Austen Extravaganza Post

(This post is for Austen Extravagantaza)

I really didn't know what to put here. I asked Meredith, who's hosting this event, and she said, "Anything." I thought about what was currently going on in my head, then decided to hone the topic a little down to "Jane Austen related" because who wants a discussion of various ways to give your wife a divorce in second-century Middle East? Me, that's who, but you are probably more interested in Mr. Darcy (though you can actually write the bill of divorce on a cow's horn and give the wife the cow*). I am a bad Austenite, not constantly filling my head with all things Austen.

By the way, the Rabbis eventually ruled that the cow shouldn't be living. It's not really a "bill" of divorce if it's on a living creature. (What? This Mishnah Gittin is interesting!)

Anyway, I was asked to speak not because I'm good at talking about Jane Austen (clearly not) but because I wrote a bunch of books. Ten of them. Four have been published, plus one free eBook of short stories related to the fourth. There's a lot of awesome books out there, so I thought I should mention some features to help me pick me out of a lineup.

14 Things That Are Distinguishing Features About My Books

(1) Swords, swords, swords.

(2) Swordfights.

(3) The first book is the Kama Sutra one. (No it isn’t. That was a mistake on the publisher’s part to label that book as such. ARGH.)

(4) Samurai. And there’s a ninja in book 8, but you don’t know he’s a ninja until he’s dead, because he’s a good ninja.

(5) Pretty sure nobody else has swung from Darcy’s chandelier in other books. Could be wrong about that.

(6) All Kitty all the time! Psych – I spend like, no time with her. Seriously, I don’t know what to do with her. She’s like the Skim Milk version of Lydia.

(7) Monkey! As in, there is one. And his name is Monkey. It turns out Mr. Bingley is not very creative when it comes to names.

(8) The Alter Rebbe (zt”l) puts in an appearance. Also, contains the phrase “zt”l,” which I had to explain to my publisher was not random words on a keyboard, but the English version of the Hebrew acronym for “May the Memory of the Righteous Be a Blessing.”)

(9) Dialogue in Japanese, French, Spanish, Tibetan, and Romanian. Probably none of it correct. Some of the English isn’t correct, either.

(10) Some vampires show up but it isn’t really a big deal.

(11) Having almost every child’s name start with a G actually just a Regency Period standard, not an expression of my hatred for the reader’s ability to keep track of people.

( (12) Copious references to synagogue members, dermatology patients of my father, and Fanfiction.net readers who bought my books in the acknowledgments.

(13) Guest appearances by: George III, George IV, Edward IV, Napoleon, Pope Pius IX, 11^th Dalai Lama, Shogun Tokugawa Ienari, Emperor Ninkō of Japan, and Saint Sebaldus of Bavaria.

(14) In the last book, everyone gets eaten by dinosaurs. You think I'm joking, but I'm not.

(*) Mishnah Masecta Gittin, Chapter 2, Mishnah 3