Inevitably, when all the excitement of releasing a new book is over, the question arises, “What should I write next?” That’s where I am now.

Mr. Knightley in His Own Words is successfully launched and the blog tour completed. (If you missed any of it, see links in previous post.) The book is receiving really good reviews too! – with a 4.7 star average at Amazon and 4.58 stars at Goodreads. So I’m happy about that. Here are a couple of the best comments so far:

I loved this book…You did something I did not think was possible. You made me like the Emma-Knightley love story. I never cared for Emma; it was my least-liked Austen book. But you fixed it! (beta reader comment)

I have LOVED LOVED LOVED all of this author’s “in his own words” books. This might be the best of the lot! (Amazon customer review)

Hopefully word-of-mouth will do the rest, leaving me free to move on to a new project (although I admit it will be difficult to say good-bye to Mr. Knightley!). But what shall I write next? I have ideas, of course, but I always like to ask for reader input as well! So here are some suggestions for your consideration:

1. another …in His Own Words book, possibly starring Persuasion‘s Captain Wentworth this time
2. a P&P/Romeo and Juliet mash-up (probably novella length) – proposed title: Darcio and Lizziet
3. a P&P prequel novel about the courtships of the Bennets and the Gardiners
4. something else altogether! What’s your idea?

Although I have played around with these (and even written a bit of #2 & 3), I haven’t committed to anything yet. So I really am open to suggestions at this time. Please leave me a comment, letting me know what you’d like me to write! Or something about Mr. Knightley in His Own Words. Have you read it yet? It’s now available in audio! – as well as Kindle, paperback, and Nook.

In the meantime, though, I thought I might as well share this brief, potential prologue for the Bennet/Gardiner novel, which I wrote quite a while ago. I hope you find it entertaining!

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Kneeling before a woman, even a decidedly pretty one, is a damned uncomfortable position to find one’s self in. That was the undeniable fact of the matter. Not that Thomas Montgomery Bennet had any doubt of his reception being favorable. One’s proposal of marriage was generally accepted, he understood, and, judging from the eager look in Miss Fanny Gardiner’s eye, this would be no exceptional case. Still, someone might have warned him.

This was only one of the myriad of thoughts coursing through young Mr. Bennet’s brain at that critical moment, for his mind was quick enough to encompass a good deal at once, when he took the trouble of exerting himself. And what occasion could possibly justify – no, demand – his absolute attention more than this one, on which so much depended?

So now, when he perhaps ought to have been, to the exclusion of all else, anticipating his joy at soon being accepted, he was also anticipating his simultaneous relief at being allowed to return to a more upright, dignified posture. When he ought to have been fully engaged in celebrating Miss Gardiner’s considerable beauty and charming amiability – soon to be his and his alone in marriage – different, rather distracting ideas intruded.

“She has no money to speak of,” his friend Edward, the fair Miss Gardiner’s elder brother, had told him plainly enough. And his own father’s advice on the subject had carried an even stronger word of caution. “God willing, you will be married a very long time. Therefore, take care you do not choose your partner in life unwisely.”

Is that what he had done? Well, if so, it was clearly too late to reconsider; the question had been asked and now answered. Fanny had wasted no time in saying yes before launching into long, rather noisy effusions of delight.

For better or for worse, young Mr. Bennet’s fate was sealed. Meanwhile, Edward Gardiner’s future remained uncertain, his lady love’s heart as yet unplighted. Who was to say which one would be happier in the end?

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Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develope.

Pride and Prejudice, chapter 1