Happy Friday, readers! What an exciting first week of February! So much going on! ❣️ Today I’m welcoming a new author to Austenesque Review – Elizabeth Gilliland – and she is sharing about her newly-launched contemporary Austenesque mystery series – Austen University. I am so excited about this series for two reasons – it places many of Jane Austen’s female characters together and involves some intrigue! 👤

Elizabeth is here to share a little bit about her writing journey and an enticing excerpt from What Happened on Box Hill. We hope you enjoy!  🤗

Thank you for having me, Meredith! And thank you for all that you do in bringing together like-minded Jane Austen readers.

I’ve subscribed to the Austenesque newsletter for years now, and I’m amazed how a) so many people come up with such unique, interesting variations, and that b) there seems to be a devoted core audience of people who want to read them all.

This second idea, about an audience with a seemingly insatiable appetite for all things Jane Austen, would not have seemed strange to me when I was growing up. I was introduced to Jane Austen at a young age, first by the television show Wishbone (the one with the cute dog who imagines himself as the hero of his favorite books – he makes a very charming Darcy, if you haven’t seen it), then by my grandmother’s library. I had a sister, cousins, and friends growing up who all had similarly fallen in love with Austen’s stories, whether through her novels or through one of their many adaptations, and I took this to be the normal experience of most girls growing up, especially if they loved to read.

I assumed that everyone, naturally, agreed that Jane Austen was the best writer; while there were pleasures that could be found in other places, it must be universally acknowledged that Jane Austen was just a little bit better than anything else out there.

When I went to graduate school to get a PhD in literature, it didn’t initially cross my mind to study Jane Austen. That seems like such an obvious choice to me now, but I think I truly believed that everyone else in the program would (of course) also want to be focusing on Jane Austen, so I’d better do something different to set myself apart from the crowd.

It wasn’t until I began learning everyone else’s areas of study that it dawned on me that nobody else in my cohort was planning on studying Jane Austen. Further, in the one seminar where we were assigned a Jane Austen novel (Persuasion) it became clear that almost no one else in my graduate-level literature seminar had read Austen before and was familiar with her other works. (Sacrilege!)

Fortunately I came to my senses and ended up writing my dissertation about Jane Austen adaptations, which in turn led to the Austen University series and What Happened on Box Hill. Through my studies, I’ve since learned that of course there are plenty of others who love Austen, write about Austen, and read Austen just as ardently as I always suspected everyone else did. Comparatively speaking, I suppose the population of Austen superfans is somewhat small in number, but we are a devoted group. We also have very strong opinions–I’ve seen two women nearly come to blows over who was the best Darcy at an academic conference! Despite that, I choose to think we are more united than divided in our love of all things Austen.

It is a special bond, belonging to the Jane Austen fandom. Of course, there are men who love Austen (as they should), but most of my experience has been in interacting with other women who love Austen, too. Maybe that’s why I was drawn to setting my novel in a sorority; I have no experience in the Greek system myself, but I felt like it would be an interesting setting to allow all of Austen’s characters–but especially her women characters–to interact in a unique subculture that at its best is considered a sisterhood and at its worst is as cutthroat and class-conscious as the ton. I wanted to see how Austen’s characters would interact in this new modern world: who would be best friends, who would be enemies, who would fall in love… and who might end up dead.

I hope you all enjoy reading this book as much as I loved writing it. Be on the lookout for the sequel, The Portraits of Pemberley, hopefully around this time next year!

~ Excerpt from Chapter One ~

Before her body had even begun to decompose, Isabella Thorpe had been branded by the press, the public, and her peers as a slut. Had young Isabella lived to see her newfound fame, she would have been tickled pink, instead of the grayish-bluish tint of her current color palette. She might have been delighted by the sight of her photographs plastered across the media, even if her carefully applied makeup and the outfit she’d spent hours choosing proved to be ultimately less than durable. Seeing her name pop up on multiple threads and comments—some sympathetic, but others making her the punchline of a slew of wincingly morbid jokes—might have made her giggle, because the Internet was forever and she was, like, totally famous now.

Even the word “slut” itself might not have given her much pause, because wasn’t she always yelling that at her sorority sisters as they laughed and danced and put on a show? It didn’t mean what it used to. It was a term of endearment now, empowerment.

But not, as it turned out, when it was being whispered behind her back—or, to be more accurate, over her dead body. Not when armchair detectives were discussing, in detail, the number of people she’d hooked up with during her brief time as a freshman at Austen University; and boys were coming out of the woodwork to testify she’d been the aggressive one, pursuing them; and the same girls who’d laughingly grinded with her only weeks before were giving “special interviews” about how out of control she’d been. Anything for those fifteen minutes of fame.

It all started out innocently enough, this frenzied piranha-feeding of Isabella’s reputation. Before the school issued a formal warning to the students about commenting to the press, Isabella’s roommate, Catherine Morland, was ambushed as she left the sorority house. Petite, wide-eyed Caty looked terrified in the video clip that eventually went viral, and the wolves circled in on her, expecting her to be easy prey. Indeed, when asked about her relationship to Isabella, Caty was barely able to stammer out she was her “best friend” and that “Bella” had been girlfriend to her brother James. (Both claims were later torn to shreds in online forums, in which people speculated why a girl like Isabella who had a “boyfriend” also had an active Tinder profile, and why Caty would claim to be her best friend when she appeared in hardly any of her social media.)

But the moment that pushed the video into viral fame was when one of the reporters asked Caty if she had any idea what happened to Isabella. Suddenly small, trembling Caty went still, looking straight into the camera. “Of course I do. She was murdered.”

That was when the president of Pi Kappa Sigma, Emma Woodhouse—tall, blonde, and with a formidable Southern-belle glare—swooped in to wrap a protective arm around Caty. “No more comment, y’all,” she insisted before guiding the younger girl to the safety of her waiting Mercedes. Online, however, no one could protect Caty or Isabella from the ensuing media circus.

Perhaps in the end, even Isabella would have shied away from this kind of attention—regardless that her name briefly became the top “Isabella” in search engines in North America and trended in hashtags, too. The kind of fame she daydreamed about in her lifetime came through merit or achievement: Miss Louisiana, for example, or winner of a televised singing competition, or top Pharma rep in the Southeast U.S. Division.

This kind of fame? It was not earned—it was taken, and turned against you. Voyeurs, gobbling up every gory, illicit detail, just so they could teeter to the edge of danger, then pull back at the last minute. All the while reassuring themselves they were okay, this could never happen to them.

Isabella could have told them differently, of course. This couldn’t have happened to her, either, until it did.

Ooh! Excellent choice of victim! 😁 And it looks like Caty might be taking a bigger role in trying to solve the murder! That should be very interesting to witness! 

Thank you so much for sharing, Elizabeth! I wish you all the best with your new release of What Happened on Box Hill! 🙌🏼

~ Book Description ~

What would happen if you combined all of Jane Austen’s characters into one modern-day novel?

Murder, of course.

When Caty Morland’s roommate, Isabella, falls to her death on Initiation night, Austen University is quick to cover up the scandal and call it a tragic accident. But avid true-crime lover Caty remains convinced that Isabella didn’t fall; she was murdered. With the help of Pi Kappa Sigma President Emma Woodhouse, Caty organizes a dinner party with the most likely suspects, including familiar faces such as Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet, Knightley, and Marianne Dashwood. The theme of the night is murder, and Caty has three courses to find out what happened to Isabella–and to try to keep the killer from striking again.

~ Connect with Elizabeth ~

Facebook   ❧    Website   ❧   Twitter

~ About Elizabeth ~

Elizabeth Gilliland teaches at the university level, putting as much Austen into her syllabi as she can get away with. In 2018, she earned her PhD from Louisiana State University, where she wrote her dissertation on Jane Austen adaptations, and fever-dreamed this series in a caffeine-induced haze. She has worked as a ghostwriter, closed captioner, copywriter, beef jerky manufacturer, and a lot of other weird jobs in between. She is a proud member of the Jane Austen Society of North America, and excerpts of the Austen University series have won awards through JASNA and Jane Austen & Co/The Jane Austen Summer Program. She lives in Alabama with her husband and son.

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GIVEAWAY TIME!!!

Today Elizabeth brings with her 3️⃣ ebook copies and 1️⃣ signed paperback copy of What Happened on Box Hill to 4️⃣ lucky winners today! 

To enter this giveaway, please leave a comment, question, or some love for Elizabeth!

• To earn a second entry you can subscribe to Elizabeth’s newsletter and put AUSTENESQUE in the message box.
• This giveaway is open to US residents.  Thank you, Elizabeth!
• This giveaway ends February 11th!

What Happened on Box Hill is now available in ebook and paperback!