Welcome back rom com author Jeanette Watts! Today we’re chatting about Jane Austen Lied to Me – the audiobook!!
During her virtual book tour, Jeanette will be giving away a Jane Austen coloring book (US resident only). To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit her other tour stops and enter there, too!
Bio:
Jeanette Watts just can’t seem to follow the rules – or color inside the lines.
When she writes inside one genre, instead of following the rules, she twists and breaks them. When authors are told to write in only one genre, she writes books in different genres. Instead of sticking to writing books, she writes screenplays and one-acts. Her YouTube Channel is about dancing… except when it’s about making costumes. Or historic homes. Or trains. Or cars.
A well-written story (or an interesting video to share with people) is apparently more important to her than the algorithms for marketing.
Welcome back to Reviews and Interviews, Jeanette. Please tell us about your newest release.
Jane Austen Lied to Me is now available as an audiobook! This has been a LONG time in the making. Audiobooks are expensive and difficult to produce, and I am very particular about vocal talent. I found the perfect reader in someone I worked with at a history museum – she was an actress with the perfect voice! She got a start… but production problems kept mounting until we gave up. I tried finding vocal talent at the University of Illinois when I first moved to Champaign. But I moved here during Covid, and communications with the University are clearly spotty for people outside the system.
And then I randomly saw that one of my former dancers back in Ohio was starting a career as a voiceover talent! I contacted her, and we got started.
Even then, it was like taking the Oregon Trail with a wagon and a team of oxen. Endless obstacles and interruptions. Moves. Technical difficulties. Medical misadventures. Professional interruptions. But we were both too stubborn to quit, and here we are with a finished audiobook!
Kristyna’s reading was worth the wait. She has such an expressive voice, and so much talent, she is now reading audiobooks for Penguin Random Audio House! So I got lucky having known her first. Or I never would have been able to get her!
What inspired you to write this book?
Perversity. This book is sort of an in-joke for Jane Austen fans. My heroine’s life keeps turning into a Jane Austen novel. Which she likes…until she doesn’t. Only people who have read (or at least watched an adaptation of) Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey will “get” what’s going on during parts of the book, and find it funny. I had one reader who was angry with me after she finished the book: she claimed to be a big Jane Austen fan, she loved Pride and Prejudice, but Mr Darcy is only in 1/6th of the story… she didn’t seem to know Jane Austen had written anything else.
But while this is a book FOR Jane Austen fans, it’s also ABOUT Jane Austen fans. I’m one, too – but I also approach each of her novels, as I translate it to modern times, asking “Does real life work like this?” It’s not always a question one should ask about one’s fantasies. But when the final reslt makes people laugh, I know I got it right.
Excerpt from Jane Austen Lied to Me!:
Nov 29
When Ken saw me in Spanish class, he asked me what was wrong.
“Why do you think something’s wrong?” I asked.
“Well, for starters, you plopped your books down next to me, but you haven’t said anything after ‘hi.’ That’s not like you,” he said. “Then you keep sighing these big tragic sighs. Most people do not make big tragic sighs unless they’re going through some tragedy.”
“Sorry. I didn’t realize.”
“Nothing to be sorry for. But you didn’t answer the question. What’s wrong?”
“My best friend kept me up half the night talking about himself, and eventually I found out that he thinks I’m disgusting, and I just found out that being a good listener apparently gets you nowhere,” I said, “so all I did was make an ass of myself and waste my time all semester.”
“Okay,” I could see that Ken was trying not to laugh at me. “Since the semester is almost over, I can see why this is a problem. You could have said you don’t want to talk about it. Want to go down for coffee after class and we can not talk about it some more? My treat?”
“I really don’t want to talk about it,” I warned him.
“We always have plenty of other things to talk about.” He wasn’t the least bit frightened by my scowl. “The whole point of the exercise is, you look like you need cheering up.”
How could I not soften at that? “I guess I do. Thank you. I would very much like to go for coffee with you after class.”
I kept stealing glances at him all the way through Spanish class. Had he just asked me on a first date? How had I overlooked him as a potential love interest?
I suppose because he’s short. He must get overlooked a lot. He’s not extremely short, but at most he’s only an inch taller than me. Maybe we’re the same height.
We ended up in different groups when the teacher divided the entire class in half to make conversation groups. I sat where I could see him. Light brown hair, blue eyes, the sort of lean but strong build you’d expect from a wrestler. Not that I knew much of anything about wrestling, but at least it fit in my imagination.
I smiled at him when class was over and we got back to our tables to collect our books. “¿Vamos a ir?”
“Sí. Vamos a tomar un café.”
We talked in Spanish all the way to Starbucks. When I started ordering my Grande Skinny Caramel Macchiato in Spanish, the clerk stared at me across the counter, and Ken started laughing. “Try it again in English,” he suggested.
“Oh. Yeah.” I ordered again. A lot less staring occurred. Ken placed his order, we collected our beverages, and we found ourselves a wonderful little nook among the chairs and couches. This place has got to be the best library in the world. I know libraries are supposed to be about books, but they’re also about quiet public places where you can study. Or talk to your friends. It’s a place to be.
I kept expecting him to bring up my tragic sighs, and ask me again what’s wrong. He never did. He talked about all sorts of other things, and kept me chatting and laughing until I completely forgot that I had just been told that dating me would be disgusting.
What was I thinking? Why did I think that eventually Eddie would come around and notice that there I was, faithfully waiting in the wings while he mooned over Katie?
The answer is simple. Jane Austen isn’t the only one who has a story where friends (okay, in her case cousins) fall in love. Hollywood is full of stories where best friends make a pact to get married if they don’t find anyone else by a certain age. Or where friends don’t realize they’ve fallen in love until someone else comes along. Or… I don’t know. But there are plenty of other stories where friends don’t say it would be disgusting to start dating.
Ken walked me to my next class. “You look like you’re feeling more cheerful. Keep it up.” That was his only reference back to my troubles. Then he kissed my cheek, and walked away.
I don’t think I heard a single word all the way through eastern philosophy class. All I could think about was that kiss on my cheek. That had been a date.
What’s the next writing project?
I am in the process of trying to figure that out. The last year and a half has been an exercise in stops and starts. I took a hiatus from fiction to write the first draft of a 9-volume series on historical dancing: but I have not yet found a publisher that’s interested. I realized that my historical fiction set in Pittsburgh needs to be a trilogy, and I’ve got 107 pages in the manuscript so far, but then I got invited to participate in a pitch contest.
You CANNOT pitch book 3 for a pitch contest… so I did a bunch of research and wrote the first 3 chapters for a trilogy on Abraham Lincoln (I live in Illinois. Land of Lincoln, you know). Nothing came of that, but it’s still more writing simmering on the back of the stove.
Then, after being a judge for the Rainbow Awards, and dealing with the upheavals in my personal life (I filed for divorce in January), another novel started banging on the inside of my head, and I had to sit down and start writing.
Once my divorce is finalized, and my life settles down, I get to pick a project and get started on some research. Because ALL these projects are going to require a ton of research!
What is your biggest challenge when writing a new book? (or the biggest challenge with this book)
This book was, ironically for one that required the least amount of historical research – was the biggest challenge to write. It took a lot of iterations to figure out what it wanted to be.
At first, it was just a novella. A little satire. But then I met a publisher who was interested, but she wanted it developed into a full book. So I went back and fleshed everything out.
But when I turned the book in, the publisher sent me a contract that was very badly written, and half the things I was promised verbally were not written down in the contract. I asked for help from various friends to rewrite it into something more comprehensive. EVERYONE asked me, “WHY are you working with this person?” I answered self publishing is fine, but I want to work with a publisher. I’m a good writer. I’m a lousy business person, and I want the help with promotions and publication. I finally took a rough draft of a rewritten contract to a real lawyer, (along with the original contract) who asked me “WHY are you working with this person?” But he drew up a professional contract, listing all the verbal promises in proper legal terminology along with all the stuff in the original contract.
The publisher refused to sign it.
Okay, great, now I have a book, but no publisher… at that critical juncture, I happened to see a touring Broadway production of Bridges of Madison County. Sitting in the audience, I had an epiphany. This story wants to be a Broadway musical!
That required some fundamental changes. The book, at that point, was still a satire. The heroine was more like the heroine on the TV show “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend:” she could never seem to NOT make bad choices. You had to laugh, or cringe, or slap your forehead all the way through. But you can’t have a Broadway show about an unsympathetic character.
For whatever reason, instead of just going straight to writing the script for the musical, I rewrote the book first. I’m sure it’s a comfort thing. I know how to write books. I am not a musician, I am neither a composer or lyricist, I have few ties to the theatre world, and the ties I do have weren’t interested in this project when I asked for help.
Meanwhile, the book rewrite was something of a revelation. It was finally right.
If your novels require research – please talk about the process. Do you do the research first and then write, while you’re writing, after the novel is complete and you need to fill in the gaps?
I love research! This book is the only one I’ve written that didn’t require a ton of research. It’s why I usually write historical fiction, I want to write about the clothes, the dancing, the architecture, the mysteries about what it used to feel like to live in a different time.
The answer for me is all of the above. There are questions I need the answers to before I get started: when exactly did Abraham Lincoln move to Springfield and start his career in the state legislature? What did Springfield look like? What did Abe look like? What’s the cadence of his speech patterns?
Then after I get started, I get stopped by details that I need before I can continue a scene. If it’s Chicago around the Turn of the Century, can I introduce the hero by having him arrive in an automobile?
And then there’s the little details that don’t need to slow me down at the moment. What kind of wallpapers were being manufactured in 1870, that would be on the walls at the hotel during the honeymoon? I put placeholders in brackets [the delicate rose vines on the wallpaper] that I can search for later, when I can go back and fact check.
What’s your writing space like? Do you have a particular spot to write where the muse is more active? Please tell us about it.
At the moment I am writing in the space where I wrote a lot of my last release, My Dearest Miss Fairfax. It’s the patio of my neighborhood coffee shop. I have a café table in shade provided by a trumpet vine that completely covers a wooden trellis that has aged to something that could be in The Secret Garden. There are pots of petunias and clematis, bushes that provide privacy and a noise barrier from a street that gets busy during morning rush hour. There’s a cup of Bourbon Barrel Caramel Mocha sitting next to my laptop. Some of the tables around me are occupied with other people on laptops, and there’s usually a couple of friends at one of the tables laughing and catching up over a couple of muffins or scones and lattes. Then they leave, and it’s suddenly quiet.
What authors do you enjoy reading within or outside of your genre?
I am currently finishing Ron Chernow’s biography on George Washington, and I have several books by David McCullough on my To Be Read shelf. My favorite things to read are biographies set during the Civil War – I adore Shelby Foote’s series on the Civil War, and the last thing I read was Chernow’s biography on Grant. I was also about to start reading Mary Chestnut’s diaries.
But I’m trying to branch out! We are a couple of years away from our Semiquincenntial: the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I teach historical dancing at history museums, music festivals, Girl Scout workshops: anyone who wants to learn more about how people lived. So I have been studying dances from 1776. I foresee being needed to teach a lot of colonial dancing in the next couple of years.
Dancing happens within a social context. It’s an important part of a larger whole. I have set aside my usual era and focused on expanding my horizons. Instead of sewing bustle dresses and Regency gowns, I’m focusing on 18th century stays and pocket hoops and serwing more Robes l’Anglaise and Robes l’Francaise. I’ve got Cokie Roberts’ book on the Founding Mothers next on my shelf, and when I was in Philadelphia last weekend, I picked up a biography on Tadeusz Kosciuszko. (I happen to be Polish, it’s about time I learned about the POLISH hero in the American Revolution!)
Anything additional you want to share with the readers today?
Check out Kristyna’s funny, fabulous reading of Jane Austen Lied to Me! She’s amazing. You can follow her exploits on her webpage here: https://www.kristynazaharek.com
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Thank you for coming back to Reviews and Interviews!
Thank you for having me back!
Thank you so much for hosting and featuring Jeanette Watts today.
Thank you so much for having me! It was a delight to be back!
This book sounds really good.