Noe and Cindy write: 2014

Thursday

The Sun Also Shines for me

IT'S OUT! ... THE SUN ALSO SHINES FOR ME
featuring Georgiana Darcy

Get your copy, hot off the press! Or straight from the digital world, whichever you prefer ;)

In this story, we took shy Georgiana Darcy and the undaunted Mary Bennet and made them close friends. (See our previous post about Mary) You may remember, Pride and Prejudice describes Georgiana as being so shy she can barely speak among strangers. Quite likely, after a year of being with her brother and Elizabeth, she would have grown out of that, at least somewhat. Jane Austen says at the end of P&P: “Georgiana had the highest opinion in the world of Elizabeth” and that from Lizzy “her mind received knowledge which had never before fallen in her way.”

You can imagine then, that Lizzy’s sisters Mary and Georgiana would have come to know one another through their new connection. We felt showing these two girls associating and drawing close—in effect drawing strength from each other—would make for a great story. The natural response of their friendship shows us a maturing of each one, bringing them out from the background and allowing them to display what fine qualities lay hidden from our view. Hence, we considered the appropriate title for our new book should be The Sun Also Shines for me, because it does for both of them.

In writing our novel, we did not want to make the characters of Mary and Georgiana so altered from P&P that they would be unrecognizable; rather, we wanted them to be like a relative you haven't seen since the last family reunion ... you know who they are, they're just older and more mature. We aimed for our readers to have a feeling of familiarity with P&P, focusing the light on these two girls who had been hiding in the shadows, as it were. We just know you’ll enjoy it!

It is currently available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle format, CreateSpace, Barnes and Noble, and will soon be available on other book websites as well. (In case you can't tell on your browser, the bold words are links to those webpages)

That middle child!

Miss Mary Bennet

We chose Mary Bennet as the main character of our second novel because of where she falls in the Bennet family. I had been doing some reading on "middle child syndrome" and it struck me as a wonderful opportunity to give a voice to those people that are so often ignored or easily swept into the background. You could say my feelings about this subject were personal, because the individual for whom I have the greatest respect and high opinion of, my dear wife, is a middle child like Mary.

The more I thought about how amazing my good wife is, therefore, the more I considered what potential there must be in the fictitious character Mary Bennet, who had the tenacity to study diligently and read extensively, something she did for the sole purpose of bettering herself. And this in the face of a family of siblings each pursuing, in one way or the other, the pleasures and advantages to be found at the time. In addition to this, Mary had the will to excel at the piano by constant practice, even without the stated advice of someone like Lady Catherine; it seems she received no encouragement from anyone in the family for that matter. I asked myself, why would Mary not improve with the passage of time? Certainly seeing the events in her family’s life would have undoubtedly caused her to think seriously about what she wanted to do herself. So I set about giving Mary a life of her own.

In the writing team of Noe and Cindy, the imagination to come up with a story is from me, but Cindy contributes the touch that makes it more worth reading. We both look forward to the release of this book in the very near future and hearing what you think of it!

You may want to read:
The Middle Child Syndrome
The Secret Powers of Middle Children
Middle Child Syndrome - keep scrolling down on this one
What are the effects of middle child syndrome?

Sunday

Coming soon ... our new novel!

We are excited to inform all lovers of Jane Austen fan fiction that we will very soon be releasing a new novel about Mary Bennet and Georgiana Darcy. This is a follow up to our first book, Mr. Darcy falls in love.

The story takes place more than a year after Darcy and Elizabeth are married and proceeds from the notion that Mary and Georgiana have developed a friendship based on their shared interest of playing the piano as well their similar feelings toward social gatherings.

We developed the characters based on what Pride and Prejudice tells us about the two girls, so you will find Mary and Georgiana recognizable except for what could reasonably be expected in the way of personal growth with the passage of time.

This tale was born from Mary's unique personality among the Bennet sisters. In Pride and Prejudice, there is an inkling of Elizabeth Bennet's angst about the options available to women of the time; in our novel about Mary, we have been able to take that further and make it the driving force of the story. Even now, two hundred years later, women are still confronted with obstacles in their pursuits just because of being female. This makes the story resonate with today's modern women.

Stay tuned for further posts on the new book, including its title.

Noe

Thursday

"Pride and Prejudice" and "Mr Darcy falls in love" side by side

Noe and I have recently been reading our book, Mr Darcy falls in love, along with Pride and Prejudice just for the enjoyment of it. Of course, when writing it, we diligently referred to her incomparable book many times so as to write our story from Darcy's point of view with the same timeline and events.

Here's a section I really enjoy, where the two stories are discussing the same episode, one through Lizzy's eyes and the other through Darcy's. I hope you enjoy it too!

Pride and Prejudice: