Welcome to author Lisa Henry and the tour for her latest release, The California Dashwoods. Lisa’s here to chat a bit about the novel her book is based on, and there’s also a giveaway, so be sure to check out the Rafflecopter details at the end to enter!

Hi! I’m Lisa Henry, and welcome to the blog tour for my new release, The California Dashwoods. I’m visiting some of my favourite blogs around the place to talk a bit about writing The California Dashwoods, and sharing some of my influences, my ideas, and even an excerpt or two! Don’t forget to leave a comment, for your chance to win a prize of a $20 Amazon voucher plus a vintage copy of Sense and Sensibility that I’ll post worldwide. The winner will be drawn on May 10.

When it came to taking Sense and Sensibility and updating it for the modern world, the main challenge was making the entire scenario with the Dashwoods fit at all. In Sense and Sensibility, Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters are left penniless and homeless at the very beginning of the story after Henry Dashwood dies and John, his son from his first marriage, is convinced by his awful wife not to look after them financially like he’d promised. In a world where the son gets everything and the daughters’ welfare is passed over to him, this is a perfectly believable scenario. In the modern world though, where families contest wills every day in court, I needed something a little different.

Which is why, in The California Dashwoods, the Dashwoods are basically like one of those scheming wealthy families from a soap opera—and even if Abby Dashwood wanted to contest Henry’s will to get an inheritance for her kids, they have such powerful lawyers that it isn’t going to happen. How do they know? Because the Dashwood family has done it all before:

“Listen, if there’s anything you need me to do, you can ask.” Ned looked so earnest that Elliott’s heart clenched. “Like, I’m probably totally out of line here, but have you talked to a lawyer?”

Elliott picked at the label on his beer. “Mom doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want anything to do with them. She thinks going after them would prove them right.” He shrugged. “They cut Dad out twenty years ago. It’s pretty watertight, from what I understand.”

“Have you checked?” Ned asked him in an undertone.

“Their lawyers would crush us. Keep us tied up for years. It’s how they operate. It’s not worth it. The best we can hope for is that John will come through with money for school and stuff.”

Ned looked at him worriedly.

“Montgomery has a daughter, you know?” Elliott said. “Not his wife’s. She was the housekeeper’s. She must be fifty-something by now. She’s never seen a penny, because every time she tried, they just dragged her back into court. Appeal after appeal after appeal. They’ve probably paid millions to their lawyers because they’d rather pay them than her. You don’t win with people like them. You can’t.”

Once I had that set up, I was free to send the Dashwood kids and their mother out into the world, with no financial security at all, putting them in the same position as so many regular families out there: living paycheck to paycheck, and hoping to get by. And then, later in the book, I couldn’t resist lampshading the entire scenario, in this exchange between Elliott and Ned:

“That . . . that sounds like a really bad telenovela, to be honest. Like the ones that are so bad you can’t stop watching.”

Ned huffed out a breath. “Thank you, though, for reducing my life to the level of a telenovela.”

“My millionaire relatives threw me and my sisters out of our home without a penny,” Elliott said. “I can judge you.”

Ned’s expression softened with a smile. “That’s fair.”

In Sense and Sensibility the Dashwoods aren’t left entirely penniless—and neither are my Dashwoods—but there’s a real idea of “genteel poverty” around them. They very much rely on the charity of others—and on the hope of making good marriages. In The California Dashwoods, their family’s sudden lack of security is a major source of stress to Elliott Dashwood, but unlike Elinor he can at least go out and get a job waiting tables. Their problems might be the same, but the practicalities are very different. After all, if young middle-class women in the Regency period had been free to go out and apply for jobs and earn their own money, you can bet history would have looked very different indeed.

About the Book

Title: The California Dashwoods
Author: Lisa Henry
Publisher: Self Published
Release Date: May 1, 2018
Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 62 000
Genre: Romance
Goodreads
Buy Links: Amazon || Smashwords
Blurb: Make a new future. Choose your true family. Know your own heart.

When Elliott Dashwood’s father dies, leaving his family virtually penniless, it’s up to Elliott to do what he’s always done: be the responsible one. Now isn’t the right time for any added complications. So what the hell is he doing hooking up with Ned Ferrars? It’s just a fling, right?

Elliott tries to put it behind him when the family makes a fresh start in California, and if he secretly hopes to hear from Ned again, nobody else needs to know. While his mom is slowly coming to terms with her grief, teenage Greta is more vulnerable than she’s letting on, and Marianne—romantic, reckless Marianne—seems determined to throw herself headfirst into a risky love affair. And when Elliott discovers the secret Ned’s been keeping, he realizes that Marianne isn’t the only one pinning her hopes on a fantasy.

All the Dashwoods can tell you that feelings are messy and heartbreak hurts. But Elliott has to figure out if he can stop being the sensible one for once, and if he’s willing to risk his heart on his own romance.

A modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.

About the Author

Lisa likes to tell stories, mostly with hot guys and happily ever afters.

Lisa lives in tropical North Queensland, Australia. She doesn’t know why, because she hates the heat, but she suspects she’s too lazy to move. She spends half her time slaving away as a government minion, and the other half plotting her escape.

She attended university at sixteen, not because she was a child prodigy or anything, but because of a mix-up between international school systems early in life. She studied History and English, neither of them very thoroughly.

She shares her house with too many cats, a green tree frog that swims in the toilet, and as many possums as can break in every night. This is not how she imagined life as a grown-up.

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