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?
Jane Austen Lied to Me has a behind-the-scenes story that is unique from any other book that I’ve done so far: it has already had two covers.
When I first published the book, the cover art are photographs. My best friend, who also happens to be the actress playing Lizzy in the book trailer, put on her Regency dress, and we got pictures of her in one of the local libraries. She is slouching in a chair in her Regency dress with her laptop and coffee. She was working the night shift at the time, so the wonderful tired and slightly grumpy expression she needed to match the title was easy for her to achieve.
For the back cover, the photo shows a broken teacup. That was actually harder than it sounds. The concept was to have a teacup with a large piece broken out of it. That is not necessarily how teacups break. Several thrift store teacups later, my husband actually carved out a missing chunk with a grinder in order to get the right image. It made for a very interesting art experiment.
However, romantic comedies now have a very specific kind of cover art. I am not particularly fond of it, but everybody has a cartoon for the cover. It makes everything look very adolescent to me, more appropriate to young adult fiction than to romantic comedies, but who am I to argue with a trend?
So I asked my husband, who was doing all my graphic art, to work on a cartoon cover for me. The end result is fairly entertaining. My heroine is standing at the front with her sunglasses, and one eyebrow raised, with a ring of men behind her. Each one all represents the different Jane Austen heroes with whom she has some form of romantic misadventure.
It was a very interesting experiment in DEAI and blind casting. If I were casting these characters for a Broadway musical, every single character cast in the show should be colorblind, and the entire cast should resemble America. This is supposed to be the story of an all-American girl who happens to be a Jane Austen fan.
I did, however, have one bit of casting that horrified me, and the cover of the first batch of books does not match any later books in print: in making all the characters different ethnicities, my husband made the black character the fellow with whom Lizzie shares a love of thrift stores.
That just came across as completely cringey to me. Hopefully I was just being overly sensitive, but… no. So I asked my husband to change two of the characters. On the new cover, Professor Jacobson is now the black man, not the thrift store afficionado. So not giving any parameters and casting blindly does have some drawbacks.
The denouement to my book cover saga still has me scratching my head. I still had copies of the old cover as well as copies with the new cover at the last couple of book festivals I went to. I put out both books with both covers; readers could buy which ever cover appealed to them more. One would think that the new romantic comedy cover would appeal more, but it didn’t. I sold a lot more of the old cover than the new one. I thought maybe different ages would choose different covers, but even that did not hold up. So now I really don’t know what to think. My takeaway is…marketers aren’t always right? Don’t know.
Feb 7
This afternoon I got further confirmation that I’ve been seeing an awful lot of Michael. I was wandering back to the apartment, when Lon hailed me from one of the couches inside the lobby doors.
“I have a message for you from your boyfriend,” he said, kind of stiffly.
I looked at him stupidly for a moment. “My what?”
“Your boyfriend was here. He said his phone was dead, so he couldn’t call or text you to tell you that he can’t stick around for dinner tonight. He has a late meeting with a new client and he had to rush back to the office.”
I was still having trouble with the boyfriend thing. “Wait – do you mean Michael?”
“If that’s the guy you’ve been seeing the last couple of months,” Lon said with a shrug. “The one you’re always having dinner with.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I protested. “He’s an old friend of the family. We grew up together.”
Lon's head was back at his computer screen. “Boyfriend, friend. The guy who kisses you goodnight all the time after he takes you out for dinner. He’s not coming tonight. I’ve delivered my message, that’s all I’ve got.”
Right then Allie walked up. “Hey, Lizzie! Waiting for Michael?”
“No, he’s not coming tonight.” I headed to the elevator with her.
“That’s a shame. I know how much you enjoy having dinner with him, even if he does aggravate you a lot.”
“Yeah. It’s kind of a love-hate relationship,” I agreed.
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Jeanette Watts has written three Jane Austen-inspired novels and two short stories for Jane Austen Fan Fiction anthologies, two other works of historical fiction, stage melodramas, television commercials, and historical dance manuals. She is a regular contributor to MOMCC Magazine.
When she is not writing, she is either dancing, sewing, or making videos for her YouTube channel and TikTok accounts, “History is My Playground.”
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Thank you for featuring JANE AUSTEN LIED TO ME today.
ReplyDeleteLooks really good.
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