Guest Mary Lydon Simonsen: Mr. Darcy Grows Fur!

Linda Banche here. My guest today is Mary Lydon Simonsen and Mr. Dacry's Bite, her paranormal take on Pride and Prejudice. Here she tells us why she made Mr. Darcy a werewolf instead of a vampire.

Leave a comment with your email address for a chance to win the copy of Mr. Darcy's Bite which Sourcebooks has generously provided. Mary will select the winner. Check the comments to see who won, and how to contact me to claim your book. If I cannot contact the winner within a week of selection, I will award the book to an alternate. Note, Sourcebooks can mail to USA and Canada addresses only.

And the winner Mary selected is Calisa Rhose! Congratulations, Calisa, and thanks to all who came over.

Welcome back, Mary!

Mary Lydon Simonsen:

Hello Linda! It’s so good to be back at Historical Hussies!

You have asked me to write about why I chose to transform Mr. Darcy into a werewolf in my novel, Mr. Darcy’s Bite. Actually, it all started as a lark. I had been reading a werewolf story on a Jane Austen fan fiction site. With Halloween 2009 approaching, I decided to write a short story called “Mr. Darcy on the Eve of All Saints’ Day.” It received such a positive response that I kept writing. Before I knew it, I had a full-length novel, and Sourcebooks wanted it for my fourth novel with them.

You also asked why a werewolf and not a vampire? Despite the enormous success of the Twilight series, I did not choose to make Mr. Darcy a vampire because that would have required dealing with a lot of blood, and I am a bit squeamish in that department. Because I eat very little meat, and what I do eat cannot remotely resemble the animal it came from, I should have had the same problem with werewolves. But I left the situations where Mr. Darcy is out in the wild hunting for his food to the imagination of my readers. If you are looking for scenes of the werewolf Mr. Darcy tearing apart a deer, you won’t find it in Mr. Darcy’s Bite. However, he does smack his lips after a satisfying hunt and a particularly tasty kill.

Mr. Darcy was not born a werewolf. Rather, he became one as a result of a bite he received in the Black Forest when he was 14. Because of his dual nature, he always thought he would marry a she wolf. You know, keep things simple. But that was before he met Elizabeth Bennet. Stalking and bringing down a buck is a piece of cake compared to telling the woman he loves that he grows fur, fangs, and a bushy tail once in every moon cycle.

At first Lizzy is horrified. Although she wishes Mr. Darcy well, she wants no part of his world. But after seeing him in his altered statement and noting how much his sister and cousin, Anne de Bourgh, love him and how much his servants respect him, she softens and eventually realizes that her love for the master of Pemberley is so great that she must share his life no matter what. Besides, what’s a little fur between two people in love?

You also asked if being a werewolf “confers power and privilege?” Yes and no. Because he is the alpha member of his small pack, he does have power, and he is supremely confident in both his manifestations. However, if his lupine nature were to be discovered, he would be killed. As a result, there is no privilege associated with his being a werewolf. Everything the Darcys do must take into consideration the danger of being exposed.

I loved writing this story because I love wolves. This goes back to the time when I was a kid reading Jack London’s stories. I was fortunate to have watched a wolf in Yellowstone Park doing his/her best to kill field mice in a meadow. I don’t know if he/she was young, but the mice were winning this day. Even so, there was something primal in watching an animal hunt.

I would love to know what your readers think about Mr. Darcy as a werewolf. Personally, I’ll take him anyway I can get him.

Thanks again. This was fun.

MR. DARCY'S BITE BY MARY LYDON SIMONSEN
Mr. Darcy has a secret...

Darcy is acting rather oddly. After months of courting Elizabeth Bennet, no offer of marriage is forthcoming and Elizabeth is first impatient, then increasingly frightened. For there is no denying that the full moon seems to be affecting his behavior, and Elizabeth’s love is going to be tested in ways she never dreamed...

Darcy has more than family pride to protect: others of his kind are being hunted all over England and a member of Darcy’s pack is facing a crisis in Scotland. It will take all of Elizabeth’s faith, courage, and ingenuity to overcome her prejudice and join Darcy in a Regency world she never knew existed.

Praise for The Perfect Bride for Mr. Darcy:

“Simonsen spins off another superior Jane Austen homage.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Engrossing and delightful…Simonsen takes quite an intriguing approach.”
—Rundpinne

“A fast-reading, engaging style…brings a new and enjoyable immediacy to Jane Austen’s most popular novel.”
—Linda Banche Romance Author

“Creative, well-paced, and definitely diverting.”
—Austenprose

About the Author
Mary Simonsen
Mary Lydon Simonsen’s first book, Searching for Pemberley, was acclaimed by Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Romantic Times. She is well loved and widely followed on all the Jane Austen fanfic sites, with tens of thousands of hits and hundreds of reviews whenever she posts. She lives in Peoria, Arizona.

Guest Mary Lydon Simonsen: Elizabeth Bennet--the Good, the Bad and the Other Woman

Linda Banche here. My guest today is Mary Lydon Simonsen and her latest Pride and Prejudice retelling, A Wife for Mr. Darcy. Here she elaborates on why we love Elizabeth Bennet--she was wrong about Darcy, admitted her mistake and changed her mind. Mary also tackles the question of what could have happened if Darcy had already committed himself to another woman.

Leave a comment with your email address for a chance to win the copy of A Wife for Mr. Darcy which Sourcebooks has generously provided. Mary will select the winner. Check the comments to see who won, and how to contact me to claim your book. If I cannot contact the winner within a week of selection, I will award the book to an alternate. Note, Sourcebooks can mail to USA and Canada addresses only.

And the winner Mary selected is cyn209! Congratulations, cyn209, and thanks to all for coming over.

Welcome, Mary. Happy to have you here.

Mary Lydon Simonsen:

Hi, Linda. Thank you for having me back at Historical Hussies, one of my favorite historical blogs. You have asked me to write about the good and the bad of Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice and the “other woman” in my novel, A Wife for Mr. Darcy.

Like most of us who were born without the Mother Teresa gene, we have our good side and our bad side. Elizabeth Bennet was no different. When she first met Mr. Darcy, she was greatly insulted by his comments and his rude behavior at an assembly in Meryton. Because her pride had been wounded, she was determined not to hear any good of him. She did not ask herself why a man of the landed gentry, and someone with such high connections, would befriend Charles Bingley, a man whose family had made its fortune in trade. Nor did she take into consideration that poor Mr. Darcy had spent endless afternoons and evenings at Netherfield Park with Caroline Bingley and Louisa Hurst, two felines who always had their claws out. Even after she learned of his devotion to his sister or that he visited his autocratic aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and her sickly daughter, her opinion of the gentleman remained unchanged. Why? Because Darcy had wronged her. It wasn’t until Mr. Darcy revealed all in his letter following her rejection of his proposal at Hunsford Lodge that she took a step back and reviewed the whole of their acquaintance, and when she did, she didn’t like what she saw.

But that is the beauty of Elizabeth Bennet. Unlike Wickham or Mr. Collins or Lady Catherine, she is capable of correction. When presented with an opportunity to set things right, she does. By the time she meets Darcy at his estate in Derbyshire, her opinion of the man has undergone a sea change, and because of that, the ground is fertile for the seeds of romance.

Now, as to the other woman in A Wife for Mr. Darcy. Her name is Letitia Montford, and she is everything that an accomplished woman of the Regency Era should be. She draws, paints, does needlework, sings, plays on the piano-forte, and knows the modern languages. She is an excellent dancer and performs well in public. What’s not to like? At first that is Mr. Darcy’s conclusion as well, and since he is of an age when a man’s thoughts tend toward taking a wife for the purpose of producing an heir, he seeks her out at the different venues during the season. Because Mr. Darcy had paid sufficient attention to Miss Montford, rumors are circulating that the gentleman from Derbyshire has found a wife. But that was before he had set eyes on Elizabeth Bennet. So what is a man to do? You’ll have to read the novel to find out.

What do you think about Lizzy Bennet? Did she make other mistakes? For example, why was she so willing to believe Mr. Wickham, someone she hardly knew, when he was telling lies about Mr. Darcy? I would love to hear from you. Thanks for reading my post.

A WIFE FOR MR. DARCY BY MARY LYDON SIMONSEN
A gentleman should always render an apology...
When Mr. Darcy realizes he insulted Miss Elizabeth Bennet at the Meryton Assembly, he feels duty bound to seek her out and apologize...

When he has insulted a lady...
But instead of meekly accepting his apology, Elizabeth stands up to him, and Mr. Darcy realizes with a shock that she is a very different type of lady than he is used to...

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mary Lydon Simonsen’s first book, Searching for Pemberley, was acclaimed by Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and RT Book Reviews. She is well loved and widely followed on all the Jane Austen fanfic sites, with tens of thousands of hits and hundreds of reviews whenever she posts. She lives in Peoria, Arizona where she is working on her next Jane Austen novel. For more information, please visit http://marysimonsenfanfiction.blogspot.com/ and http://www.austenauthors.com/, where she regularly contributes.

Guest Mary Lydon Simonsen: Fun in Regency England

Linda Banche here. Today I welcome Mary Lydon Simonsen, whose latest book is the Pride and Prejudice retelling, The Perfect Bride for Mr. Darcy. Here she talks about what Regency ladies did for fun.

Leave a comment with your email address for a chance to win one of the two copies of The Perfect Bride for Mr. Darcy which Sourcebooks has generously provided. Mary will select the winners. Check the comments to see who won, and how to contact me to claim your book. If I cannot contact the winners within a week of their selection, I will award the books to alternates. Note, Sourcebooks can mail to USA and Canada addresses only.

And the winners Mary selected are Judy and Dee! Judy, I've already sent you an email. Dee, please contact me at linda@lindabanche.com by February 3 or the book goes to an alternate.

Welcome Mary!

Thank you for inviting me to join you on your blog today. I was so pleased when my publicist told me that you wanted me to write about Regency Era books and what women did for fun—two nice, juicy subjects. Since The Perfect Bride for Mr. Darcy is a Jane Austen re-imagining, I thought I would try to give you a feel for Austen’s world (1775-1817), give or take a decade.

So what books did Austen read? We know that she read Henry Fielding’s rather risqué Tom Jones, Samuel Richard’s Pamela, and the writings of Dr. Johnson. She was also familiar with Ann Radcliff’s gothic novels, and not being a fan of that genre, she parodied the author’s The Mysteries of Udolpho in Northanger Abbey. By the way, Northanger Abbey was published posthumously in 1817. But by that time, the gothic novel craze had run its course, and Austen’s first written and last published novel was already dated by the time it was released.

Austen was an admirer of the novelist, Fanny Burney, who penned Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla. Evelina is a witty epistolary novel about the unacknowledged daughter of a spendthrift English aristocrat. It is likely that Austen borrowed the title to her most famous novel from Miss Burney as the final chapter of Cecilia is titled “Pride and Prejudice.”

Sir Walter Scott’s novels were just appearing in print at the time of Austen’s death in 1817. She may have had an opportunity to read Waverly, but not his later novel, Ivanhoe. Scott was a giant of the later Regency Era, but two American authors were having their impact as well. James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, including The Last of the Mohicans, were bestsellers in Britain as was Washington Irving’s Sketchbook that included his two most famous stories, The Headless Horseman and Rip Van Winkle.

Your second question was what did Regency Era ladies do for fun. Like our famous couple, Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, let us assume that we are speaking of the middle and upper classes. Although ladies did not run, they did walk and walk and walk. They might choose to visit the seaside and go sea bathing, changing into appropriate bathing attire before being pushed into the sea in a bathing machine. On a sunny day, two friends might engage in a battledore, the precursor of badminton, or play lawn bowls. In the winter, they could strap on their ice skates and go out on a frozen pond, most likely on the arm of a male relation or suitor. Riding was a year-round pursuit, but because horses were expensive to keep, this tended to be a sport for the upper class.

On a visit to London, a lady may choose to attend one of Sheridan’s plays at the Royal Theater on Drury Lane, purchase a ticket to the opera, enjoy an afternoon stroll in one of London’s pleasure gardens, or witness a balloon launch.

In a world lit only by fire, at home, Elizabeth and Darcy would have played cards, and there were so many games to choose from, including whist, casino, faro, just to name three. Charades, staging plays, and guessing at riddles were popular entertainments as was reading out loud. Furniture could be pushed to the perimeter of the room to permit a game of blind man’s bluff. But the preferred activity of most people of this era was dancing. This was one of the few opportunities where unmarried ladies and gents had the opportunity to actually touch, if only a gloved hand, as well as to engage in a conversation without their chaperones overhearing them. But even for those not looking for a marriage partner, it was a favorite pastime and the reason why an assembly hall could be found in any town of a goodly size throughout the kingdom.

Thank you so much for inviting me. This was a pleasure.

THE PERFECT BRIDE FOR MR. DARCY BY MARY LYDON SIMONSEN – IN STORES JANUARY 2011

If the two of them weren’t so stubborn…

It’s obvious to Georgiana Darcy that the lovely Elizabeth Bennet is her brother’s perfect match, but Darcy’s pigheadedness and Elizabeth’s wounded pride are going to keep them both from the loves of their lives.

Georgiana can’t let that happen, so she readily agrees to help her accommodating cousin, Anne de Bourgh, do everything within their power to assure her beloved brother’s happiness.
But the path of matchmaking never runs smoothly…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mary Lydon Simonsen’s first book, Searching for Pemberley, was acclaimed by Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and RT Book Reviews. She is well loved and widely followed on all the Jane Austen fanfic sites, with tens of thousands of hits and hundreds of reviews whenever she posts. She lives in Peoria, Arizona where she is working on her next Jane Austen novel. For more information, please visit http://marysimonsenfanfiction.blogspot.com/ and http://www.austenauthors.com/, where she regularly contributes.