Kind of a thrilling week!! First, our daughter Rachel returned, after her first year of her PhD at Harvard.

Then my husband’s latest book was published (Super-fancy, hardback, paperback, you name it. Everything you ever wanted to know about Edwardian London but was afraid to ask!!!!!Link below.)

And today, the fourth in my standalone Jane Austen series emerges.

Pride and Perjury, a short story collection, ambushed me  while I was planning, and even plotting my fourth Austenesque standalone, my seventh novel altogether.

It was the omissions that bothered me. Omissions in my previous three, as well as Austen’s own omissions.

For example, while I was writing Harriet, how I longed to buzz off to Bath with Mr Elton, in order to detail his pursuit of Mrs Elton/Augusta Hawkins. (But… Harriet’s plot!)

And in Darcy, of course, I was hampered by the book’s being almost entirely from Darcy’s point of view. This, among other things, prevented me from exploring what might have occurred, in Brighton, between Lydia and Wickham… something Austen never told us.

Because, frankly, I kept wondering why Wickham agreed to elope with Lydia. We know he was fatally attractive, even to Elizabeth. We’re aware that he hoped to marry for money – otherwise he’d never have pursued Mary King. In addition, the guy had options: he could have gone abroad to find an heiress, for example. And, though Lydia is clearly both exuberant and attractive, she’s not depicted as stunning as Jane or as enchanting as Lizzy – while being every bit as poor. So, why did Wickham elope, simultaneously wrecking any chance of making his fortune by the easiest method? (Read Pride and Perjury for find out!)

Other omissions: who did Miss de Bourgh wind up marrying – for surely such an heiress would have married – after Darcy disappointed her? How did Mr Elton recover enough to pursue Miss Hawkins, after Emma’s contemptuous dismissal of his suit? And what about the missing scene from P&P, when Lady Catherine rashly attempted to dissuade Darcy from proposing again to “that dreadful Bennet girl” – unwittingly encouraging him to hope?

 In the end I decided I had short stories to write, and that 12 was a nice, round number. I was also inspired by the late great Alice Munro, who died a couple of weeks ago. If you haven’t read Munro, stop whatever you’re reading now and try her. Personally, I gulp down her short stories like candy… Just one more… and maybe just one more… What a loss!)

As for Pride and Perjury, I’m so grateful to my husband for his editing, and to Phil McKerracher – my tech genius – but I’m also so indebted to each of you who volunteered to be ARC-readers. THANKS!!!!

And for those too busy to volunteer, I really hope you like it!

This Elgar concerto performance is over a year old. I owe the chance to (Sir) Adrian Brown, long-term friend and music director of the Bromley Symphony Orchestra, who kindly allowed my husband and his assistant conductor Simon to “borrow” the orchestra so that we could perform together.

At the time, loads of people kept saying, “So it was recorded? Where can I hear/see it?” but I kept putting off releasing it.

This is because I’m a perfectionist, and I’m still not perfectly happy with every note. But finally I was talked into it, even though I’m not a pro soloist, and never have been (have been in cello sections accompanying Steven Isserlis and Sheku Kannah-Mason’s astonishing Elgars, but I have no illusions that my own talent is on their level!)

Because it’s Elgar and Edwardian, it’s now on YouTube to accompany the release of Simon’s really major book, Music in Edwardian London (Boydell and Brewer. Check this book out, it - at least - is perfect!!)

Just blown away, earlier this month, to receive a First Place in Chanticleer’s International Book Awards – and for my whole book series!!!

I’d decided I was being cheeky, even entering, with a book series of the minimum size (um, only three!!!) but won First Place (historical). Darcy (in the Chatelaine) and Pride and Perjury (the short story, not the just-released volume) were also finalists.

To celebrate – this and the release of Pride and Perjury – I’m doing a giveaway of Jane Austen book swag.

Enter by June 30^th for your chance to win. Simply email astmcveigh@gmail.com with the word GIVEAWAY as subject!!!

“I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No - I must keep my own style & go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.”
― Jane Austen’s letters

The master will not be serious, even though the mistress is dying. Or so she says.

‘I shall die of this, Hill,’ she cries, ‘for there never was a better girl, nor a kinder, sweeter one, than my dearest Lydia! But men are deceivers ever!’

‘Quite, ma’am,’ says I, thinking that it was Miss Lydia, and not myself, she should have been lecturing to about men, for there her lecture might have been of rather more use.

‘The best girl in the world! And me, lying here, dying!’

‘Yet, with respect, ma’am, it could have been still worse, for a great many families have survived an elopement – and the nobility as well as Mr Spencer himself says.’

‘Dying! Dying!’

Thus, in the morning it might be, ‘My nerves, Hill, are not in fit state to endure such anguish!’ And, ‘’Tis all that Mrs Forster’s fault, Bessy, for she never looked after her. That one false friend will be the ruination of us all!’

But after luncheon she can listen to Miss Jane’s reading a novel by Miss Burney and complain, ‘Well, I can see nothing so very clever in it,’ and at four o’clock brag to Lady Lucas, ‘Why, any moment now, I warrant you, we shall learn that little Lydie is as wedded as you and I, ourselves!’

But in the evening she might be banging on about the ruination again – till I heard the master tell Miss Lizzy that it was an education to him, to learn that ruination could feature in quite so many guises.

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