Janet Mullany – Guest Post

Please welcome my guest, Janet Mullany!

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IMMORTAL JANE

He released her hands and stood. “Consider, Jane. You’ll marry some bore of a country gentleman who’ll kill you in childbed and who won’t want a bookish wife anyway. Perhaps you’ll stay a spinster and lose your bloom and die young of some disease they’ll find an easy cure for in a hundred years or so. Or you’ll see your sister die first.”

“Now you’re cruel.”

“No, it is the truth. But let us paint a happier picture for Miss Jane Austen. You write a few books that entertain your family and you win a little fame, perhaps even some money, while you live. And after, what then? Your books languish forgotten on dusty bookshelves and you are but a name on a binding that disappears with decay and time. You think your books offer you a chance at immortality?”

Jane and the Damned

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Jane and the Damned isn’t a romance so it doesn’t have a traditional happy ending. It’s a historical urban fantasy with romance elements, part alternative historical with a bit of this, that, and the other, and some “spot the Austen novel” moments. But I think a characteristic of the HEA is that hero and heroine exist in a bubble of passion, which is why vampire romances are so hot (and, oh yeah, the physical perfection and great sex and all that stuff)—the eternal is now. Never mind that she’ll be looking at hip replacements while he is still a gorgeous 28-year-old sex god. Or, they’ll both be forever young and gorgeous vampires, the HEA distilled into eternity, the passage of time halted.

It’s a great fantasy.

But Jane Austen as a vampire? Neither of these endings would work and I had to create a scenario where her immortality would come with her books, even if at the age of 21 (the book is set in 1797) she was not at all sure she would ever be published. But I was following a trend, even though I hadn’t read a lot of vampire books, and I certainly hadn’t read any of the vampire classics, but I had watched hours of True Blood on HBO before getting tired of all those ripped perfect bodies and all that blood.

All those ripped perfect bodies and all that blood are what I define as Vampires Type A in popular culture. Vampires Type O are the evil ones. The ones mortals must fight to save the world, yadda yadda. And then there’s all this stuff about garlic and holy water and crosses (anyone remember that Roman Polanski movie with the Jewish vampire?—“Oy, lady, did you ever get the wrong vampire…”), not being able to cross running water, go out in daylight, use public transport (I’m making that up), and so on.

I had to come up with a vampire scenario that fit into my depiction of Georgian England, the age of reason and of both social and industrial revolution; the world that produced Jane Austen. I chose very selectively from vampire lore, although essentially the Damned are Type A—hot, desirable, and very fashionable. They’re the ton. Everyone wants to have sex with them or provide them with a dining experience. (These vampires do not feed—that is so vulgar. They dine.) The Prince of Wales (later the Prince Regent) loves to hang out with them and the newspapers are full of their scandalous behavior.

To tie the vampire elements to what we know of Austen’s life, I used another established literary trope, that Austen became what she was because of some lifechanging event: frequently a passionate love affair, a secret destroyed in the letters her sister Cassandra burned after her death. The family secret as I interpreted it was that Jane Austen was once a vampire and it influenced everything she wrote.

Do you agree with my vampire-HEA assessment? And what do you think of the current Austen-paranormal trend?

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Thanks, Janet! It was great to have you visit!

About Victoria Janssen

Victoria Janssen [she, her] currently writes cozy space opera for Kalikoi. The novella series A Place of Refuge begins with Finding Refuge: Telepathic warrior Talia Avi, genius engineer Miki Boudreaux, and augmented soldier Faigin Balfour fought the fascist Federated Colonies for ten years, following the charismatic dissenter Jon Churchill. Then Jon disappeared, Talia was thought dead, and Miki and Faigin struggled to take Jon’s place and stay alive. When the FC is unexpectedly upended, Talia is reunited with her friends and they are given sanctuary on the enigmatic planet Refuge. The trio of former guerillas strive to recover from lifetimes of trauma, build new lives on a planet with endless horizons, and forge tender new connections with each other.
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4 Responses to Janet Mullany – Guest Post

  1. Anonymous says:

    Hi Janet! Your book sounds like great fun! I'll have to add it to my "to be read" pile…of course, that means getting out the ladder and climbing up the side of the pile, standing on my tippytoes to carefully add your book to the top of the heap…damn, I knocked the whole pile over!
    Beth W

  2. Margay says:

    Hi, Janet! I'm usually not into the Austen mash-ups – I like the other variations, though – but I might make an exception for yours because I am a fan of your stories.
    Margay

  3. Janet Mullany says:

    Beth, should we send emergency services to get you out from under the pile of books?

    Margay, this isn't really a mashup in the sense of being an Austen book with added blood n monsters. So I hope you like it!

  4. Sharon S. says:

    Great post. I think you hit on a great idea with making Jane a vampire. I am interested in reading your book for this reason. And your book cover is just so pretty .

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