New Novel Passage
I’ve been so busy these past three weeks that I completely forgot to update my Novel Passage! Well, I have done so tonight, keeping with my plan to share excerpts from Mr. and Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy ~ Two Shall Become One. As always my desire is to give a tantalizing taste of what the novel includes. In this instance I have chosen a bedroom scene – one very typical in tone, language, and detail to all the others – for your reading, um, pleasure. OK, a lame joke, but I do have a point.
I have never pretended, not for a second, that intimacy is absent from my story. Rather I state it boldly as a necessary (in my opinion) aspect of exploring the blossoming relationship between Darcy and Elizabeth. Preferences and attitudes will vary, naturally, in what one is comfortable reading. I am perfectly fine with that. In addition, I suppose people have differing definitions for the words steamy, smutty, excessive, erotic, sexual, and so on. That is fine too, although I do believe there are standard meanings that most would agree on, such as ‘smutty’ being a very derogatory word generally saved for pornography.
Semantics and personal reading preferences aside, what I want to make clear is that despite some notations stating otherwise, Mr. and Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy is not a novel chock full of one sex scene after another. It just isn’t. I was beginning to wonder myself, in fact! I started to question my own memory, wondering if perhaps a different book had been published than the one I wrote! Had my publisher pulled a fast one on me? I am happy to say that is not the case. What I wrote is now available for you to leaf through for yourself, to make a decision based on your own observation. The various excerpts I have here on the website, including this most recent Novel Passage, are the best proof of what is in between the pages of my gorgeous book. And, if cold, hard facts are helpful, I went further and did the math. Generously counting every page including a lovemaking scene, starting at the first kiss or touch and continuing through any aftermath conversation and cuddling, even those scenes where nothing is described at all but it fades to black, I came up with 40 out of a 295 total. That is 13.5%, or roughly 1/8th of the whole. I doubt there is a mathematician in the world who would consider that the majority!
Thanks ladies! Ninja E, I wouldn’t buy a mangled copy either. Just wait, it is popping up everywhere now. Thanks May – yes, ‘violently in love’ – I can’t imagine that Austen didn’t mean that in the way we think. Thanks Susanne. Yes, they are cranks! True love RULES!!! But I do appreciate the reminder. I will certainly share bits from future novels from time to time once the immediate launch is past. Keep a lookout!
Dear Sharon, I´m eagerly waiting for an email from amazon, telling me that your book is on its way to me! Till then I´m reading the three others over and over again. I love all the passages that are focused on Darcy and Elizabeth; your "new" passage is as beautiful as all the others. Don´t listen to the cranks. It feels so good and right to read about two people who are deeply in love, believe and trust in one another, belong completly together! It will be great to hold your book in my hands and dream about their lives in part 4; will we get a very very little part of it sometime in the near future?
Have a fantastic time, celebrate March 1st as it is the official date!
Lots of love,
Susanne
Well it was obvious that the book had been well thumbed through by other people in the store! And isn’t it great that this lovely book is selling like hotcakes!
As to your Darcy, Sharon, well Jane Austen did write that he was "a man violently in love" and therefore we would expect Darcy and Lizzie to be affectionate and your book addresses that side of their life in a wonderfully romantic way at all times.
Good News: I saw your book in one of my local Target stores.
Bad News: I did not buy it.
Good News?: I’m one of those people who must buy ‘perfect copies’ … there was only one copy on the shelf and it was a bit too worn for my taste…
Pay day this Friday… I will look again.