We are delighted to announce the three winners of a paperback copy of The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen!
There were 31 entries in the draw, and the winners are:
kneyda
Ashley
Carmen
Many congratulations to all 3 of you, and thank you so much to everyone who entered. We really enjoyed reading your responses.
Please can the winners email me on cass {dot} grafton at yahoo {dot} com with your mailing address, and I’ll get your book out to you as soon as possible!
As you probably know (because we pretty much haven’t shut up about it over the last month), the long-awaited sequel to the first book in the Austen Adventures series, The Unexpected Past of Miss Jane Austen, is coming out one month today (7th November 2019… It’s already the 7th somewhere in the world, isn’t it?)
Billed by our publisher, Canelo Escape, as a page-turning story of adventure, friendship and family, the story picks up where the first book in the series, The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen, ends, taking the familiar characters on another exciting escapade, this time into the past.
You can read the blurb to The Unexpected Past of Miss Jane Austen here, and you can find it up for pre-order on the ‘Where to Buy‘ page here.
The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen was released in September, and to celebrate the run-up to the release of the sequel, we’re giving away THREE copies of the paperback edition of the book.
The giveaway is free to enter and is open worldwide! All you have to do to enter is leave a comment telling us your favourite Jane Austen novel or adaptation. That’s it! No more, no less!
Entries close at midnight UK time on Sunday, 20th October 2019, and the names of all entrants will be entered in the draw, with three winners selected by an impartial third party.
Winners will be announced here on the Blog and the news will be shared on social media. If a prize is not claimed within seven days of the winners being announced, a further name will be chosen to receive the book.
So what’s it about? Here’s the blurb of this uplifting, comedic tale of time travel and friendship:
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~
So there it is! A chance to win a free paperback of The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen! So what are you waiting for? (please don’t say ‘the sequel’)
Zip on down to the Comments and share with us your favourite Jane Austen novel or adaptation (just the title will do if you don’t have time to say more)!
And if you don’t win the paperback and still fancy reading the book, the eBook is also available with this very pretty cover, and available through the Where to Buy page as well!
If you’ve read my previous post, you’ll know Cass and I were set to appear at the Jane Austen Festival’s Pre-Festival Get Together on Friday, September 13 in Bath!
What I haven’t mentioned yet is that my little traveling party (my 16 year old daughter, Abby, and my mother-in-law) decided to take advantage of the opportunity to walk in the famous Grand Regency Promenade during the Festival.
This is a costumed event that is always popular and… if I can just say it – AWESOME.
Cass had walked the Promenade before, but this year she decided to watch and was therefore designated as photographer. As for the rest of us, we needed to start from scratch.
First thing was to pick fabric.
I was pretty nervous about this part. I’m not great at visualizing a finished product. The last time I picked fabric for something it was an armchair and I regretted it and continue to regret it 18 years later.
I also know that a lot of the wonderful people who dress Regency for this type of event choose beautiful era appropriate fabric and patterns, so I went into the fabric store stressed by the entire idea.
Luckily, when I get like that my family knows well enough to ignore me and get on with the task at hand!
And sure enough, Abby was the one who caught sight of a pretty cream fabric with little flowers that looked right enough. And it happened to have a darker, sister fabric that I thought would compliment my complexion better as well. Sold!
It just so happens that my mother and my mother-in-law both know their way around a needle and thread. So my mother-in-law chose to make her own dress, and my mother got stuck with doing the other two.
They got to work on the measuring, cutting, sewing, and my mom twisted our ears until we made time to try on the dresses during the different stages. In fact, my mother-in-law ended up making not one but TWO dresses. Both very cute.
(Yes, never fear, I am aware I hit the mother AND mother-in-law jackpot. How often does that happen?)
Meanwhile I went hunting on Etsy for bonnets. This is my daughter and I in ours:
The next worry was packing them!
And then, after a flight, a few days of all sorts of fun, and a quick iron, we were dressed ready for the Promenade!
Cass and I were honored to be invited to launch our new release through Canelo Escape, The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen, at the Pre-Festival Get Together for the Jane Austen Festival in Bath last month, and it was a fantastic night!
The book is, after all, set during this very Festival in the beautiful city of Bath, so what could be more fitting?
The sell-out event took place at St Swithin’s Church (where Jane Austen’s parents were married), and we arrived to find the lovely Festival volunteers had readied everything. All we had to do was set out our books and publicity material and wait nervously for people to arrive (Cass felt a lot better once she had a glass of wine in her hand)!
We’d had posters made up for both The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen and the sequel, The Unexpected Past of Miss Jane Austen (releasing 7th November but already up for pre-order!), along with the blurb – which you can read here for the first book in the Austen Adventures series, and here for the second. This enabled us to have some lovely conversations with people attending the event, and we were delighted with the interest in our stories.
We’d made up some goody bags for the first 30 people to buy signed books, which proved very popular, especially the Californian candy and the Swiss chocolate!
We were honored to have Dr. Gabrielle Malcolm (amongst other things, an Austen scholar and author of the upcoming non-fiction book, There’s Something About Darcy – releasing on 11th November) introducing us and moderating a Q&A, which was a lot of fun.
Afterwards, there was time for more conversation as we signed books and handed out the goody bags, during which we met some lovely people from across the globe.
We were also touched and thrilled to see several friends there, who had all travelled some distance to support us.
Tabby Cow 