I’ve noticed there are characters in my books who are just plain strange. They always come in pairs—and who better to start with than Artie and BeBe from Bellevere House?

Artie is like something out of a freak show. He is the son of a radio producer—perhaps constant immersion in show business accounts for his being out of touch with normal life. He wears plaid suits and just zones in on Bebe. Zones in. She’s interested in voice acting, so he targets her. He doesn’t marry her even though he’s actually in love with her. Instead she gets pregnant, for almost no reason, he picks on her eating and table manners (what the heck!?!?) Then he disappears into the blue and pretends to forget about her. Later, they pop up happily married and he hopes her dad will accept him. He doesn’t seem concerned whether BEBE will accept him, although I think that should be a serious IF. If I were her, he’d be dead. He would no longer be a part of the world of the living. He would be gone from the Earth as we know it, right about the time I first met him.

There’s no explanation of BeBe’s reasoning—seriously, who would be interested in this guy? She gets in a lot of trouble with her dad after Artie runs off and diffidently assumes she could never even dream of getting married to Artie. After all Artie is—is—is what, exactly? A freaky guy in plaid who treats her terribly for some unexplained reason. Like he’s trying to impress her with how knowledgeable and distant he is, how hard to attain, how critical about how to eat crackers? Artie ISN’T hard to attain. He followed HER around from the first. BeBe is quite self-centered. That must be why she doesn’t see him the way he is. She doesn’t see him at all.

I think she’s perfect for him. The person married to Artie should be blind as a bat.
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And there will be more updates. 

I popped back into Pinterest early this week and started making boards again. "Pinterest--haven't been on there in a while. Does it still exist?" I thought lethargically. But I poked back in, reactivated my account, and started pinning lots of funny pics and inspirational quotes. Then I searched vintage fashion for a Bellevere House board and found lots of great ideas.

I knew vintage was a popular search, but my sister (who OWNED Pinterest at that time) specialized in girls with bombshell hair and bright lipstick. So I thought that was all there was to the vintage thing. This week I discovered lots of great dresses from the circa 1930s era--some on models, some on dressmaker's dummies. I saved lots and lots of them in many great colors. I visualize Bellevere as having lots of variety in the colors the women wear for each scene (men are harder to get creative about, but maybe something specific in the argyle pattern of a vest, etc.)

Now I actually have dresses to look at, concepts were just popping out at me. Faye wears a lot of gray, black, and blouse-with-skirt combinations. In one scene she wears a pale blue with pink flowers on it, for no reason. Helene often wears an outfit in just one scene, sometimes very striking colors--like dark maroon with a white collar when she plays piano, or a gold shirt and dark brown skirt at the beach. BeBe wears a lot of pale pink, little sweaters, and coral. I found a long dark blue flamboyant evening dress for Myrtle when she's discovered to have been cheating with Horace, and a medium green with embroidery for Aunt Betty when she talks about whether green is more a color for men or women. (Her son wears lots of green ties, which is odd, and which might throw her off!)

So much fun. I'll narrow down pics soon and put some on the blog.

And there will be more updates.

This book was begun several years ago, as part of a group project. My sister started the project and I knew most of the other members personally, some for years. So I agreed to join. There was much defensiveness last year because I portrayed some of the characters in my book as immoral, something that wasn’t done in any of the other VJA books I’ve read so far. Even my mother, who was editing it, spent literally 75% of the editing time, on a deadline, going over and over and over and over and over and over and over a few chapters early on which showed parties, a scene between Myrtle and Horace, and some slangy 30s dialogue. I had to really push her to move on and I could not see why all the concern was necessary. All of this material was light and unimportant because the characters were the same without it—cavalier, often selfish, and immoral.

But that IS the interest in Mansfield Park. I didn’t take Mansfield Park because I related to these characters. It was because MP is a story that’s rarely told right. Rarely told truthfully. Every movie, every retelling seems to get something wrong. And since finding the story that’s really in the story is what I do, I felt the task was mine since I had to join the collection. This was the story that I found inside Mansfield Park. It's a book about virtue, that’s true. Everyone praises virtuous Fanny Price or has obvious motives for bashing her. But it’s also a book about vice and most of the people interested in the book do want to discuss that side of behavior. I looked into the mirror of the story and this is what I saw. It’s not a personal reflection on me or my writing. In fact, this is my only story ever to show such characters. I don’t usually take on books with that as their hidden “true story.”

I didn’t feel the book ultimately had a lot to say in the vintage era. That’s why I switched it this year. MP was contemporary in Austen’s time and unlike some of the others it really, really needs that setting. And since telling the true story is what I do, I want Bellevere to do the best possible job of that while it’s still being marketed.

And there will be more updates. 

With Bellevere House coming up for sale next week, I thought I’d post a bit about Jane Austen. When I was growing up, JA saturated my house because of my mother. Some of my earliest creative efforts involved making little picture books of Pride and Prejudice, although I haven’t been interested in the story since. She really was just wallpaper and I didn’t think she was interesting. She was just there.

After working on the JA project, I began to rethink this author and her fans. My mother was not typical. Her view was old-fashioned even when she was young (the 1960s) and one of the few other fan-type commentaries she enjoyed was a book written in the 1940s. The 1940s. So I wasn’t prepared for the 21st century fans, or even late 20th century fans. The cult. The explosion. The Jane Austen girls. I didn’t know who these people were and I didn’t overly care. But I did gradually notice their movies and fanfiction had a tone I didn’t expect. Some of the movies were dark, sleazy, or bizarre; others droning, angsty, or a bit odd when portraying characters. (Such as Harriet.)
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I hadn’t thought of working with any of the novels in an in-depth way and I lumped them all together as DeBooksByJehnAusten. (Sounds like a name for a fan website, doesn’t it?) Once I did, I noticed surprising things, and when I watched the movies closely, instead of casually, I saw more. And then I was reminded of that old 1940s book. The authors of that book had rated the novels from best to worst and I’d wondered why they put P&P so near the bottom and Emma so near the top. True, I didn’t care about P&P—but didn’t everyone love it? And EMMA? Boring, BORING Emma at the top??

I came to feel that was entirely true. Their list was pretty much accurate. Even then, they were seeing something I wasn’t in these books. And after I overheard someone talking about the parents in JA, as a way to rate the books, I saw they also all agreed. So here, partly based on them, partly on personal experience, is my official Jane Austen list.

• Emma ~ a bit boring and something about it feels old and overdone. (Somehow.) But it’s harmless and cute. Much more interest in Frank Churchill than you’d think.
• Persuasion ~ slow and truly for a niche audience. But not as bad as you’d think, even if characters like the Elliots seem stuck-up and remote.
• Mansfield Park ~ deeply frustrating. After working with it, I concur. There’s so much that’s good, but something about the audience’s view (and the characters themselves) is unlikable and vague.
• Northanger Abbey ~ I want to like it. I really do. It used to be my favorite and underlying it’s still harmless. But the view of so many characters now makes them out to be bad people.
• Pride and Prejudice ~ shady, shady. True, many just think they’d like to be witty, clever Lizzie in a fancy dress. But there’s a dedicated audience that needs explaining. And why does it convert so well to having the characters as little kids? I'm not the only one to do this. That’s weird.
• Sense and Sensibility ~ There’s not much to say at this point. It’s  . . . become more dark than it used to be. It’s hard to speak well of any of the men and even Mrs. Dashwood seems questionable.

And there will be more updates.