Peculiar Engagement Book Launch

Today I am excited to announce the release of my novel, A Peculiar Engagement! And there is a giveaway! Many of you may recall about a year and a half ago I began posting chapters of it as I was writing Mr. Darcy’s Rival. It was the ‘book in a book’ that Miss Anne de Bourgh had written (and had published) about her engagement since birth to Mr. Darcy.

A few excerpts were included in Mr. Darcy’s Rival, but I had not intended to publish it as a book. But that has now changed. Several people inquired about it, and it seemed people were interested in a novel about Anne, so I decided to go back and work on it, expanding it, improving it, and making it a better story. Another reason I decided to publish it was that I thought it would make the book much better if I included a bonus chapter, detailing the part Mr. Darcy plays in giving Anne her ‘real’ happily ever after based on the events in Mr. Darcy’s Rival.

Each chapter in A Peculiar Engagement begins with the Easter visit Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam made, the spring before Pride and Prejudice begins. It then goes back to a memory Anne has of her cousin – getting to know one another, their interactions, and growing up into adulthood knowing they are promised in marriage. Here is a link to Chapter 1, which I have changed to reflect the changes I have made for the book. (The comments from the original posting still remain!) 🙂

Here is the blurb for the story: Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy and Miss Anne de Bourgh have been promised in marriage to each other since their birth. They have what might be called a peculiar engagement.

As per the events in my Pride and Prejudice variation, Mr. Darcy’s Rival, Miss de Bourgh is secretly an author and penned this reflection of stories about their engagement as they grew and matured. What was it like to know that one day they would marry? Did they love one another? Did they want to oblige the particular wishes of their mothers and marry? Did Anne grow weary waiting for an offer of marriage?

Included in this novel is a special bonus chapter that explains how Mr. Darcy plays a part in Miss de Bourgh finally getting her true happily ever after.

In Mr. Darcy’s Rival, when Elizabeth reads Anne’s book, she realizes that the way the book concludes could not possibly have happened, and she is curious to discover the truth. This is the reason I decided to include the bonus chapter, to give a little more insight into what part Mr. Darcy played in the matter.

Also, for those of you who may have read it when I posted the chapters here,  you may recall  that Anne had not used anyone’s real names in her book so their identity would not be known. She had also written it under a different name so no one would realize she was the author. I decided to publish it with everyone’s real names to make reading it easier.

If you are at all interested in what it was like for Anne to grow up knowing she was to marry her cousin, I hope you will check out A Peculiar Engagement. It is available in the kindle store (Kindle Unlimited for 3 months), available in paperback at Amazon, and hopefully soon at other online retailers. Once the 3 months is over for Kindle Unlimited, I will make the ebook available elsewhere (Nook, iBookstore, etc.)

As a side note, you do not have to have previously read Mr. Darcy’s Rival to read this book, but I hope it will make you curious enough about what happens in it to put it on your TBR list!