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.
We’re excited to formally reveal the cover for the upcoming sequel to The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen! Billed as ‘a page-turning story of adventure, friendship and family’, it’s now up for pre-order here.
It’s Isn’t it pretty? And here’s the cover blurb:
After becoming trapped in present-day Bath due to a mishap with her time-travelling charm, Jane Austen is safe and sound back in the 1800s thanks to Rose’s help. Now, Rose is ready to focus on her fledgling romance with dreamy Dr Aiden Trevellyan.
But when Jane reappears in the present, it looks like Rose and Aiden have no choice but to follow her back to 1813…
Staying in the Austen household, Rose and Aiden are introduced to a number of interesting figures from the past, including Jane’s eccentric – and surprisingly modern – neighbour. Suddenly Rose’s life is in need of a re-write as she discovers some unexpected ties to Jane Austen’s world and her past.
The sequel to The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen will be released on 7th November 2019.
If you haven’t read the first book in the series, you can obtain it here:
The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen – eBook
The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen – paperback
Hello! We’re back!
It’s been a whirlwind of a week, with us both flying to the UK for the launch event of The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen at the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, but now we’re back home and able to announce the winners of our paperback giveaway (from the earlier post, Don’t judge a book by it’s… wait! Go on, then!)
There were three copies up for grabs (signed by both authors), and here are the winners:
Please email me on cassandra (dot) grafton (at) gmail (dot) com with the address you’d like your book sent to, and we’ll make sure they wing their way to you directly! 😉
Thank you to everyone who entered into the spirit of the draw and many congratulations to our winners!
More news coming soon about the upcoming sequel to The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen (official cover reveal tomorrow from Canelo) and some insights into our adventures in Bath this last weekend!
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.
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!
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:
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:
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~
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 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!
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 😉 😉 ;).
You can say a lot of things about Cass and I. We’re brilliant and funny and obsessed with cats to name a few. But you can’t say we overly self promote ourselves; considering I’m seven months late telling you all about a really wonderful book signing we did here in Pasadena, CA.
September 24, 2017
Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena is a historic local shop that is notorious for supporting artists from the community. I have loved Vroman’s since I moved here in 1998.
After our mountain-top experience for our book launch at 4 Sydney Place in Bath, England, we always had the intention of doing something on my side of the pond. After some research and communication with Vroman’s, we decided a book signing there would be ideal. And then… well, obviously… we’d need a party afterwards.
As excited as we were to plan another visit together and celebrate The Particular Charm of Miss Jane Austen with our friends and family, we were not overtly excited about the presentation portion of the book signing evening. Cass had a list of diseases she planned to use to get out of it, but I promised her that there would only be four people in the audience and that we’d be back at my house for the party in no time (she had no problem with the party portion of the plan).
Well, we had a few more than four people in the audience. And we were surprised to get a solid slate of questions from them. While we did have a good set of people that were there to support us because they knew us, there were quite a few from the public too.
This was beautiful and wonderful but we were *not* prepared. We signed books for an hour, and we sold out!
After that, we went home to an amazingly catered meal by my mom and an amazing show of support from our friends and family. Special appreciation goes to our husbands who were more than supportive, more than gracious and more than wonderful.
Thank you to my mom for the food and help, for Megan for taking photos for us and everyone for the support! We will endeavor to be slightly quicker to update Tabbycow the next time something exciting happens!
Cheers!
Tabby Cow 