Rebirth and Rejuvenation: a Second Chance for Hope

Spring is my favorite season! It’s all about new life – baby animals (I saw a fawn just yesterday) and green growing things. The birds return from their winter latitudes and start to sing. And flowers begin blooming everywhere. It means I’ve made it through another winter, and I feel hopeful and rejuvenated.

When I was thinking about this theme – Rebirth and Rejuvenation – I decided to try working some of that springtime magic on one of my books: Leap of Hope: Chance at an Austen Kind of Life. But I’ll need your help, because I can’t figure it out.

Is it the cover? Personally, I think it’s gorgeous, but perhaps it doesn’t exactly scream, “This is a JAFF novel!” The idea behind the design is you have a modern girl named Hope – a devoted Janeite – dreaming of an Austen Kind of Life. She’s looking longingly at a large picture of Chatsworth and wishing she could step through into it, back in time (hence the clock image) to Jane Austen’s day to find her very own Mr. Darcy.

Haven’t we all imagined that from time to time? Well, our young and optimistic heroine gets to live out that fantasy, taking us along with her for the adventure. So the problem can’t be the premise, can it?

The ratings and reviews are excellent too – 4.5 stars at Amazon and a full 5 stars at Austenesque Reviews: “Shannon Winslow came up with an inventive and diverting premise and her execution was masterly… Well-written, original, and beautifully composed, Leap of Hope is an entertaining and delightful adventure. Fresh and fun…”

So people who have read it, enjoyed it. Yay! The problem is that so few have given it a chance in the six years since it was published, and I can’t understand why.

I always root for the underdog to win and for the perpetual wallflowers to finally find love and happiness. Naturally, then, when I see one of my “darling children”  going underappreciated, I want to do something about it. So today, with your help, I’d like to give Hope a fresh start. Pretend you’ve  never heard of the book before, even if you have. Read the prologue below (which totally fits the springtime theme!), and then let me know what you think.

Hope O’Neil – recent orphan, college student, and Jane Austen devotee – awoke completely uninjured but mystified to find herself in unfamiliar surroundings.

The last thing she remembered, she had been minding her own business, just walking down one of the many tree-lined sidewalks on campus, on the way from her freshman English class to a ten o’clock appointment with someone by the name of Mrs. Tanaka, a guidance counselor. It was a beautiful spring morning – deliciously cool but already hinting at the balmy South Carolina summer ahead. The air smelled of fresh-cut lawns. Larks and wrens were singing. Pink magnolia trees had begun bursting into bloom all over town. Long-legged youths in khakis and polo shirts played Frisbee on the quad.

In short, it was the sort of day that made a person glad to be alive.

And Hope was… glad to be alive, that is. No, her life wasn’t perfect. For one thing, she was pretty much alone in the world. She’d never had any siblings. Now her parents were gone. And she still hadn’t stumbled across the hunky-but-sensitive man of her dreams that the Regency era novels she read inspired her to expect. Yet her native optimism, which had allowed her to move beyond the tragedy of her parents’ deaths a year and a half before, also told her Mr. Wonderful was bound to turn up at any moment. She was sure some romantic adventure lay in store for her, at least she dearly hoped so.

In the meantime, she planned to focus on finding her calling. The fact that she didn’t know exactly where she was headed, career-wise, wasn’t at all unusual. Less than half of the kids on campus had decided on their major by the end of their first year. Most of the others had changed their minds at least once.

It wasn’t so much that nothing interested her. Quite the opposite; nearly everything did. College was a glorious buffet to Hope, with a hundred tantalizing entrees to pick from. English literature had the upper hand at the moment, but public health, environmental science, art history, and even paleontology had all been contenders at one time or another. Making a definite choice was the challenge, and, even more difficult, sticking to it. But that’s what guidance counselors were for, right? – to help students who lacked clear direction get things sorted out? Even though she had never met the woman, Hope placed the utmost confidence in Mrs. Tanaka’s ability to do just that.

And there was plenty of time to get herself sorted, have adventures, and fall in love, she reasoned. After all, she was only nineteen.

Yes, plenty of time.

Ironically, that’s what Hope O’Neil was thinking that April morning as she leisurely made her way toward Grady Hall. Then suddenly she heard a roaring noise overhead and time ran out.

(continue reading a written or audio sample here)

So what do you think? Are you at all intrigued with Hope’s story? How do you think a modern-day coed would deal with the confining facts of Regency life? Would you like to see Hope discover her Mr. Darcy, or would it be more interesting if she got sidetracked by a rake such as Wickham or Henry Crawford? I had the same questions when I started the book, and it was fun discovering the answers as a wrote.

I hope you’ll decide that Leap of Hope deserves a fresh start, a second chance. It’s available at Amazon in paperback, Kindle, KU, and audio.

Happy reading, everybody, and have a great spring!