12 Days of Christmas, Day 11

Happy eleventh day of Christmas! If we were going by the famous Christmas carol, today’s gift would be eleven pipers piping… however I suspect that nobody has much use for eleven pipers (or even one) these days. 😊 However, in keeping with the auditory spirit, I’m giving away something that I hope will be a …

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12 Days of Christmas, Day 10, & Sanditon Group Read: Chapters 7 – 9

I trust you’ve been enjoying our 12-Days-of-Christmas posts with all the excellent giveaways! Here’s day 10, followed by the next installment of the Sanditon Group Read. You may have taken down your tree and moved on. But it’s still Christmas here at Austen Variations! We’re up to day ten, marked in the song by TEN …

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12 Days of Christmas, Day Nine by Nicole Clarkston

Welcome back to our Twelve Days of Christmas event! I’m hitting the dance floor today with nine Jane Austen ladies, but we have a twist. It’s Truth or Dance time, so help our ladies decide which would be the  most fun (or least awkward)! You can check out the results after you take the survey. …

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12 Days of Christmas – Day 8 & New Release!!!

Happy New Year! I hope your holiday season has been festive so far and that the New Year will bring wondrous things your way. I don’t know about you, but I’m happy to see the back of 2019. Here’s to 2020 and a glorious year! For my Christmas offering, I’m giving away a copy of …

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Twelve Days of Christmas, Day 6

On the sixth day of Christmas my true love gave to me… well, the song says “Six geese a-laying,” but what did Jane Austen give us that is in sixes? She gave us 6 wonderful novels. And we are so grateful for that, although we wished she could have written more!  For my post today, …

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12 Days of Christmas, Day 5

…5 WORD SEARCH PUZZLES! I’ve been pretty quiet around here this past year. More than a year ago, I started working at a bookstore, which I love, but there’s a long commute, which I hate. So basically an 8-hour work day becomes an 11-hour workday. Yikes. My reading has slowed, my writing has slowed, time …

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12 Days of Christmas – 4th Day!

Happy 4th Day of Christmas!! In my newest novel, The Knight Before Christmas, my characters, Emma Westwood & Austin Knightley, make a special dessert — a chocolate-apricot torte, reminiscent of the famous Viennese Sachertorte. My husband and I were in Austria back in the mid-1990s, and we each enjoyed a generous and oh-so-chocolaty piece of …

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12 Days of Christmas, Day 3, & Sanditon Group Read: Chapters 4-6

  As you can see from the title of this post, I’m doing double duty here today! We’ll get to our Sanditon discussion in a moment, but let’s talk Christmas first! In the famous old song, the third day gift is (sing it with me) “…three French hens…” But I’m not sure what the Austen …

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12 Days of Christmas ~ Day 2

Two turtledoves and dreams of their merry, merry Christmastimes at Pemberley or at their house in town. In early wedded bliss, perhaps – or surrounded by (more or less welcome) guests – or later, when there are children at Pemberley and the new custom Prince Albert had brought from his home country had begun to catch …

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Happy Hanukkah!

For those who celebrate, the eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights is currently under way, running this year from sundown on December 22nd through December 30th. The Hebrew word Hanukkah (or Chanukah) means “dedication,” and the holiday commemorates the re-dedication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem after the Maccabean Revolt in 164 BCE. Like most holidays, …

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