Month: August 2019

The Event of the Year

~ Ada ~ 4 Comments

Most of you know that, much as I love the people that I travel to see and the places that I stay when I travel, TRAVEL, in and of itself is not something I love.

But once in awhile, there comes an opportunity that even I am eager to travel for.

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In The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen, our characters participate in The Jane Austen Festival in Bath. This is a weeklong, world famous event Cass has been to several times and they (very kindly) invited us to be part of their pre-festival get together on September 13… nowhere special… only at St Swithens Church, the same church where Jane Austen’s parents were married. No big deal.

Ummm.. that’s a lie. This is a very big deal to us. Our friend Gabrielle Malcolm will be moderating for us (hey – she can make a conversation about forks interesting, so you know it’s going to be a great time).

We so appreciate the festival organizers for thinking of us and inviting us and we will be there with bells on.

Hope to see a few familiar faces there!

 

Don’t judge a book by it’s… wait! Go on, then!

~ Ada ~ 30 Comments

Hello again everyone!

If you follow Cass or I on any social media platforms you probably already know our biggest news (also mentioned in my last post): the eBook of The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen… AND it’s sequel (I don’t think I’m allowed to tell you the title yet) were acquired by Canelo Digital Publishing at the end of last year.

One of the many things we were excited about on entering the traditionally published world was that there would be real artists and professionals creating our covers!

Our first cover will always be near and dear to us, but at the end of the day it didn’t reflect the light hearted nature of our writing and so… drumroll please… HERE is what the professionals came up with:

I love the color and the whimsy of it. I love the animals and the little Royal Crescent at the top. Hopefully it will grab readers that our first cover might have put off.

But wait! There’s more!

We did edit the manuscript before submitting to Canelo, and with the interior updated to reflect this, it seemed the perfect time to brighten up the paperback cover as well.  

Of course we couldn’t step on the publisher’s toes as far as making the two too similar, but we found something refined and pretty (just like main character Rose).

So HERE is what we came up with:

This means that if you have a book with this new cover, then you have the new and revised version of our book, which we are immensely proud of.

Whereas if you have this cover:

Print

Congratulations! You have the OG (this is apparently a reference no one is going to get based on asking several peers – basically I just mean ‘the original’) version of The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen.

Regardless of the covers, it might be sensible to tell you a little about the inside of the book, for those who haven’t yet read it!

Here we go:

When a time travelling Jane Austen gets stuck in modern-day Bath it’s up to avid Janeite Rose Wallace to save her… because she’s the only one who knows that Jane exists!

Rose Wallace’s world revolves around all things Austen, and with the annual festival in Bath – and the arrival of dishy archaeologist, Dr Aiden Trevellyan – just around the corner, all is well with the world…

But then a mysterious woman who bears more than a passing resemblance to the great author moves in upstairs, and things take a disastrous turn. Rose’s new neighbour is Jane Austen, whose time travel adventure has been sabotaged by a mischievous dog, trapping her in the twenty-first century.

Rose’s life is instantly changed – new home, new job, new friends – but she’s the only one who seems to have noticed! To right the world around her, she will have to do whatever it takes to help Jane get back home to write Rose’s beloved novels. Because a world without Mr Darcy? It’s not worth living in!

~o0o~

GIVEAWAY TIME!!

As we approach the release date for the eBook (12th September – it’s available for pre-order here!), we’ve decided to give away a few copies of the new, revised paperback! What’s more, these will be signed by both authors (not a thing that happens very often with the distance between us!)

All you have to do is leave a comment on this post, letting us know your thoughts on any of the covers (do you have a favourite, anything you love, anything you don’t), and then we’ll enter your name in the draw, which will be made on Sunday, 15th September in Bath!

Draw open internationally! Closing date for entries is 12th September 2019.

Thank you for bearing with us! We hope you enjoy the next few months where we should be posting here more regularly!

It was the best of times…

~ Ada ~ 9 Comments

 

It has been quite a while since I’ve been here on our own beloved tabbycow.com (Cass! I think we need to grab the addy tabbyhippo now too! – sorry, private joke that you’d know about if you followed Cass or I on twitter!)

I came to update you all on changes to the cover of our first book together, The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen. But lo and behold, when I got here, I saw that we had never officially marked our partnership with Canelo Digital Publishing here on Tabby Cow!!

And THAT was ridiculous! But then, that made me remember WHY we never did so.

It was the best of times…

Cass, being all things brilliant – but in this case Twitter savvy in particular – entered our book in Canelo’s open pitch in the Summer of 2018. There were discussions and contracts and boom! Cass and I had joined the Canelo family.

This was exciting and terrifying, particularly since Canelo wanted not just The Particular Charm, but its sequel which, if you’ve read the first book you know, we’d left a pretty wide open door for.

An open door that we’d not yet walked thru! So, one of the first things Cass and I did after signing with our publisher (after sharing a drink over Facetime together), was book a ticket for me to go to the UK so that Cass and I could outline the sequel and we could officially meet with Canelo and sign on the dotted line.

While Cass and I are quite adept at communicating over the interwebs in all it’s many forms, there is something about being in the same room that is important for us when outlining. We shared an adorable place very near the Royal Crescent. We ate lovely meals and drank Luxe Chocolate Bailey’s Irish Cream and saw friends and ironed out plot points and I fell asleep every twenty minutes. (I’m usually very unaffected by the journey TO the UK. I usually fall into a jet lag coma when I get home).

We also toured all the places our characters would be walking around in the sequel and just generally had a lovely time.

It was the worst of times…

Honestly, most of the work was done (thank goodness) when I started to feel… awful.

I couldn’t eat or sleep or lay down or sit up or walk or be a functioning adult. Joan (a friend and our B&B hostess) very sweetly took care of me (as did Cass, of course) as I spent my last day and a half wondering if anyone would be willing to just knock me over the head until I could get better. Spoiler: no one was willing to do it.

I am so so lucky that my seatmates on the flight home were total arses because I didn’t feel bad one bit that I looked like I was carrying the plague.

I got home, dropped by bags, hugged my kids, and went straight to the ER. I then spent the next two months trying to figure out what sort of antibiotics would finally do the job. Here is me back at the ER on Thanksgiving still trying to figure it out! I wish I looked this good for my family Christmas pictures!

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Anyway… I think that robbed some of our enthusiasm for what we’d just accomplished (outlining the sequel!!! I’m so excited to share with you when we can!!).

I wonder if you’ll be able to gather any hints to the sequel by noting where we went to research 😉 😉 ;).