I absolutely love reading variations of Jane Austen’s books.  It’s so interesting to see how changing one or two elements of a story can spin it in a completely different direction.  You would think it would get old after a while — reading different versions of the same stories, but I find it endlessly fascinating.  It’s like a series of parallel worlds– each created by a character making a different decision at a critical moment.

Some of the most accomplished writers of Austen variations can be found at the site Austen Variations (http://austenvariations.com/).  Many of my favorite Austen writers are members of this site.  There are free ebooks by some of the authors and you can sign up for their blog which sends out chapters of works in progress.  It’s a great place to encounter polished Austen authors. Visit it — maybe you can find your favorite writers or find some new ones!

Victoria

…And chances are that you wouldn’t be reading this blog if you didn’t…

You might be interested in this website I discovered in the course of writing The Secrets of Darcy and Elizabeth. It was particularly useful for someone writing a Pride and Prejudice variation: the Austen Thesaurus.  Yes, that’s right, someone actually cataloged all the words Jane Austen used in her novels.  So, you can look up a word to see if Austen ever used it and how many times it was used.  For example, look up the word “grin” and you will discover that Austen never used it, but she used “smile” 175 times, “beam” 2 times, and “simper” and “smirk” both once.  It’s an invaluable resource for someone like me who is attempting to avoid anachronistic words and sound something like Austen in her writing (of course, no one is as good as the original).  But it would be fascinating for anyone who liked Austen — actually it’s addictive.  You can easily waste a lot of time being surprised about which words she did and didn’t use. Here is the url: http://www.writelikeausten.com/