The best Compliment ever!

Little Angelic Rose

@LilAngelicRose

"This is, without doubt, the best Regency romance I have ever read, short of ‘Persuasion’. A wonderful story with that delightful Austen feel yet completely Ms Black."

This is the best compliment I have received on one of my books, certainly for The Matfen Affair, which is the one Little Angelic Rose is talking about. Can't tell you how much it pleased me! I went to bed last night and thought about what I'd written, how the storyline developed, and drifted off into dream land no doubt with a satisfied smile on my face.

It also encourages me to get on and finish Viking Wedding! There isn't far to go now, definitely into the last quarter of the book, and if I make a relly good effort, I can finish it very soon. I've been checking and re-checking as I go along, so there won't be too much editing to do.

Re-Writes

I see someone has re-written The Sheik.
The original story, written by Edith Maude Hull in 1919, was her most popular book and became a famous film starring Rudolph Valentino. The book is still in print today, but out of copyright in the USA and Europe.

Victoria Vane has written a steamy version using the original characters and the same storyline. She has simply added the word "retold" to the title and placed the original author's name on the cover below her own. I find it amazing that this is legal.

I know that there are some well known authors  in this country preparing or actually engaged on re-writing Jane Austen's stories. Are we so devoid of imagination that we can think of nothing new, but have to plunder works that have been in print for decades? Does it not make a nonsense of copyright? Is it any better than plagiarism?

I feel sure that publishers have consulted lawyers and, like accountants slipping between the legalities, a loophole has been found that allows this to take place. Perhaps the fact that both authors are dead has something to do with it. Perhaps the person or company who holds the estate of the author has given permission and that is all that matters. But is it right? I don't think so. I hope no one buys the wretched things, but I suspect they'll sell in shiploads. And to some people, that's all that matters. Look out for re-writes of every other classic novel in the next few years.

 

This celeb thing

Good pal Anita Davison has a blog up today entitled Jane Austen Didn't Have a Critique Group, and the thought made me smile. But for all we know, she may well have the equivalent around her in family and friends. I know she supposedly wrote in secret, but given the time writing a novel longhand takes, her sister at the very least must have been curious. How many letters can one person write? Especially when they don't go out to the post!

The main thrust of Anita's piece is that everyone seems to be writing a book these days. Anita and I live at opposite ends of the country, and I can safely say that but for the twenty or so people in my writers' group, no one else I know is a) writing a book or b) interested in writing one. Unless they're doing a Jane Austen and keeping quiet about it.

But like Anita, I deplore the number of celebrity novels out on sale. Some of them are not celebrities in my mind. I used to read Hello and OK magazines occasionally - mainly because I liked their range of photographs, but these days I recognise very few of the so called "celebs." A case in point - until yesterday I had never heard of the latest, greatest ever boyband One Direction. Now I've seen them, they look like very young teenagers, all with carefully coiffed hair. I know the Beatles looked young when they first hit the world, but heavens! this lot talk about it being difficult to leave their mums to go on tour! One wonders if they're old enough to go into a pub and order a drink.

I bought Rafa's biography because I'm interested in his tennis career. He was 25 when it came out, but in tennis terms, he'd had a life as a pro player from fifteen or sixteen. I suppose people buy celeb biogs because they're interested in acting or being a celeb themselves. Maybe they want to know how those people made it through the crowds of other young hopefuls. It's almost the same thing as everyone wanting to write a novel - everyone wants to be famous these days.

Here's a link to Anita's blog: http://thedisorganisedauthor.blogspot.co.uk

Austen re-written?

The book pages are full of publisher HarperCollins commissioning Joanna Trollope to write a contemporary reworking of Austen's novel, Sense and Sensibility. It is to be the first of a "major" new series in which modern authors reimagine Austen’s books in a contemporary setting.

HarperFiction publishing director Louisa Joyner came up with the idea after reading a comparison between Trollope and Austen – Trollope herself has said that "comparisons with Jane Austen make me twitch. She is a Great: I am a Good - on a good day".

"TV adaptations of Austen all focus on one reading of her: they are all about the romance. But actually she was such an acute social commenter – and economics were such an important part of it," said Joyner. This led to wondering how a contemporary novelist would deal with the stories.
She describes the new series as a "conversation" between Austen and today's novelists. This is no attempt to better Jane. “It's a respectful conversation, and if it ends up with people talking more about Austen and Trollope, then that's a good thing. It's not a competition. It is a literary celebration, and all debate is good."

John Mullan, Professor of English at University College London, said the project was part of "a time-honoured literary genre". "In the 18th century they used to call it imitation," he said. "It's an old tradition - Pope did Horace, Dr Johnson did Juvenal, now Trollope is doing Austen ... I think it's fine. It always works best if the people who enjoy it most know the original - that's the test."
HarperCollins is currently in talks with other "authors of global literary significance" about the remaining five Austen novels. Joyner would not comment on suggestions that Stephen King might produce an interesting take on Northanger Abbey, or that an Ian Rankin crime twist to Emma could prove fun.
Now the last two suggestions could be interesting, don't you think?

Squirrels in the snow

We had a dusting of snow yesterday. It was hard to tell if it was a severe frost or snow at times, but it certainly looked pretty and the temperature was minus 1.5C in the sun mid afternoon. We went to Wallington and had the beautiful grounds to our selves. I think we passed only a dozen people in two hours.

We saw this little squirrel foraging like crazy and I have lots of pics of them with heads down and tails up! The National Trust have taken down the feeding stations because they fear they spread the pox that the greys carry, which is good, but it means the little fellows - and they are little - have to work that much harder in this cold hard world.

This is the landscape in which they live. Overnight we've had more snow, and it is snowing as I look out of the window so I'm not going into town for shopping and lunch with a friend as planned. "Half and inch of snow in the UK and chaos ensues on the roads as every one drives as if they are an old-age pensioner" commented someone on the radio this morning, and much as I resent the Old Age Pensioner tag I have to admit it is true.

So it is back to work again. I'm running through Till the Day Go Down (the new title I've given Warden's Bride) before offering it to my publisher. I knew I needed a better title because the heroine never became the bride of a Warden, but it gave me a tag to hang on to until I thought of something better. The next thing is to try my hand at loglines for it. I find it really hard to condense the story down to one sparky sentence. "Confident Harry finds his mission and life endangered when he runs foul of Alina's brutal father. " Doesn't seem like enough, does it?

I have to add that I'm revelling in the ITV3 concentration on historical fiction this week. The Jane Austen films and tv specials are being re-run, and there's a lovely series on Costume Drama running alongside. It is a fascinating compilation of clips from old and new historical dramas from Brideshead to Sharpe via Pride and Prejudice. Wonderful! The only problem is deciding wether to watch The Devil's Whore, a new first showing of the Civil War story about Angelica Fanshaw or Billie Piper's Mansfied Park. What a choice - I opted for Angelica. It's pretty gory in parts, but the cast is good and the story sound.