We’re so pleased to have author Megan Reddaway dropping in today to celebrate the release of her new novel, Out, Proud, and Prejudiced. Megan’s chatting about remaking this Jane Austen classic, and there’s also a giveaway so be sure to check out those details at the end.

Welcome, Megan!

Reimagining Jane Austen: Out, Proud, and Prejudiced

‘Out, Proud, and Prejudiced’ is—you guessed it—a retelling of Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’, set in the modern day, with gay main characters. So how did it feel to be playing in the backyard of such a great writer?

It started out as just a fun thing to do. Could I figure out a plot that would work in our times, with a mostly male cast? And could I also make it a good story for someone who’d never read ‘Pride and Prejudice’? I wanted to publish something that a modern reader would enjoy even if they had no interest in the two-hundred-year-old classic.

The first scenes that came to me were the final ones. That often happens with a story—I see the resolution first, the part where the characters finally get together. In this case I also had the second-to-last main scene firmly in my head, involving Lady Catherine in the original. That was a fun scene. In fact, Catherine was an all-round fun character to write!

Then I asked myself what situation would a young guy need to be in today, to be equivalent to Austen’s Elizabeth with her four sisters and no financial security—because as soon as her father died, their home would go to a distant cousin? Even back then, having nothing to inherit wouldn’t have been such a big deal for a man. So I made my Bennet a student with negative money, i.e. big debts, and not at a university but at a further education college—something like a community college in the USA—which doesn’t give him the best career prospects.

I wanted Bennet to have other gay guys around him, as Elizabeth has her sisters. But to have five brothers, all (or even mostly) gay, was too much of a stretch for me, so I had four unrelated gay male students and one straight woman, his friend Charlotte, all living in the same house.

And Bennet has one brother back home who is straight and kind of takes the place of Mary in the original story (although that may be a little unfair on poor Mary). It’s true that from Elizabeth’s point of view, we see two pairs: Jane and Elizabeth, Kitty and Lydia, and Mary is left out in the middle. But from Mary’s point of view, Elizabeth is surely the sister who is most like her. I reflected this by separating Marlon from the main story, but making him the one who is biologically related to Bennet.

From there, the rest of the plot came little by little, through a lot of writing and rewriting. I wanted to follow the threads closely and involve pretty much all of the original characters, even though that means there are more characters than most romance readers would expect in a book these days.

Because of that, I had to introduce them more slowly than Jane Austen does. She mentions five of the Bennet family plus Mr. Bingley and four other people in a very short first chapter—ten names presented to the reader in three pages! So I thought I’d be doing okay by introducing my students plus their landlord (a kind of mother figure) and the rich stranger in the same kind of space. But my first beta reader was, like, “Whoa! Way too many characters too fast!” So I had to split that over a couple of scenes and let my story start more slowly.

The other main issue was that Darcy and Elizabeth spend very little time together in Pride and Prejudice. Following the conventions of the time, they were hardly ever alone, and Jane Austen has to introduce major coincidences to bring them together at all, first when Elizabeth goes to stay with Charlotte in the rectory that serves Darcy’s aunt’s estate, and again when her uncle and aunt take her on a tour that happens to include Pemberley, his own estate, of all the places in England they might have visited.

These days, as one of my characters says, most people wouldn’t consider marrying someone they hadn’t had sex with, let alone someone they barely knew. I had to bring my couple together more often and for longer, before there was enough of a connection for a convincing happy ending in a modern-day romance.

When I stopped to think about it, setting myself up for comparison with Jane Austen was scary. I kept reminding myself it’s not a question of writing something better than the original, but casting it in a new light.

If you’re familiar with ‘Pride and Prejudice’, I hope you’ll like the way I’ve mapped the characters and played with the plot strands.

And for anyone who is new to the story, my aim was to make my version stand alone and be a fun read on its own terms, so you don’t have to like classics to enjoy it.

About the Book

Buy Links: Amazon US | Amazon UK
Length: 85,000 words approx.
Cover Design: Natasha Snow
Blurb: One’s proud, one’s prejudiced, and they can’t stand each other. 

Quick-tempered Bennet Rourke dislikes Darius Lanniker on sight. Darius may be a hotshot city lawyer, but that doesn’t give him the right to sneer at Bennet, his friends, and their college. It doesn’t help that Bennet’s restaurant job has him waiting at Darius’s table. So when his tutor recommends him for an internship at Darius’s Pemberley estate, Bennet isn’t sure he wants it. He’s also not sure he can afford to turn it down.

Darius is a fish out of water in the small college town of Meriton, but something keeps pulling him back there. He’s helping out a friend with business advice, nothing more. If he’s interested in Bennet, it’s not serious. Sure, Bennet challenges him in a way no other man has. But they have nothing in common. Right?

Wrong. Their best friends are falling in love, and Bennet and Darius can’t seem to escape each other. Soon they’re sharing climbing ropes and birthday cake, and there’s a spark between them that won’t be denied.

But betrayal is around the corner. Darius must swallow his pride and Bennet must drop his prejudices to see the rainbow shining through the storm clouds.

A standalone novel—a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Note: contains mention of past abuse.

About the Author

MEGAN REDDAWAY lives in England and has been entertained by fictional characters acting out their stories in her head for as long as she can remember. She began writing them down as soon as she could.

Since she grew up, she has worked as a secretary, driver, barperson, and article writer, among other things. Whatever she is doing, she always has a story bubbling away at the same time.

For news of Megan’s gay romance releases and two free stories, visit her Website || Facebook || Twitter || Goodreads

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June 4 – The Novel Approach
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