Austen and Bronte Classics Turned into Erotica...

No, I couldn't believe it either when I heard it, but sadly it is happening.

The 50 Shades trend has now reached the literary classics: Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey and Jane Eyre. :(

Now I've always thought there was an underlying sexual tension between the hero and heroine of these well-known novels; but that could just have been my imagination of course. :-)

And this isn't the first time that Jane Austen's characters have been given new lives in other genres.

There's been Mr Darcy, Vampyre by Amanda Grange, and Vampire Darcy's Desire: A Pride and Prejudice Adaptation by Regina Jeffers.

Admittedly there's always been new stories or alternative versions of the original story- too numerous to mention.

Even P. D. James (Baroness and a best-selling crime novelist) had a novel featuring Darcy and Elizabeth, Death Comes to Pemberley (published in 2011) which takes place six years after Pride and Prejudice, and features Lydia Wickham arriving on the eve of the annual ball declaring her husband-the scoundrel George Wickham- has been murdered.

That I can accept. It's a new story-even though the characters were Jane Austen's invention.

But honestly, an erotic makeover for Pride and Prejudice is so wrong.

If you want to read an example- though the excerpts are quite tame- you should look at this piece from The Independent by Sherna Noah; and if you want to see the book covers, there's a gallery here.

I have to say the covers wouldn't be too out of place among many of the historical romances from US publishers.

Will I read any of them? I honestly don't know.
If I could read a longer excerpt first I might consider reading the rest.

It's sad that literary classics get mucked about with like this just to make money because erotica is the latest big selling trend.

At heart I believe books should be published because they are good and readers will buy and enjoy them. But as a writer who lives in the real world I accept that this no longer seems to be the priority.

Milestones and Technology...

I've had a busy week with technology issues, so there wasn't a blog post Wednesday/Thursday.
So now you're getting two posts in less than 24 hours.

My writing life has been very constrained for many years- because triplets take up a lot of energy and time, so every year I've made an effort to do a little more writing as ages and resulting demands of my family have changed.

Today lots of schools finished for the summer holidays; and for my three teenagers school has finished forever, and the grown up world of college beckons.

In some ways it will give me a little more free time to write.
So the office area is even more important now. And if the weather is dry this weekend I'll be sorting more boxes and finally filling the bookshelves.

Technology wise the old phone is being replaced with a newer all singing and dancing type- okay it can't sing and dance :-) but I won't need a separate answer machine to record messages. I've got to wait a few more days for its arrival, but at least I know it's due soon.

The old router has come to the end of it's life- I can't tell you how many times I've just typed out a comment on another writer's blog post and the connection has gone just as I click submit... So hopefully the new broadband device will arrive tomorrow.

And in future I'm going to check for driver updates for my computer regularly. I hadn't thought about it since the new computer arrived last year, so there's quite a few to do, and I'm still working my way through them...

So I'm starting another phase of my development as a writer- being an up-to-date and organised one.