Friday, October 11, 2013

Author Linda Beutler ~ Guest Post & GIVEAWAY!


Hey Everyone! I'm so excited to have Linda Beutler guest posting on my blog today! Linda is the author of The RED Chrysanthemum, a Pride and Prejudice variation. I recently had the pleasure of reading it, and I LOVED it! I will post my review on Monday! 

Be sure to read all the way to the bottom of this post, and you'll find a Rafflecopter form to fill out for a chance to win a copy of The RED Chrysanthemum




Thanks for the opportunity to guest blog here at So little time... It is a real privilege to get to know the JAFF community this way.

The questions has been posited, “After writing gardening books, what made her want to write a Regency romance, especially a P & P variation?” The question makes it sound as if I can provide some natural and logical explanation of how one led to the other, and the truth is, I can’t! The only thing I can do is provide a kind of timeline, and it will be up to whomever reads this to make of it what they will.

I first read Pride and Prejudice after the 1980 BBC mini-series aired in the USA, but had already read Sanditon and Emma. Pride and Prejudice joined the rotation of books I revisit again and again, a list that includes A Room with a View by E. M. Forster, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, and the Bertie and Jeeves stories by P. G. Wodehouse. After a spate of reading all kinds of fiction, I always return to one of my “English anchors”. When the Emma Thompson version of Sense and Sensibility was released I rushed to see it, then watched the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice in reruns after realizing I’d missed its first run on A & E here in the States. It was at about this time I began garden writing for magazines.

The garden writers who inspired me had a bit of Jane Austen about them. The best were witty and opinionated, even though ostensibly writing non-fiction, and reading them (Christopher Lloyd, Margery Fish, Beverley Nichols and the like—again, mainly British) encouraged my written voice. Books about gardening didn’t have to read like textbooks, and I’ve been assured that mine do not.

In the summer of 2011 I must have made my annual rereading of P & P with a more critical eye than usual. It didn’t seem outlandish, when I picked up my first title of JAFF from my local library (What Would Mr. Darcy Do? by Abigail Reynolds), for some one to ponder the what-ifs more prominent in P & P than in any of Austen’s other stories. It flipped a switch. I bought the 1995 BBC P & P set, and was immersed in the voices of Elizabeth and Darcy as countless titles were read, discarded, or cherished. And I really don’t know exactly when I started, but before I made a trip to China in the summer of 2012, I was writing. In my hotel rooms throughout western Yunnan I was filling yellow legal pads, writing by hand as I had not done in years!

My first long story, Longbourn to London (posted at A Happy Assembly) was not so much a what-if as an expansion of the six week engagement of Elizabeth and Darcy, and there was little of the language of flowers in it at all. During that story, Elizabeth asks Darcy why he came to see her at the inn in Lambton on the morning she learns of Lydia’s elopement with Wickham. Darcy answers her in a charming and romantic way, but the question set me barking off after another squirrel, which became The Red Chrysanthemum.

With Andrew Davies’ screenplay as much in my thoughts as Jane Austen’s original novel, I started with Darcy arriving at the inn, and Elizabeth reading letters from Jane containing nothing to move Elizabeth to anything other than a few chuckles and knowing smiles. Both the canon and the screenplay allow for an evening at Pemberley, but how to get Elizabeth there more often in the remaining week she is to spend in Lambton? That’s where the language of flowers, which has always fascinated me, came in handy. Doing the research was pure joy, like putting a puzzle together, and when I unearthed a pdf of an old herbal with Victorian era illustrations of garden maids in Regency dress, I couldn’t believe my luck!


My own garden is in the cottage style, because that’s what my house is, a 1907 “brakeman’s cottage” built for workers at the end of the streetcar line connecting my neighborhood with downtown Portland. The iconic garden designer from the early 1900s, Gertrude Jekyll said, “The garden should curtsy to the house.” And my garden does. There are many plants here Darcy and his sister might known in the flowerier parts of Pemberley, a hundred years before my house was built. A mansion so grand would have had a cutting garden, a kitchen and herb garden, perhaps a conservatory attached to the house, and glasshouses producing fruit and salad herbs to extend the growing season. Off the Pemberley kitchen would have been a still room with a maid assigned to create arrangements fresh and dried, to make sachets for wardrobes and linen closets, and to blend strewing herbs to freshen the carpets and repel pests.

The 1995 screenplay gives us a glimpse of such a room in Longbourn, where Elizabeth and Jane dry flowers and discuss the return of Mr. Bingley. The scene enabled everything I wanted to include to fit easily into place on a grander scale in Pemberley. Even Bingley, great joiner-inner that he is, picks up the dialect of the local wildflowers.


There it is, the explanation—ephemeral as it is—for how the flowers, got into The Red Chrysanthemum, and how I became compelled to write in this new-to-me genre, whether I wanted to or not! 



It should be mentioned there is adult sexual content in the chapters after Darcy and Elizabeth marry. It is important to my vision of them that we know they are completely and utterly happily married. ~Linda B


Thank you so much, Linda! Your garden is beautiful! It's been a pleasure having you guest posting today. I'm so glad you figured out a way to have Darcy and Elizabeth spend more time together while she was in Lambton! Read my review here


Connect with Linda Beutler





~ * ~ * ~ GIVEAWAY ~ * ~ * ~

Linda Beutler has generously offer to giveaway one signed copy of The RED Chrysanthemum to one lucky person! Open Internationally! Last day to enter is October 21st, 2013! 
Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Any thoughts? We'd love to hear from you! Remember to enter the giveaway you must fill out the Rafflecopter above! Please, don't leave your email in the comments. Thanks! 

27 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Hi Summer! I hope you get a chance to read it soon! Thanks for stopping by! Good luck!

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  2. I miss my old garden I left in Scotland the previous owner had done all the hard work and the flowers were wonderful. All I had to do was plant a few more trees. But I have never cut any of the flowers - much preferred to leave them outside

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    1. Hi Vesper! I have a hard time cutting flowers myself. They look so beautiful outside. Good luck in the giveaway!

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    2. But many plants bloom better if their spent flowers are removed so they don't make seed. Just do it a bit early, when the flowers still have a bit of life for the vase!
      Linda B

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  3. I don't know much at all about the language of flowers, I'll definitely try and read this. Glad you enjoyed it Candy!

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    1. Hi Ceri! I didn't know flowers had different meanings until I read this book! Very interesting! Although, the story itself is not heavy with flowers and their meanings - it's nicely done! I think you will like it!

      Good luck to you!

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    2. I've been blogging a bit more detail about the flowers in this book on my Meryton Press author page. Hope you enjoy the story!
      Linda B

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    3. I updated this post and put a link to your Meryton Press author page!

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  4. I love gardening, but I'm not in Linda's class. It's fun to be outside digging in the dirt because I get a lot of thinking done that way. I have read Victorian Romances where they give poseys that mean things and I thought that was a neat way to say things. This version of P&P sounds charming and I look forward to reading it.

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    1. Even I'm not in my class anymore! Too much time writing and working in the garden I get paid to be in at the Rogerson Clematis Collection at Luscher Farm. But I do love my jungle!
      Hope you'll enjoy TRC, Sophia!
      Linda B

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    2. Hi Sophia Rose! I'm not in Linda's class either! ;) Vegetable gardening was about it for me! I do miss my garden and chickens I had before I moved.
      I think you will like TRC! Good luck!

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  5. I think it's a beautiful idea to make flowers language part of Pride and Prejudice! I love your garden, I'd like to spend some times reading in it!

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    1. Loren,
      My garden does have one special place where I sit writing in the shade on hot days, an area I call the Pink Flamingo Lounge. Yes, it is a little tacky, but it's also a bit hidden, to protect my spouse's delicate sensibilities.
      Thanks for joining the giveaway, and best of luck!
      Linda B

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  6. Your garden is so beautiful! I am sure that reading a favourite book while being surrounded by all those sweet aromas and delightful colors of flowers is a pure pleasure. Also I find the idea of the Red Chrysanthemum very appealing and inter5esting, and look forward to reading about flower language courtship:) I love variations where there are more of Lizzy and Darcy spending time together and getting to know each other, and variations in which the authors have the images of my favourite 1995 adaptation in mind when writing :)))

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    1. oloore,
      I've always felt that in the original P & P, as Jane Austen wrote it, Darcy and Elizabeth were more in love with their idea of who the other was, rather than really knowing each other. In the 1995 production they get a tiny bit more time, but still so much of the development of affection is in their heads. That's part of why I was compelled to write TRC, to give them even more time, perhaps enough time. These are two supremely confident people, yet they do not trust their feelings about each other! They don't even entirely trust what the flowers say.
      Best of luck with the giveaway,
      Linda B

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  7. It's a pleasure to read the inspiration of how The Red Chrysanthemum came to be written. As I mentioned in my blog and in some other blogs where you guest post, I think it is an original and unique P&P story. And your garden is very pretty too.

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    1. Thank you, Luthien!
      The picture here features an old garden rose on the arbor, 'Félicité et Perpetué', bred in France and named for the daughters of the breeder. It is a big rambler from 1827. I chose it after seeing it in many Canadian and English gardens. It was the replacement for an awful modern climber constantly beset by mildew. This rose flowers once over a long period in June and into July, but it has a dwarf form, great for small gardens, a white floribunda called 'White Pet' (1879). The dwarf form blooms all summer!
      Best of luck with the giveaway,
      Linda B

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  8. Sounds great!! Would love to read this book! Looking forward to it!!

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    1. Josephine,
      Best of luck with the giveaway, and have a great weekend!
      Linda B

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  9. Congrats Linda! I enjoyed the post. I am so excited to read your book! Thanks for the giveaway!!

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  10. Kelli,
    You are very welcome, or you will be if you win! Best of luck,
    Linda B

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  11. Congratulations! I have had my eye on this one.

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    1. Becky,
      Hope you will find TRC worth the wait. Best of luck with the giveaway!
      Happy weekend,
      Linda B

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  12. I can't wait to read this book. I love the concept of this book. Thanks for the share!

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    1. Liz,
      I hope you enjoy TRC. It has a lighter tone than some P & P variations, although the usual sadness and insecurities L & D always feel during the Wickham induced separation. And then, I have added Darcy's little joke at the end...at his mother-in-law's expense.
      Best of luck with the giveaway,
      Linda B

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