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The working title, Elizabeth Bennet WEREWITCH, (now the title of Part 1) has been changed to Pride and Predator as this book is based on Jane Austen's book, Pride and Prejudice. It is about the romantic premise that Austen laid out so well between the slighted by Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth, and himself; however, there is a predator in the woods outside of Meryton, and its existence has more than a just a little to do with the misguided craft of a coven of girls that Elizabeth Bennet formed, naming herself the high-priestess. There main objections are love spells, spill-the-beans or tell-all castings, and certainly protection for themselves and the ones they love. The latter is where their skills in dabbling with witchcraft fall short of the powers of the ancient tools they've collected from an old curiosity shop in Meryton where Elizabeth, Jane, Lydia, Kitty, and sometimes even Mary often walk to shop and browse, pass the time and meet the officers who are camped at the opposite edge of the woods. When attacks occur and conjuring beasts is the accusation that lead to a group of concerned citizens with Colonel Forster in to the house of the Bennets to accuse Elizabeth Bennet of witchcraft, dear Mr. Collins, the parishoner who is staying at Longbourn, asks the men to join in the reading of sermons to the girls. Jane, the perfect object of country girl goodness has just been left behind by the most eligible suitor from Derbyshire to Rosings - Mr. Charles Bingley the owner of the Netherfield estate. After the ball he holds where only Jane has captured his attentions, the Investigator and Mr. Jones, the apothecary are attacked at the edge of the woods. Clues lead the apothecary - the only one to have escaped alive, from an attack, to Elizabeth, but he'd lost a lot of blood, and even the Colonel knows that any girl worth her salt in witchcraft could have brought Bingley and Jane together - not apart! Now it seems he has run off to London leaving the comely Jane to sit by the fire while Mr. Collins reads sermons. Assuming the trail a dead end, Elizabeth is not bothered any more by the group, but the whisperings in Meryton turn to hisses and she escapes to visit her friends at the Parish in Hunsford, where she again runs into Mr. Darcy at the Rosings estate.
The predator is a protector, and though magick is sworn off by most of the girls in the coven, one lonely, misunderstood girl continues her practice with only Elizabeth occasionally driven to look in on her. Mary Bennet is the Wednesday Addams of the group. The color assigned to her by her mother is dark brown, her eyes and hair are even darker, and her general outlook is positively occult. She stirs a little more than practical magick up for the chalice, hidden in the wooden, woman's vanity box, next to the grimoire, beneath the potting bench in the shed. She's a good girl who wants to protect her parents from losing their home and her sisters from becoming old without marrying; but, she has been forgotten, often even by her mother, and magick is no way to seek attention - unless its the whole town's attention you're seeking.
This book is to be out sometime before Halloween 2016. And is being written as you read this. Here is a snippet to go:
'Elizabeth took the large, ancient book of magick and wrapped it in her shawl. She closed the girls' book of shadows and returned it to its hiding place in the wooden, women's vanity box and hid it back beneath the potting shed. She shoved the piece of parchment paper into her pocket which already contained the amulet, and resigned herself a walking beacon of the evidence of witchcraft - which had been whispered about from Hertfordshire to Rosings since the first night's search in the woods. She began to worry what the Investigator would do to her if someone were to plough into her, knock her over, and spill the magical contents she was packing on to the ground for all to see. But, then she remembered that the Investigator was gone; the words "taken care of" floated into her mind as though she had read them off a page penned from another person's hand, and she blinked at the cold, harsh ring to those words.'
This is a new title from Fae-tality Publishing, 2016. At first, the author Kara Skye, was including offers which did not pan out; and, the publishing industry knows this is how to be the Whisper of the decade no life was too boring so its going to be a good book at the least!
