Launch of Rosings Park

Launch of ROSINGS PARK: A Story of Jane Austen’s Fighting Men, by Jack Caldwell

Merry Christmas, everyone. Jack Caldwell here.

Years ago, back in the dark ages of JAFF, my beautiful wife Barbara challenged to write an Austenseque story. That story became THE THEE COLONELS: Jane Austen’s Fighting Men. The story was audacious at the time because I:

1. Wrote a hard historical fiction novel starring Jane Austen’s characters;
2. Created a sequel to TWO of Miss Austen’s novels, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility;
3. Assumed that all of Miss Austen’s characters knew each other—in other words, a massive cross-over of all her works; and
4. I reformed Caroline Bingley.

I broke a lot of hearts with the original ending of THE THREE COLONELS. In fact, when I published the thing five years later, my editor was so broken up over it, I re-wrote the ending. I knew then it was a brilliant idea because it gave me a chance to write a sequel!

That was ten years ago.

It’s not that I haven’t been busy. I wrote and published nine other books, two of them in that unique Jane Austen’s Fighting Men Universe (JAFMU): THE LAST ADVENTURE OF THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL and PERSUADED TO SAIL. But these were companion novels—books whose plots occurred at the same time, featuring characters connected with the other novels. They were not sequels to THE THREE COLONELS.

At first, I imagined the sequel to be a grand finale to the series, incorporating elements of all three books. But that proved to be unwieldy. Below is an idea of just how BIG my JAFMU is. These are some of the characters who appear in my novels:

The various source novels are in color: P&P in gold, S&S in green, MP in grey, NA in orange, Persuasion in blue, and Emma in white. Various baddies are in black.

Everyone is connected in this universe. Married couples are linked. RED lines are family. GREEN lines indicate links through business or politics. BLUE lines indicate friendship. Quite a web I created, didn’t I? This is only the major characters–there are more besides this.

Still, I went forward and created a novel that one beta reader said of it, “Jack, you’ve written two great novels here.”

Oops. Back to the drawing board.

After throwing out 20,000 (!) words, I made a few changes and tightened up the focus. I set the book in late 1816 and 1817, wishing to talk about post-war Great Britain, the effects of rising industrialization, and the world-wide devastation caused by the Tambora eruption of April 1815.

The title states that tighter focus: Rosings Park in Kent. Colonel Fitzwilliam is knighted and marries Anne de Bough. Everything’s rosy at Rosings, right? Wrong. Sir Richard was brilliant on the battlefield, but he knows next to nothing about running an estate. And as for an insecure Lady Anne Fitzwilliam, she is constantly undermined by her mother, Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Things aren’t any better for our other friends. Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth Darcy may have made a cocoon out of Pemberley, but the North of England is where the worst of the riots occur. And Lady Caroline Buford must try to help her badly wounded husband, Sir John Buford, recover as best he can. Unfortunately, he is suffering from what we know is PTSD.

There’s a lot of symbolism in the cover, too, my friends. It’s not just a clever reverse of the cover for THE THREE COLONELS.

Folks, “happily ever after” exists only in fairy tales. It doesn’t just happen in real life. IT MUST BE EARNED.

By the way, about those 20,000 words? They will not go to waste. While ROSINGS PARK is the concluding chapter to Jane Austen’s Fighting Men, that doesn’t mean I can’t write a fifth book in the series. Those pulled pages will be incorporated in a lighthearted novel I will “slot” between THE THEE COLONELS and ROSINGS PARK. It will be titled BROTHER OF THE BRIDE, and I think you can figure out what that one is about!

I hope you will read and enjoy ROSINGS PARK: A Story of Jane Austen’s Fighting Men. It is available everywhere in paperback, and you can get it in Kindle or read it at Kindle Unlimited. The audiobook will take a little longer—with the huge cast of characters in this book, we’ll have to get the right narrator to tackle it!

Meanwhile, please leave your questions and comments below!

Until next time, this has been the Cajun Cheesehead Chronicles.

It takes a real man to write historical romance, so let me tell you a story…