Sep

2

Mrs Darcy, Episode Seventy-Three

Filed Under Mrs Darcy | Leave a Comment

Whoops, almost forgot. There was another episode of Mrs Darcy yesterday, wasn’t there? Leaving her sick husband behind in Bath in the dubious care of Sir Humphry Davy, Elizabeth, heads off to Glastonbury to seek Charlotte, accompanied by Wickham and Colonel Sutherland.

Aug

28

Mrs Darcy, Episode Seventy-Two

Filed Under Mrs Darcy | Leave a Comment

For reasons which are way too boring to go into, there wasn’t an episode this Wednesday. However, this doesn’t matter too much as we have a small amount of slack in the schedule, given that the total projected length is 100 episodes, plus prologue and epilogue – which means that we can afford to skip a couple of appointments and still stay within a year.

Anyway, in today’s episode, Elizabeth and Wickham make their past hordes of drunken zombies to Darcy’s hotel and we learn a little of his progress towards a cure. There is an enema hose involved.

By the way, plans are afoot to produce a third and probably final YouTuberance. The broad outlines of a script are being prepared even as I write. So to speak.

Aug

21

Mrs Darcy, Episode Seventy-One

Filed Under Mrs Darcy | 2 Comments

In this episode we (thankfully) take our leave of Miss Austen, but not before we experience a curious little Hitchcockian cameo. Back to the main story next time, folks.

Aug

18

Mrs Darcy, Episode Seventy

Filed Under Mrs Darcy | Leave a Comment

And in other news, the sage staggers on. In today’s episode, we find out the awful truth about Miss Austen’s writing career, and Wickham makes a helpful suggestion. I’m quite proud of one of the gags in it.

Aug

14

Mrs Darcy, Episode Sixty-Nine

Filed Under Mrs Darcy | Leave a Comment

It struck me that we hadn’t had any aliens for a few episodes, so here’s a quick interlude featuring Lady Catherine and her opposite number on Mars. Probably the last time I can get away with this particular gag, so enjoy it while you can.

Incidentally, it struck me whilst I was writing this episode that there’s probably an opening for an automatic alien anatomy generator. All you need is something that will come up with one of each of the following:

location | function | structure

Which is basically how I came up with “perianal thrust bladder”. Another writing tip there from JP. I should be charging for this stuff, you know.

Aug

11

Mrs Darcy, Episode Sixty-Eight

Filed Under Mrs Darcy | Leave a Comment

The story takes another turn into the meta today, as Elizabeth and Wickham make their way to the Jane Austen Emporium in search of the Great Author’s autograph. No idea if this bit’s working or not – I just fancied following the idea to see where it went. Normal service will be etc. etc. etc.

Aug

7

Mrs Darcy, Episode Sixty-Seven

Filed Under Mrs Darcy | Leave a Comment

In today’s episode we learn more about Mr Wickham’s unhealthy interest in the works of that “well-known writer of cheap, tawdry zombie stories” known as Jane Austen. We’ll get back to the main plot once this bit’s over, but I thought I’d have a bit of fun trashing JA’s reputation whilst I had the opportunity. It gets worse in the next couple of episodes, by the way …

Aug

5

Mrs Darcy, Episode Sixty-Six (and a pin-up for you to cut out and keep)

Filed Under Mrs Darcy | 3 Comments

In this episode, we find out what’s happening with all those zombies, and we meet a couple of old friends once more.

Bath undergoes a kind of collective madness during the Jane Austen festival, where some people do indeed adopt Regency costume for the entire time they are there – which of course means having several outfits, depending on the time of day.

When Mrs P and I went a couple of years ago, we made the cardinal error of turning up in our normal clothes for an event one evening, and it was just like being the only two people at a fancy-dress party who’d failed to make the effort. Although, as I wrote on this very blog, finding the right accoutrements can take you to some unlikely places. This, incidentally, is the only post on this blog that you can find using the search term “Ann Summers butt plug”. And, yes, someone has.

Now for that pin-up. My Mrs Darcy T-Shirt arrived today, and here I am, modelling it. As it happens, I was hoping to get Naomi Campbell to do the job, but it turned out she had a prior engagement. So you’ll have to make do with yours truly. You can buy one for yourself here, incidentally.

Photo on 2010-08-05 at 14.15

Jul

31

Mrs Darcy, Episode Sixty-Five

Filed Under Mrs Darcy | Leave a Comment

There are zombies in this episode. Just trust me, OK?

Jul

28

Mrs Darcy, Episode Sixty-Four

Filed Under Mrs Darcy | 6 Comments

Today’s episode is a reflective interlude which seeks to explain what actually happened at the Mission. I’ve just realised that we are almost two-thirds of the way through this thing, which is a long way further than I’ve previously managed with a novel – so if nothing else, I’ve proved to myself that I can keep going for over 40K words …

Now here’s a question for you people out there. In the course of trying to sell this thing to a publisher, it keeps coming up against the problem that it looks like another bloody mash-up – and of course the market for that kind of thing has long moved on (P&P&Z sold zillions, but most of the other wannabes have apparently sold poorly, at least in the UK).

My problem with this is that I never intended to write a mash-up as such. Sure, my starting point was that I thought it might be amusing to take the characters from “Pride and Prejudice” and use them in an entirely different context, but the story very soon took on a life of its own, bringing in a whole load of other stuff that I hadn’t anticipated at all. But how do you differentiate that from a mash-up? Or is there no difference at all? Are Jasper fforde’s books (for example) just mash-ups, then?

I’m thinking aloud here, which is a dangerous thing to do on a blog. But I really would be interested to know what anyone else thinks. The floor is yours.

Next Page →