other posts about your writing style and how 'Guerilla Writing' has helped you.  Can  you tell us a little bit about that? 
CLodge:  I am a perfectionist, if I let myself be.  So much so, that I end up paralysed by the fear of failure.  I wrote some stories in various fandoms which were well received: I then became morbidly convinced that I would never write anything as good ever again.  So I stopped.

After a bit, I told myself not to be so damn silly.  All my life, I've been afraid of other people's reactions.  Why?  So I made myself write, check it through the same day, and then post it to discussion boards.  I didn't fret about where the plot was going, I just had a vague idea where I wanted to end up.  A very vague idea.  And you know what?  Ideas rushed in to fit the space available.  I'd write myself into a corner, go for a walk and have an idea of how to get out of it.
BTCole:  How did the inspiration for this book come to you?  And was Persuasion a part of your inspiration at all? 
CLodge:  Not at all.  Nope, there's a shout out to Persuasion in a latish chapter, but that was the earliest it even crossed my mind.  I was posting in parts, so people mentioned it in comments but I did not have it in mind at all.  What sort of Janeite am I?

As I mentioned somewhere else, I was packing my books away before the builders came to replace my kitchen roof, and when I got to the shelf of CS Forresters, Patrick O'Briens and Alexander Kents, thought I to myself, thought I, "Hmmmm Captain Darcy, now *there's* an idea.
It's taken me years to pluck up the courage to send my baby-book out into the world, where I can't wait to see how it makes it's way.
BTCole:  There are not many Austen inspired stories with Darcy as a second son, so that in itself made this book unique.  Anything else you would like to tell us about your story?
CLodge:  Um - go and buy it?  At least as soon as Amazon drags its head out of its fundament and lets me publish it.  I was plagiarised a couple of years ago and wrote to Amazon to assert my copyright.  They now seem to think I'm plagiarising myself and are sitting on my book.  Anyone who has a voodoo doll of Mr Bezos is cordially invited to stick pins in it.
BTCole: Are you writing anything now?  Want to give your readers any hints?
CLodge:  Weeellll, I have an idea for a book called "The Wicked Mr Darcy" which I ought to write before someone gets there first, at least with the title, but it will have to wait until this one is out.  After that I'd like to get A New Beginning out.  Elizabeth and Darcy meet in circumstances where they each come to a proper realisation of each other's sterling qualities.  So everything turns out fine....... or does it? 
BTCole:  Thanks for being spending some time with me today, Catherine!  Hope you will come visit with us again.  

 Enter to Win

For Give Aways, comment on the interveiw here and register on the Rafflecopter link below:


 

Book Blurb:



We all know that in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Mr Darcy is proud and prejudiced because he is a wealthy landowner who believes himself above his company; and that Elizabeth Bennet can afford to be proud and prejudiced because she believes she has the freedom to make choices for herself.

But what if Mr Darcy is the second son, sent to sea at a young age? What if Elizabeth is trapped by circumstances, with an ill father on one side and an understandably desperate mother on the other?

Meet Captain Darcy of the Royal Navy, a successful frigate captain, with ample prize-money and a sister he needs to provide for while he is at sea. Meet Elizabeth Bennet, who needs a husband and is trying to resign herself to Mr Collins, the worst “least worst alternative” in the history of literature.

Author Bio:

Catherine Lodge is a semi-retired lawyer and lecturer, living in Yorkshire–a part of the UK even more beautiful than Derbyshire. One of five daughters, although by birth order regrettably the Jane, she found 19th Century literature early in her teens and never looked back–even if that meant her school essays kept coming back with “archaic!” written in the margin next to some of her favourite words. She still thinks that “bruited” is a much nicer word than “rumoured.”

After years of drafting leases and pleadings, she finally started to write for fun in her forties and has never stopped since. Much of this will never see the light of day, having been fed to the digital equivalent of a roaring bonfire, but “Fair Stands the Wind” is the first book she thinks worthy of public attention.
She spends her day fixing computer problems for friends and family, singing in her local choir, and avoiding the ironing


Contact Info for Catherine Lodge:



Buy Links Not Yet Active:

Fair Stands the Wind   (Amazon UK)


Blog Tour Schedule:

08/30   Babblings of a Bookworm;  Guest Post or Vignette, GA
08/31   My Vices and Weaknesses; Character Interview, GA
09/01   Austenesque Reviews; Vignette, Excerpt, GA
09/02   Interests of a Jane Austen Girl; Review, Excerpt, Giveaway
09/03   DarcyholicDiversions; Author Interview, GA
09/04   Half Agony, Half Hope; Review, Vignette
09/05   Of Pens and Pages; Review, Excerpt, GA
09/06   Diary of an Eccentric; Guest Post, Vignette, Giveaway
09/07   From Pemberley to Milton; Guest Post or Vignette, Excerpt, GA
09/08   So little time…; Guest Post, Excerpt, Giveaway
09/09   My Love for Jane Austen; Vignette, GA
09/10   Margie’s Must Reads; Review, Excerpt, GA
09/11   My Jane Austen Book Club; Guest Post, Excerpt, GA
09/12   Just Jane 1813; Review, GA