Jun

19

Mrs Darcy, Episode Fifty-Three

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I’d like to think that this episode is the first-ever work of fiction to combine references to H.G.Wells, Goldilocks and R Kelly. I’m not necessarily suggesting that this is a good thing, mind. I would also like to apologise for using the word “weapon” in a double-entendre for the second episode running, but it just seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

Episode summary: Wickham captures the wrong Mr Darcy. Well, it was bound to happen, wasn’t it?

Jun

16

Mrs Darcy, Episode Fifty-Two

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I’ve always wanted to have an episode open with “Sheath your weapon immediately, there are ladies present”, and this seemed the perfect opportunity. Wickham confronts Alien Darcy and he reveals his true colours!

Jun

12

Mrs Darcy, Episode Fifty-One

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Well, I’m still on a bit of a high after yesterday’s news, but other matters need to be attended to. In this episode, things descend into farce as Elizabeth Darcy has to contend with two different versions of her husband. But will Wickham save the day again?

Don’t forget the competition, by the way! The emporium will also be opening for business soon. I can’t wait.

Jun

9

Mrs Darcy, Episode Fifty!

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Good Lord, we have reached the half-century already. And in a suitably revelatory episode, our mysterious man with no name finally reaches home and find out who he is. Which means that things are about to get very complicated indeed.

But much more importantly, we have a competition! Anyone can enter, even those of you who aren’t following the story (although if you aren’t, you may find it more than a little challenging) – more details here. Go on, you know you want to go in for it, don’t you?

Jun

5

Mrs Darcy, Episode Forty-Nine

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And so we move closer to the next set-piece, as Wickham arrives at Pemberley with the Midsummer Ball in full swing. I actually managed to write this episode in time for this week’s VWC manuscript evening and we had an interesting discussion on things that could go amusingly wrong with a steam-powered gyrocopter, with the result that I scrapped my rather boring initial idea. Such is the value of a critique group :)

Jun

2

Mrs Darcy, Episode Forty-Eight

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OK, I admit it – this is a bit of a filler episode. I knew what was going to happen in episodes 49 and 50, and then a rough idea of the sequence from 51 onwards, but I hadn’t a clue what to do in 48. But then I thought it might be fun to see things from Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s point of view for once, and it does actually move the plot on a little. It is, however, essentially one joke stretched out over 600 or so words, so it really depends on whether or not you like the joke or not.

May

30

Mrs Darcy, Episode Forty-Seven

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This episode is actually quite disturbing if you think too hard about what probably happened last night. So I felt I ought to leaven it a little by bringing in the one Bennet sister that we haven’t yet met, Kitty. I felt that she would probably be the kind of person who wouldn’t bother answering an invitation until the last minute when she would send an irritating text saying she’d had a better offer.

So I thought about Regency equivalents of texts, which initially took me in the direction of telegrams – except that of course they came much later. Then, around eleven o’clock last night (I do so like deadlines) I came up with the idea of tux’d’s instead. Which was great until it struck me overnight that of course tuxedos are about as anachronistic as telegrams. Hence my addition of this footnote. I can’t quite decide whether this is a horrible kludge or an inspired piece of unpainting myself out of a corner. Either way, it’s behind us now. But it did at least give me the opportunity to sneak in an entirely gratuitous Abba reference as well.

I think we should probably have some kind of competition when we get to Episode Fifty. No idea what the prize might be, though. Watch this space …

One more thing: if you want to see what the whole of “Pride and Prejudice” might look in text format, try this by my VWC mate Dave Weaver (he’s the one who did the amazingly cool picture of Mrs Darcy on the blog). Brilliant, isn’t it?

May

27

Mrs Darcy, Episode Forty-Six

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Mary Ann tells all at last and Wickham learns the truth about Mr Darcy. Or at least some of the truth, because as we saw in episode forty-five, things are not quite always as they seem.

[Technical note: on the day that this episode appeared, I had to go into London for the day job and as I was strolling through St Pancras (where I'd stopped off in order to grab a couple more copies of Litro 95 from Foyles - yes, that's where they've all gone) it suddenly struck me that I'd cocked up the point of view in the final paragraph. So yesterday's readers will have seen this:

The two men left the room, speaking to each other in furtive whispers.

“Oi!” said Mary Ann Nicholls, pointing at the cage on the desk next to her. “You two! What about my baby?”

I've now changed this to

The two men left the room, speaking to each other in furtive whispers. As they did so, they were both completely oblivious to Mary Ann's gesticulations towards the cage on the desk, as well as her cry of “Oi! You two! What about my baby?”

which sort of fixes it. Almost. OK, it's not perfect, but I didn't want to lose that last joke.

Then again, when I took a close look at "Pride and Prejudice" recently, I was startled to find that Jane Austen's point of view was all over the shop. You really would have thought that an editor would have picked up that kind of shoddy writing :) And it turns out there aren't any aliens in it, either.]

May

22

Mrs Darcy, Episode Forty-Five

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In which the mysterious stranger with no name (or at least a name that he’s temporarily mislaid for the time being) takes part in a game of cards. Incidentally, the rules of Portugese Six-Card Wazzock may be found all over the web, although there are a considerable number of variants. “Hapsburg rules” is sadly very rarely played these days.

There’s a bit of a bombshell at the end of this episode, too.

May

19

Mrs Darcy, Episode Forty-Four

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Today’s episode is my bid for the steampunk market, although thinking about it, I probably should have thrown in a dirigible for good measure. Something for a future episode, perhaps. When I was writing this, I was casting around for a suitably stupid steampunk pun, and after discarding the alternatives (steamfunk, steamdrunk, etc.) I settled on “steam pink”. Imagine my surprise when I’m checking up on incoming referrals to the site and I find out that this term actually exists and relates to a sub-genre of steampunk with female heroines. I’m still not entirely sure whether or not that makes the joke better or worse.

This week I also wrote a piece for Ziggy Kinsella’s excellent Feckless Goblin blog about the merits of giving your work away. Judging by the number of RTs that it got on Twitter, it seems to have struck a chord. Is this the future of publishing, then? Well, maybe. But for the moment it’s a means to an end, and it would still be nice to get a proper book out of it …

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