Tell us about your latest book, who
are the main characters and what can we expect when we pick it up?
My latest release is the audiobook for my romantic comedy, Jane
Austen Lied to Me! I am very excited to have been able to procure the
talents of the very delightful Kristyna Zaharek. When you listen to her read,
the image in your head is the perfect all-American college girl.
The main character happens to be a Jane Austen fan, (as is
many an all- American college girl) who is navigating her way through her first
three years of college. Her life is a series of romantic misadventures that
happen to coincide with all six of Jane Austen’s published novels.
This book is a romantic comedy and a satire. The single
most-used word in the reviews my readers write is the word “fun.” They say that
you do not have to be a Jane Austen fan to read this, but it helps. If you’ve
even watched a movie adaptation of Jane Austen’s books, it does help for
understanding the humor. Without the jokes, it simply romantic comedy about a
somewhat hapless undergrad trying to figure out who she wants to be when she
grows up.
Do you come up
with the hook first, or do you create characters first and then dig through
until you find a hook?
Oh my goodness, I never think about
“hooks” while I’m writing books. I suppose you could say that, since my brain
hates me and won’t leave me alone to finish one idea before it comes up with
the next, my brain creates the hook first, and forces me to write a book about
it.
Which of your own
characters would you like to have lunch with?
This is a
particularly funny question to ask about this particular book, because a huge
proportion of the characters in it are based on friends of mine! Professor
Jacobson is named for - and very much based on - a good friend of mine from
graduate school. Wendy really is like a sister to me, albeit I am much closer
to her than the character is to the sister in this book. There really is a Ken,
and he really is a sweetheart. Karla really does like her rum. Bunny really
does have this aura about her that every male in a 10-foot radius of her is
immediately in love with her. So of course I’ve had lunch before with all of
them, and can tell you WHICH restaurants each friend would prefer.
Tell us about what you are reading at the moment or anticipate reading in
the future? Any favorite authors you enjoy reading in your spare time?
Right now, I am on page 750-something of
Ron Chernow’s biography of George Washington. I absolutely adore historical
biographies; it has been my favorite reading since I found that section of the
library in fourth grade.
My favorite era to read about is the Civil
War (so, books by Shelby Foote and Grant’s autobiography, etc). I have been a
“Civil War buff” since I discovered Gone With the Wind in eighth grade. But,
oddly, what do I come away with? Not that I like historical fiction, but I’m
interested in that era of history. Shrug.
I write historical fiction, but I read
biographies. I realized years ago when I moved to North Carolina, that I needed
to branch out. The Charlotte area has a lot of Revolutionary War history, and I
had a giant deficit in my understanding of the Revolutionary War. So I bought
the books to start expanding my horizons. It was a fortuitous choice for
expanding my library, since now we are coming up on the semiquincentennial of
the Declaration of Independence. I teach historical dancing, and I have been
researching dances from the Revolutionary War to teach at history museums to
fourth grade classes and adults wanting to go to a Liberty Ball or a Hamilton Ball
at their local historical society. You cannot understand dance without
understanding the society that is doing it. So I am enjoying diving in to an
era that I know less about!
Which of your own books would you like to live in?
No question about it, Wealth and Privilege!
It is historical fiction set in Pittsburgh between 1875 and 1889. I picked that
time period so that I could write about bustle dresses, which is my favorite
era! I love wearing bustle dresses. My life is a costume party full of croquet
and tea parties and waltzes and quadrilles.To be able to live in that area,
surrounded by people who know the dances, and getting to wear those clothes
every day, that would be amazing.
Of course, Pittsburgh in that era was an
industrial giant, and the skies were absolutely black at noon. They had to
install street lights at the park where two of my characters have a picnic,
because it was pitch black from the coal smoke 24 hours a day. That part seems
a whole lot less appealing.
What do you do when
you have free time?
Please explain these
words “free time…”
I am a consultant
who teaches historical dance at history museums and music festivals. I have a
YouTube channel and a TikTok account called “History is My Playground.” Every
Tuesday I release a new YouTube video about my latest historical costume sewing
project, or the historical dance I was just at, or the nifty museum my car
happened to find while I was driving from one place to another. I am trying to
be good about posting daily TikTok videos, with some little bit of history’s
mysteries. Yesterday I posted this gorgeous chatelaine that has an adorable thimble
in its own little bucket, a pair of scissors, a needle case, and this funny
little silver ball with a crank on one end. I post, and my clever viewers can
usually tell me what the mystery item is.
The rest of the
time, I am gardening, (I just finally finished pitting all the cherries from my
very generous cherry tree in the backyard) and I am knocking on neighbors doors
and handing them bags of lettuce, because I cannot eat lettuce nearly fast
enough for the way my garden seems to be growing it this year.
I am an avid
seamstress. When I am not making historical clothing that people commission me
to sew, I am working on my own latest garment. Although my most recent project
was a gift for my best friend. Her father died during Covid, and I have been
turning some of his Hawaiian shirts into outfits for her. He happens to have
had multiple shirts of the exact same fabric, and I was able to make an entire wrap
dress for her.
How do you approach
character development in your stories? Do you have any specific techniques or
methods that you find particularly effective?
Characters need to have something special
to make them stand out in readers’ minds, something that makes them
distinctive. Look at Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and the five
sisters. What makes each sister distinct? Jane is the pretty one, Elizabeth is
the sassy one, Mary is the stuffy one, Kitty is the follower, and Lydia is the
wild child.
My characters are often based on something
about someone I know, just to keep it real. When I wrote My Dearest Miss
Fairfax, I realized I could write the character (who is more different from
me than any other character I’ve ever written), because she is the total
embodiment of an introvert friend of mine who is a very keen observer of
people.
Jane Austen Lied to
Me is something of an outlier from my other books. The character
development for the main character isn’t so much about a characteristic from a
specific someone I know. I was subconsciously tapping into Jane Austen’s appeal
as a writer who wrote about timeless things. One story she never told in any of
her books is about the pain of growing up and coming of age. All of us do a lot
of growing up during college. We graduate from high school with this idea that
we are adults. But we’ve only just reached adulthood, with no experience on how
to be an adult. And there’s only one way to really learn how to do it:
by just plunging ahead and making a lot of mistakes.
What do you believe
sets your writing apart from others in your genre, and why should readers
choose to read your books?
Most genre writers are under a lot of
pressure to just produce. The writing doesn’t need to be good. The
writing needs to satisfy the algorithm that says these are the parameters for
what people are buying right now, and you need to crank them out quickly before
audiences (well, the algorithm about the audience) lose interest in you, or
your genre.
I am a rule breaker. I apparently just
cannot color inside the lines. The rules say you need to pick a genre and just
write in it to build your base of readers. I ignore the rules, and focus on
writing a good book. Jane Austen Lied to Me is my only romantic
comedy, but I wrote it because it is a good book and fun to read.
After I finished this one, the next thing
I wrote is a lesbian romance based on Jane Austen’s Persuasion, because
the idea came to me, and once you think a thing, you cannot unthink it, and I
had to see it through to the finish, because I knew it was going to be a good
book. I also wrote it to prove a point: there are those who say that Persuasion
is not relatable for a modern audience. Cantankerous me sat there, listening to
the conversation and thinking “that’s not the least bit true. You just have to
have the stakes right.” So I wrote A Woman’s Persuasion as a chapter by
chapter literal translation of the original book, just to prove it is
absolutely and completely relatable to a modern audience.
When I wrote My Dearest Miss Fairfax,
because I truly do love writing historical fiction, someone said there is no
good fan fiction told from the point of view of Jane Fairfax from Jane Austen’s
Emma. I read Emma with a pink highlighter to look for clues as to what
was going on in Jane Fairfax’s world, and when I saw how complete a picture
there was already buried in the novel, I had to write it. The book has won four
awards already, which I think bears me out that it was a book worth writing. I
don’t write genre books, I write good books.
Wow, that sounds sooooo arrogant. Sorry,
readers. But give one of my books a try. I think my books stand on their own
merits.
Can you discuss any
upcoming projects or books that you're currently working on? What can readers
expect from your future works?
That thing I said about how my brain hates
me and won’t leave me alone? I realized that the two books seet in Pittsburgh, Wealth
and Privilege and Brains and Beauty, need to be a trilogy. The third
book is called Deceptions and Desires. I got a magnificent start on that
book, when I was invited to submit to a “pitch contest.” You cannot put pitch
the third book in a series. So I started the research and wrote the first three
chapters on a series about Abraham Lincoln as a young man in Illinois. (I am
currently living in central Illinois, 70 miles from Springfield.) I did not win
the pitch contest. I had to set that aside to spend some time focusing on the
nine volume series of nonfiction historical dance manuals for my historical
dance career. But then, when I filed for divorce, it gave me the idea for a
book set in Chicago at the turn of the century, and, I wrote the first couple
of chapters for that. I have just submitted the first page of that to a
different writing contest. If my muse would just shut up for a little while and
let me focus, I can settle down and get some writing completed.
So, what readers can expect from my future works? They will
continue to be eclectic, but thoroughly researched and well written. And
probably historical fiction. Unless I get distracted because some reader points
out a really great idea for a romantic comedy set in the Civil War or
something and I will be forced to sit down and write the whole thing out.
JANE AUSTEN LIED TO ME
Jeanette Watts
GENRE: Romantic Comedy Audiobook
What college girl doesn’t dream of meeting Mr. Darcy? Lizzy was certainly no exception. But when Darcy Fitzwilliam comes into her life, he turns out to be every bit as aggravating as Elizabeth Bennett’s Fitzwilliam Darcy. So what’s a modern girl to think, except....
How
could my hero be so wrong?
Excerpt
Two:
Feb 28
I’ve been thinking about my conversation with Professor
Jacobson over and over. The thing about
formulas and people. It makes a certain
kind of sense, but does it lack a romantic sensibility?
Ha! Sense and
Sensibility!
This is the second time that Professor Jacobson has me
thinking about S&S. Well, if I’m no Lizzie Bennett, there are worse things
in life than being a Marianne Dashwood.
She had youth and beauty and high spirits. She wasn’t good at the dating thing, either,
and overlooked the better man at first.
Why was that? Did Colonel Brandon
seem unromantic at first impression?
Even though I’ve got an assignment due in Spanish, as well
as the inevitable calc and chem homework, I grabbed Sense and Sensibility to
take with me to read while I went to dinner. I wanted to read everything in the
book about Colonel Brandon.
Anne spotted me in the dining hall while I was halfway
through a tuna sandwich and a really big pile of potato chips. “Hey, Roomie.” She slid her cafeteria tray
onto the table across from me and plopped her book bag down beside it. “You having a really bad day?”
“Um, no I don’t think so, why?” I asked.
“Usually, if you’re having a bad day, you pick up Jane
Austen and read a little something before you start to study. Since instead of sitting here doing your
homework, you’re sitting here reading Jane Austen, I take it you had an
exceptionally bad day today.”
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
When she is not writing, she is either dancing, sewing, or making videos for her YouTube channel and TikTok accounts, “History is My Playground.”
Contact Links
Website:
https://www.JeanetteWatts.com
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/JeanetteWattsAuthor
Twitter:
@JeanetteAWatts
Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6967936.Jeanette_Watts
https://www.goodreads.com/author/dashboard
Pinterest:
https://www.pinterest.com/jeanette2420/_saved/
Instagram:
@jeanetteamlwatts
YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClz5LwyUEhPYhBS6piNpBqQ
Or
YouTube handle: @historyismyplayground1827
TikTok:
@historyismyplayground
