Austen Pastiches

Resolution is a modern retelling of the Jane Austen classic Persuasion. Our story opens with Anne Elliott packing up the family home. Her father, a professor at the University of California, is book smart but a financial idiot. In an attempt to recoup his losses from a disastrous business investment, he rents out the family home to the Crofts, who happen to be the brother-in-law and sister of Derrick Wentworth, Anne’s former love. They met while students at university and had an acrimonious parting the spring of her junior year.

Now thirty-five, she’s dated other men, but no one has made as deep dents in her heart as had Derrick Wentworth. We have the selfish father, the odious sister, and the whining malcontented sister set against the backdrops of the California cities of Berkeley and Carmel.

Using the mystery writing world as a backdrop, Pen and Prejudice is a modern pastiche of the Jane Austen classic, Pride and Prejudice, but instead of our witty, playful heroine and attractive but arrogant suitor willfully misunderstanding each other while attending balls and dinner parties in the nineteenth century, they metaphorically duke it out in the twentieth at mystery writing conferences. A cross between I Don’t Know How She Does It and Bridget Jones’ Diary, this novel is a romantic comedy that provides an insider look into the struggles facing most writers of genre fiction.