Jennifer Petkus's Blog, page 6

Jane, Actually Book Trailer

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Jane, Actually (or Jane Austen’s Book Tour) book trailer. Please feel free to share this YouTube video.

Proof ordered

Jane, Actually is creeping its way toward reality. I just ordered a proof from Amazon CreateSpace, which I’ll use primarily to see how the cover art looks—whether it’s too dark or washed out or too light. I’ve already encountered problems where the original cover design was too complicated for CreateSpace, and I’ve had to limit the number of transparencies (like the pretty drop shadows that are now available in Adobe Illustrator). I’ve gotten spoiled doing most of my work for the web, where I don’t have to worry whether a design will actually print.

The book is already in the hands of three advance readers, U.K. Janeite Christopher Sandrawich, fellow Sherlockian Mike Newman and fellow Denver-Boulder Janeite Maryann O’Brien. When the proof arrives, I’ll give it to my husband to read as well.

Once I’ve heard back from proofreaders, I’ll send the book out to advance readers. I probably won’t send too many physical copies, however. At 406 pages (including front matter like the acknowledgements and the quick Austen bio), the book is a little expensive to print. I had to switch to a larger book size—5.5×8.5 inches—and drop the type size down to 10.5 point, to keep the book manageable. Even so, it’s about an inch thick.

And I’ve added another imprint to Mallard Press, which includes Mallard Mystery, Mallard Classics and now Mallard Sci-Fi. I toyed with the idea of introducing Mallard Romance (technically speaking, I listed Jane, Actually as Romance/Science Fiction at CreateSpace), but I couldn’t figure out what kind of hat the duck would wear.

If anyone’s interested, I’ll be documenting the experience of printing Jane, Actually through CreateSpace and also creating the Kindle and epub versions at http://mallardpress.blogspot.com.

What I’ve read/watched: Cold Comfort Farm

For some reason, Cold Comfort Farm had been preying on my mind recently. Some oblique reference to “something nasty in the woodshed” must have burrowed it‘s way into my subconscious at some point, which re-awakened my long dormant resolve “I really must read that sometime.” I’d only seen the 1995 …

His Last Bow quiz

Certain things you leave till last. I’ve never read Agatha Christie’s Curtains, for instance, or the director’s cut of Blade Runner and for years I’ve put off re-reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s His Last Bow. (I had read it so many years ago that it’s but a dim memory, but since …

Jane Austen and textiles

U.K. Janeite Christopher Sandrawich sends me this link to the blog Textile Stories: The Fabric of Everyday Life. It’s the work of four talented women who all have either professor or doctor in their titles. Chris had received an email from one of the women, Professor Deborah Wynne, a lecturer at Chester …

UPDATE: Why am I not surprised? A “Devonton” Abbey comic

I just found this on GoComics.com: Agent Gates and the Secret Adventures of Devonton Abbey. From the website: Presenting a parody spin on the characters we know and love from the hit show Downton Abbey, this story is told through the eyes of the downstairs staff—especially one secretly rugged valet John …

Why am I not surprised? A “Devonton” Abbey comic

I just found this on GoComics.com: Agent Gates and the Secret Adventures of Devonton Abbey. From the website: Presenting a parody spin on the characters we know and love from the hit show Downton Abbey, this story is told through the eyes of the downstairs staff—especially one secretly rugged valet John …

Movie trailer for The Monk

I believe this to be the The Monk mentioned in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. One can certainly understand Catherine Morland’s dreams being affected by it.

City of Vice

I am proud to be an American, but boy there are times when I wish I lived in England. Based on their television, I have this ridiculous image of a well-educated populace who know the kings of England and can quote the fights historical. I’ve watched all manner of documentaries, …

Jane, Actually second draft finished

Actually the second draft was finished about a week ago, but I plunged right into the process of transferring the text from the Microsoft Word document to Adobe InDesign, which I use to format the printed book and the EPUB document.

It’s been a long process and I had nearly stalled out with the intricacies of plotting. Getting back to writing after the holidays was difficult for me and I’d taken detours into scale modeling and programming, but I finally got into the rhythm of editing in February.

Most of my difficulties involved the timing of the romantic conclusion, which takes place on the Saturday of the 2011 Annual General Meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America. Unlike an actual Jane Austen novel, I wanted mine to end with a kiss and as two of my leading players are disembodied, that took a little bit of doing.

I was also dreading the conclusion because I decided that like my inspiration (the movie Love Actually), I would temper happiness with sadness. So not every relationship ends well.

The book is about 120,000 words long with close to 70 chapters. These numbers are in flux as I decide to divide long chapters or delete others. I decided to add some footnotes for those unfamiliar with white soup or British readers ignorant of the term dope slap.

My decision to switch to a British narrator and obey UK spellings continues to cause problems. The narrator, I’ve now decided, grew up in the UK and then moved to America … and then moved back. I’m sure I’ve made many mistakes, despite changing truck to lorry, spelling tidbits tidbits and changing shopping bag to carrier bag.

Some words get changed back and forth with each draft. When I first saw that I had spelled skepticism with a “k” I changed it scepticism, but during the next exit I realized it was spoken by an American and changed it back. The subsequent edit, I spelled it with a “c” because I thought that’s how my British narrator would spell it. And finally (I hope), I spelled it with a “k” because I realized it was an inscription written by an American, who would spell it thusly.

It’s such a large book (my previous books running about 80,000 words) that I get lost. From the time I start a draft to the time I finish it, I can’t remember who knew what when or whether my character’s name is Albert Ridings or Albert Hastings or whether his wife’s name is Katherine or Catherine. When I read it through, I realize I’ve used variants of the same expression “cometh the hour, cometh the man” three times. You wouldn’t think one could find three excuses to use this expression, but I did and the only words in common are “hour” and “man,” so it’s rather difficult to find where the expression is used.

I’ve used just about every Shakespeare quote I know, although I still can’t find a place for “a consummation devoutly to be wished,” which you’d think would be perfect for a book about the disembodied. I think I’ve referenced in one way or another every Jane Austen novel (in more ways than just listing the title), but I haven’t delved into the Juvenilia.

My decision to allow Jane to utter the occasional mild expletive or to indulge in modern vernacular still worries me. I worry that Jane saying “this is not my first rodeo” will cause howls of derisive laughter, but I like to think Jane would be just as fond as I am to get a rise out of others.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the second draft. After the entire book is formatted in InDesign, I start proofreading and I think I’ve come up with a more efficient, if silly, process. If I read the book out loud, dramatically (using different voices for the characters and affecting accents when appropriate), then it becomes glaringly obvious when a word is missing and I also get a much better sense if a sentence is awkwardly constructed. If I have to take three breaths reading a single sentence, then maybe it’s too long.

I hope that within a month, I can start sending out copies to proof readers … hint, hint.