WEEKEND WRITING WARRIORS #86

Welcome back, fellow warriors and guest readers! I had quite a productive week. I added a healthy portion of words to my current WIP and made homemade tomato sauce for the first time in my life. If I had known how time-consuming it was, I might have given back those beautiful tomatoes before scuttling off to the closest grocery store. Next spaghetti night we'll find out if those four hours were worth it. I also canned some green beans in preparation for the upcoming holiday season. My family LOVES green bean casserole, and before I started preserving my own food, I had no idea the difference between store-bought canned goods to homemade. The difference is... all I can say is - wow. The same for Pinto Beans, which we use exclusively for my hubby's chile recipe. Those are resting on my canning shelf as well. Yum... I'm hungry now.

Okey dokey, enough of my manic enthusiasm for all things #canning, and on with this week's offering. I am giving you a snippet from my one and only (for now) paranormal Jane Austen Fan Fiction: Fitzwilliam Darcy ~ Undone. I had a blast writing this, and the response from the readers was good. At the time of publication, there was not much out there for this little sub-genre, but it has now exploded and has gained a following.

Rules of engagement for Weekend Writing Warriors:

Weekend Writing Warriors is a fun blog hop where authors share eight to ten lines from a Work in Progress. If you'd like to check out some of the other author's writing, please click on this link: WeWriWa

EXCERPT:

When they gained entry to their shared room, she took out the letter and said, “This is from Caroline Bingley, and what it contains surprised me a great deal.”

Lizzy accepted the envelope, which contained a sheet of elegant, little, hot-pressed paper, well covered with a lady’s fair, flowing hand. She read a few lines and gasped.

“The pomposity of that woman, declaring she cannot ‘pretend to regret anything I shall leave in Hertfordshire, except your society.’ And to call you her dearest friend. The woman would not know a friend if they kicked her in the shins while declaring it.” She read further before emitting a very unladylike snort. “This is rich, she hopes their absence can be alleviated by − where is that ubiquitous line? − ‘we may lessen the pain of separation by a very frequent and most unreserved correspondence.’ She threw the letter onto the bed. “Jane, I give you leave to dislike Miss Bingley with all your heart, she is nothing but a pretentious prig.”

MAY I HAVE SOME MORE PLEASE?

“Lizzy,” Jane chastised softly, “that is most unkind. She is letting me know her brother does not hold me in the same regard as I do him. She encourages me to find another beau without her brother getting in the way of my heart, and seems most solicitous in her care of my feelings. She even hinted Mr. Darcy agrees with her opinions, and he is Mr. Bingley’s best friend. Surely, he knows where Mr. Bingley’s true interests lay.”

Never in her life had Elizabeth wished to impose her will on someone as much as she did right at this moment. How could Jane be deceived by one such as Caroline Bingley? Anyone with eyes in their head could see Bingley was madly in love with her sister. She paused in thought. Of course! They had seen how much in love he was and decided Jane was not of their sphere and hastened to remove him before he could declare himself to all and sundry. And what part did Mr. Darcy play in all this? There was no way Miss Bingley would willingly vacate Netherfield Park without ensuring Mr. Darcy was in tow. Or had he led the parade himself? Given what Miss Bingley revealed in her note, Mr. Darcy most likely cautioned his friend to leave before he’d committed himself publicly, with no way out of an unwanted marriage.

She fumed silently while Jane carefully returned the letter to its envelope, and placed it in her nightstand drawer. Even without her ability to perceive others’ emotions, she knew Jane’s heart was aching. Unable to bear her sister’s suffering, she headed downstairs to escape the confines of Longbourn. She stormed to the far end of her mother’s rose garden and paced. Paced and fumed, and fumed and paced, not even feeling the cold November air. Her anger waffled between Mr. Darcy and Caroline Bingley. She instinctively knew Mr. Bingley would defer to Mr. Darcy’s counsel long before he acquiesced to his sister’s demands. Her anger mounted with each step. If she could only see Mr. Darcy face to face and tell him what she really thought.

A tingling sensation cascaded over and through her body, and when she opened her eyes, she found herself in an unfamiliar room, standing before the man himself clad only in a pair of buckskin breeches and Hessian boots.

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Book Blurb:

She’s the outcast in her family…

Elizabeth knows she’s different from the rest of her family. She has strange dreams and sees things others do not. With the advent of the odious Mr. Darcy and his friends from Netherfield Park, as well as the amiable Mr. Wickham of the _____shire Militia, her powers seem to increase and her greatest fear is that she won’t be able to contain them and will be discovered.

He has eight hundred years of tradition to uphold…

No Darcy has married a non-magical woman since arriving on the shores of England with William the Conqueror in 1066. However, his kind – Miatharans – are dwindling in numbers. Miatharan's magic only flows through aristocratic bloodlines, so his strange obsession with Miss Elizabeth Bennet is puzzling as she is not of noble blood. Just a country squire’s beautiful daughter who has him slowly becoming undone.