Author Archives: Joanne Guidoccio

Honoring Female Inventors – Part 3

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

May is National Inventors Month, a month set aside to recognize the curiosity and imagination of people who innovate and create.

The May 13 blog post highlighted the following female inventors: Jeanne Villepreux-Power, Margaret Knight, Josephine Cochrane, Mary Anderson, and Sarah Breedlove. You can read the post here.

The May 20 blog post highlighted the following female inventors: Melitta Bentz, Beulah Louise Henry, Ruth Graves Wakefield, Grace Hopper, and Virginia Apgar. You can read the post here.

Here are five more innovative women from across history:

Marie Van Brittan Brown (1922 – 1999)

American nurse Marie Van Brittan Brown was concerned about safety whenever she was home alone. The crime rate in her neighborhood of Queens, New York had been increasing, and police response time was slow. Working with her husband (an electrician), Brown created a system of four peepholes and a movable camera that connected wirelessly to a monitor in their bedroom. A two-way microphone allowed conversation with someone outside, and buttons could sound an alarm or remotely unlock the door. In addition to obtaining a patent in 1969, Brown received an award from the National Science Committee. Her innovative idea became the groundwork for modern home security systems.

Patricia Bath (b. 1942)

Patricia Bath was the first black person to serve as an ophthalmology resident at New York University and the first woman on staff at the Jules Stein Eye Institute. She was also the first African-American female doctor to receive a patent for medical purposes. She invented the Laserphaco Probe, a medical device that quickly and painlessly uses a laser to dissolve cataracts, then irrigates and cleans the eye to make inserting a replacement lens quick and easy. She is also the inventor of community ophthalmology, a new discipline dedicated to ensuring that all members of the population have access to eye and vision care.

Anna Stork and Andrea Sreshta

When the devastating earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, Anna Stork and Andrea Sreshta were graduate students at Columbia University’s School of Architecture. They were assigned a project to help with disaster relief in one of their classes. After speaking to a relief worker, Stork and Sreshta decided to create an inflatable, waterproof, and solar-powered light. The LuminAID Solar Light can be packed flat, charges in six hours to provide light for sixteen, and features a handle, making it easy to carry. They used a crowdfunding campaign to make the first 1,000 lights and later started a Give Light Project: one light is donated for every light purchased. They have also provided lights to Nepal and to Syrian refugees.

Ayla Hutchinson

After watching her mother cut her finger while splitting kindling, New Zealand teen Ayla Hutchinson decided to invent a device to make cutting kindling safer. She invented the Kindling Cracker as a science fair project. The cast-iron device uses a built-in ax blade in a safety cage. The cage holds the wood while you hit it with a hammer, easily splitting the log into pieces. After receiving a positive response to her prototype, she developed the idea further. Her father helped her start a company to manufacture it. Within two years, tens of thousands of Kindling Crackers were sold across New Zealand. In 2015, a distribution agreement with a major US tool company helped sell 22 tons of Kindling Crackers in North America.

Answer the Miracle Question

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

In her book, 13 Things Mentally Strong Women Don’t Do, psychotherapist Amy Morin shares the following technique:

Asking, “If you woke up tomorrow and a miracle had occurred, how would you know things were better?” is a solution-focused therapy technique. It’s one of my favorite ways to help people start identifying their own solutions.

Pose that question to yourself. Imagine what your life would be like if things changed for the better. How would you know things were better? What would you be doing differently? Then, go do those things.

If your “miracle” involves something that can’t really happen, such as spending time with a relative who passed away, think of other people who could give you some comfort.

Many women wait until they feel different to become different. After all, women are more inclined to feel first, rather than act first. But sometimes, changing your behavior first is the key to feeling differently about yourself. You don’t magically feel more confident if you aren’t challenging yourself. Or you won’t suddenly experience a burst of motivation unless you are already working toward a goal. Don’t wait until you feel different to become different. Change your behavior first and you’ll change how you feel.

Source: 13 Things Mentally Strong Women Don’t Do by Amy Morin, p. 280

Honoring Female Inventors – Part 2

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

May is National Inventors Month, a month set aside to recognize the curiosity and imagination of people who innovate and create.

Last Friday’s post highlighted the following female inventors: Jeanne Villepreux-Power, Margaret Knight, Josephine Cochrane, Mary Anderson, and Sarah Breedlove. You can read the post here.

Here are five more innovative women from across history:

Melitta Bentz (1873 – 1950)

German entrepreneur Melitta Bentz was frustrated with the coffeemakers of her time. The percolators often over-brewed coffee, the espresso-style machines left grounds in the drink, and the linen bag filters were difficult to clean. She experimented with different materials and finally found a solution: blotting paper from her son’s school exercise book. She inserted the blotting paper inside a brass pot perforated with a nail, obtained a patent, and set up a business to manufacture the filters. She sold hundreds of filters within a year, including 1,200 at the 1909 Leipzig Fair alone. By 1928, her company employed dozens of people. Beloved for her generous bonuses and work schedules, she also created “Melitta Aid,” a social fund for her company’s workers. The Melitta Group is still making coffee, coffee makers, and filters today.

Beulah Louise Henry (1887 – 1973)

American inventor Beulah Louise Henry submitted her first patent for a vacuum ice cream freezer while still a college student in 1912. In 1924, she moved to New York and founded two companies to sell her many inventions. She is known for 110 inventions and 49 patents. In the 1930s and 1940s, she shifted her attention to improving existing machines, including typewriters. One of her patents was for a “protograph,” a typewriter that created an original and four identical copies without using carbon paper. She spent the 1950s and 1960s working as a consultant for companies.

Ruth Graves Wakefield (1903 – 1977)

A university graduate, American entrepreneur Ruth Graves Wakefield began her career touring as a dietician. In 1930, she and her husband bought the Toll House Inn, which became famous for Wakefield’s delicious and innovative desserts. One day, she took an ice pick to a block of chocolate and added it to the cookie dough. The chocolate chip cookie was born! When she added the recipe for the cookie in her best-selling cookbook, the Nelson Chocolate Company noticed a spike in demand for their semi-sweet chocolate. They approached Wakefield and obtained the rights to the recipe.

Grace Hopper (1906 – 1992)

When mathematician Grace Hopper began her computer science career, all programs were written in numerical code. Determined to make programming more accessible, Hopper invented the first compiler in 1952, enabling teaching computers to “talk.” Her colleagues initially dismissed the compiler, informing Hopper that “computers could only do arithmetic.” She later co-invented the COBOL computer language, the first universal programming language used in business and government. During Hopper’s naval career, she achieved the rank of Rear Admiral by special Presidential appointment and was nicknamed “Amazing Grace.” Quotable quote from Hopper: “The most important thing I’ve accomplished, other than building the compiler, is training young people. I keep track of them as they get older and I stir’em up at intervals so they don’t forget to take chances.”

Virginia Apgar (1909 – 1974)

A pioneering anesthesiologist and the first female full professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Virginia Apgar realized that medical personnel had no standardized way of assessing the health of newborns. So, she developed a clear set of criteria that were easy communicate. The Apgar Score provides a handy mnemonic for areas to assess: Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, and Respiration. Apgar was also the author of the 1972 book, Is My Baby All Right? This book provided parents with a guide to birth defects, a taboo topic of the times. Quotable quote from Apgar: “Nobody, but nobody, is going to stop breathing on me.”

Announcing Guelph’s Official Bird…

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

The Black-Capped Chickadee has been chosen as Guelph’s official bird. Honorable mentions go to Chimney Swift and Green Heron.

A bold, inquisitive bird, the Black-Capped Chickadee can adapt to almost any environment and may even feed from friendly “human” hands. Small and short-billed with a black cap and throat, the chickadee communicates with its flock-mates using fifteen different calls. The best known is the chickadee-dee-dee that gives the bird its name.

The Black-Capped Chickadee is also the provincial bird of New Brunswick and state bird of Massachusetts and Maine.

Here are ten more interesting facts:

1. Chickadees usually mate for life.

2. These birds build nests in holes, mainly dead trees or rotten branches.

3. The females lay six to eight white eggs, marked with reddish-brown spots. Eggs are incubated for 12 to 13 days, until they hatch. Chicks grow quickly and fledge in 14 to 18 days.

4. Their wing beats are about 27 times per second. In comparison, a hummingbird’s wing beats are 80 beats per second.

5. The chickadee possesses excellent spatial memory. During the warmer months, it hides seeds and other foods in different spots. The bird can remember the hiding places a month after catching the food.

6. These birds observe and adapt the food-finding behavior of successful flock-mates. Unproductive activity is ignored.

7. On cold winter nights, the chickadees can reduce their body temperatures by as much as 12 degrees Celsius (from their normal temperature of 42 degrees Celsius) to conserve energy.

8. A frequent visitor to bird feeders, the chickadee is a ravenous eater, especially just before dusk. It can gain as much as ten percent of its body weight each day.

9. Research has shown that the survival rate of chickadees doubles when they have access to feeders during cold weather. In the winter, these birds require twenty times more food than they do in the summer.

10. Their favorite foods: sunflower seeds, suet, and coconut.

Deciding to Follow-Through

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

On Fridays, I receive Hope Clark’s newsletter, Funds for Writers. Here’s a thought-provoking essay from a recent email:

Steven Pressfield (the author of The War of Art) speaks about the difficulty of pushing through and reaching THE END of whatever you are writing. It could be a poetry chapbook. It could be a memoir. It could be fiction of any genre or any word count. It could be a how-to on cabinetmaking or a children’s picture book. A lot of writers struggle with perfecting an effort and reaching THE END.

Why? Because that is the point where you let others read it . . . and get feedback. That is when you submit for publication . . . and get feedback. The feedback is the thrill and the agony of writing, and sometimes we feel safer just saying we’re still writing it, because that is the world in which we feel safest.

What are we afraid of?

-Being told it’s just okay. Or worse, that it’s bad, but frankly, once we hear it’s okay the meaning is the same.

-Prematurely releasing your darling in the world. But who’s to say when it’s premature?

-Learning after all that time invested that we really do not know what we are doing. It’s called being a phony.

Look across social media. When an author talks about typing THE END, or submitting to the publisher, or having a release date, a lot of the public admire first and foremost the fact that the author got to that point. You think it. I think it. Everyone thinks it.

There’s a reason that authors continually get asked the questions: “What is your work regimen?” and “Where do you get your ideas?” Successful freelancers get asked similar questions. The basic underlying question is “How do you make it all the way through . . . then do it again?”

It’s magic. It’s a genetic gift. It’s a unique upbringing.

No, it’s deciding to follow-through. And nothing on this earth gets in your way in doing this but you.

Sign up to receive Hope Clark’s newsletter here.

Blurb Blitz: Big Shot

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

I’m happy to welcome author Kirsten Weiss. Today, Kirsten shares her new release, Big Shot.

Blurb

Small Town. Big Murder.

The number one secret to my success as a bodyguard? Staying under the radar. But when a wildly public disaster and a dead client blew up my career and reputation, it turned my perfect, solo life upside down.

I thought my tiny hometown of Nowhere would be the ideal out-of-the-way refuge to wait out the media storm.

It wasn’t.

My little brother had moved into a treehouse. The obscure mountain town had decided to attract tourists with the world’s largest collection of big things… Yes, Nowhere now has the world’s largest pizza cutter. And lawn flamingo. And ball of yarn…

And then I stumbled over a dead body.

All the evidence points to my brother being the bad guy. I may have been out of his life for a while—okay, five years—but I know he’s no killer. Can I clear my brother before he becomes Nowhere’s next Big Fatality?

A fast-paced and funny cozy mystery series, buy Big Shot now to take advantage of the special pre-order price of 99 cents.

Murder mystery game included in the back of the book!

Excerpt

My low heel caught on something, and I stumbled backward.

Normally, this wouldn’t have been an issue. I was fairly light on my feet. But a howling mass of gray fur flew around the corner of the building at the same moment. I threw up my hands to protect myself and thudded into something hard and muscular.

Powerful arms wrapped around my chest. And since my hands were protecting my face, the arms grabbed a very sensitive spot. Two sensitive spots, actually.

“Watch it,” a masculine voice rumbled.

I jerked away, and he released me. Embarrassed and indignant, I whirled and glared into a pair of green eyes full of mirth.

My gaze moved upward to his dark, curling hair. For the first time since the accident, I felt like I was in the real world. He was real.

He was also at least six-foot-two, because he was four inches taller than me. He looked like the Greek god of war—not the Ares from the marble statues, the one from that old TV show, Xena, Warrior Princess (my secret hero). The effect was in no way diminished by his white t-shirt and jeans stained at the knees.

“There are easier ways to get to know me,” he said.

Buy Links

Kindle | Apple Books | Nook | Google Play | Kobo

NOTE: The book will be on sale for $0.99 during the tour.

Author Bio and Links

Kirsten Weiss writes laugh-out-loud, page-turning mysteries. Her heroines aren’t perfect, but they’re smart, they struggle, and they succeed. Kirsten writes in a house high on a hill in the Colorado woods and occasionally ventures out for wine and chocolate. Or for a visit to the local pie shop.

Kirsten is best known for her Wits’ End, Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum, and Tea & Tarot cozy mystery books. So if you like funny, action-packed mysteries with complicated heroines, just turn the page…

Website | Facebook | Instagram

Giveaway

Kirsten Weiss will be awarding a $10 Amazon/Barnes & Noble gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour. Find out more here.

In addition to the Rafflecopter, the author is running a pre-order promotion on her website.

Follow Kirsten on the rest of her Goddess Fish tour here.

Honoring Female Inventors

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

May is National Inventors Month, a month set aside to recognize the curiosity and imagination of people who innovate and create.

Today and for the next two Fridays, I will be highlighting innovative women who have imagined, developed, tested, and perfected their creations.

Jeanne Villepreux-Power (1794 – 1871)

The French naturalist started her scientific studies on the island of Sicily. While studying the paper nautilus (an unusual octopus that spends its life drifting the oceans near the surface), Jeanne Villepreux-Power decided to test a popular hypothesis. It was believed that the nautilus took its shell from another organism. She created the first glass aquarium to observe the nautilus in controlled conditions and proved that it made its own shell. She also designed a glass apparatus within a cage for studying shallow water creatures and a cage-like aquarium that could be raised and lowered to different depths.

Margaret E. Knight (1828 – 1914)

A Maine resident, 30-year-old Margaret Knight built a machine that folded and glued paper to create a flat-bottomed paper bag. When the paper bags became popular, a man stole the idea. In court, he argued that a woman “could not possibly understand the mechanical complexities.” Knight won her case and went on to invent over 100 different machines. She patented 20 of them, including a rotary engine, a shoe-cutting machine, and a window frame with a sash.

Josephine Cochrane (1839 – 1913)

After servants chipped her heirloom dishes, American inventor Josephine Cochrane invented a mechanical dishwasher that held dishes securely in a rack. At the same time, the pressure of a water sprayer cleaned them. In 1883, her husband died and left her with substantial debt. Determined to pay off her debts, Cochrane obtained a patent in 1886 and began marketing her dishwasher to hotels. In those days, women did not cross hotel lobbies alone. She later commented, “I thought I should faint at every step, but I didn’t—and I got an $800 order as my reward.” In 1893, her dishwasher was exhibited at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In 1915, her company was bought by Kitchen Aid.

Mary Anderson (1866 – 1953)

An Alabama resident, real estate developer and rancher, Mary Anderson visited New York City in 1902. When she rode in a trolley car, she noticed the driver had to open the panes of the front window to see through falling sleet. Back in Alabama, she set to work on a solution. Her device used a lever inside the vehicle to control a rubber blade on the windshield. Despite its effectiveness, car manufacturers dismissed Anderson’s invention. One Canadian firm commented, “We do not consider it to be of such commercial value as would warrant its sale.” In 1922, Cadillac became the first manufacturer to include a windshield wiper on all its vehicles. Soon afterward, wipers became standard equipment.

Sarah Breedlove (1867 – 1919)

While working as a laundress, Sarah Breedlove observed that many black women struggled with hair loss and scalp diseases. The reasons: a lack of indoor plumbing and harsh ingredients in hair products. She developed her own life of hair care products specifically designed for African American hair. Hoping to evoke Parisian luxury, she branded the products with her new identity of Madam C. J. Walker. Later, she set up a college to train “hair culturists,” creating employment opportunities for thousands of African American women. Breedlove became the first female self-made millionaire in the United States.

Virtual Book Tour: My Dearest Miss Fairfax

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

I’m happy to welcome author Jeanette Watts. Today, Jeanette shares ten important rules about dancing and her new release, My Dearest Miss Fairfax.

Here’s Jeanette!

I am a dance teacher. I teach belly dance, and swing, and tango, and foxtrot, and waltz, and polka, and any number of other historical dances. I started a French Cancan troupe and ran it for 20 years (it is now under the direction of one of the dancers from the troupe, and still going strong!). I adore moving to music, and I adore the process of teaching people to dance. It’s a beautiful, powerful process of self-discovery that everyone goes through when they learn to dance.

Every single one of my books has some dance references snuck in them. Which was really fun for my current book, “My Dearest Miss Fairfax,” because Jane Austen’s “Emma” spends a lot of time and attention to scenes that talk about all the decision-making that goes into throwing a ball. I laughed with recognition as I was re-reading the discussion about where to put the food, and will the hall be big enough, and where do we put the music, and who will be able to come/did we give the people on the invite list sufficient notice? I have those same conversations, all the time.

So, here is my contribution:

10 Important Rules About Dancing

1. Unless you really like performing, you can ignore all that “Dancing with the Stars” nonsense. Dancing is for everyone. It is something you do WITH people, not AT them.

2. The whole point of dancing is to create moments of meaningful contact with other people. It has been said over and over again: “no one cares if you dance well. Just get up and dance.” It’s true. Better to get up and try than to sit there like a lump and refuse to participate. It is actually spelled out in dance manuals in the early 1800s, “If you are not inclined to dance, don’t come to the party.” (Notice how that contrasts with Mr. Darcy’s behavior at the ball where we first see him! He is in violation of the social code of the time, and Lizzie’s indignation is more than just her injured vanity.)

3. Stop agonizing over mistakes. Dancing is done in the moment. The music goes on, so the mistakes are almost immediately part of the past, not the present. When something goes wrong, shake it off with a smile or a laugh and let it go. (Unlike Mr. Collins, who makes his dancing worse by constantly apologizing for the last mistake – which contributes to him making another one!)

4. A smile for your partner is worth more than you can imagine. If you are a beginner, there is nothing wrong with admitting to your partner that you are new at this, and a smile makes partners much more charitable to you than a frown. If you have been dancing a long time, remember what it was like to be a beginner who needed some reassurance. Go out of your way to make new dancers feel welcome: they will become your favorite dance partners soon, if they keep coming back. They won’t come back if you scare them away with a frown.

5. If you are going to a dance (English Country Dance for Jane Austen-era dances), try to get to the class ahead of time. If you are a beginner, you will feel much more comfortable having a preview of the material. If you are not a beginner, it is a kindness to go to the class anyway. Beginners learn faster with more experience points on the dance floor. And even for experienced dancers, it can be good to learn what the local dialect is. (Yes, dances have local dialects!)

6. Wear appropriate shoes. This is for safety as well as comfort. The wrong shoes get in your way while trying to dance, and it is easy to injure yourself while trying to dance in a pair of gym shoes. If your foot stops but your knee or ankle doesn’t, it’s not going to go well. Dance shoes slide along the floor as you push your foot along it. But you also don’t want something too slippery. Sliding so much that you are out of control is a great way to slip and fall and injure yourself in a different way.

7. There are lots of kinds of dancing in the world. Again, “Dancing with the Stars” and Arthur Murray studios don’t even begin to touch on the great, wide dance universe. Irish dancing means you get to dance to that fabulous bouncy Irish music, with minimal physical contact with other dancers, just shaking hands. Salsa dancing, and bachata, and Brazilian Zouk, and blues has a lot more physical contact. The last two are kind of like very, very fancy prom dancing. Give your partner a hug (who doesn’t want to go hug people after two years of quarantine!), now stay there and do some dancing. Scottish and English Country dancing, and their American cousin, contradance (the dances from Jane Austen’s books) are figured dances. Some footwork required, but less complicated than Irish dancing. The focus is on the figures. A line of couples go through the figures of the dance, and you dance with several people in the course of one dance. Each dance is a new configuration of usually 4-6 figures. Then you find a new partner, form new lines, and start a new dance.

8. Leading and following are two mechanical parts of a whole, not a judgement. Our modern world is a weird place. I have heard and read many a biased commentary upon leading and following. Generally, the idea is that following is a subservient role. This prejudice is often embraced as truth, and I’m sorry, that’s a completely ignorant attitude. No one says a musician is subservient because they are following the conductor.

There are simply two skill sets in partner dancing. The lead makes suggestions, the follow interprets them. Historically, the expectation was that men lead and women follow. But watch an episode of American Bandstand in the 1950s: there are plenty of girls dancing together. One of them is leading, one is following. They can even decide to trade roles in the middle of the dance. (One of my lovely dance friends from Massachusetts and I will trade roles back and forth many times over the course of one dance! It’s heaps of fun. Of course, it helps that he and I are both perfectly comfortable with both leading and following – we’ve both been dance teachers for a long time.)

Following is not in the least a passive skill set. You don’t just hang on and let your partner drive. You have to have a good frame, good footwork, and think quickly. Every small gesture might be a signal to lead a move. It is like playing defense in basketball. You are anticipating signals and body language and comparing what information you have available against all the dance vocabulary in your head, and making a decision upon how you intend to respond. You are doing this every 6 or 8 beats of music.

Leading means listening to the music, listening to your partner’s responses, and also checking the list in your head of all known dance vocabulary and selecting which ones fit the occasion. But just because you’re driving the car right now doesn’t mean that you are master and commander and your partner’s only job is to obey. You are making suggestions, not orders, and you are constantly adapting to this partner’s responsiveness. Dance is a PARTNERship.

9. Be courteous. This can take all kinds of forms. Don’t talk while the teacher is trying to teach. The person you are talking to probably wants to hear what the teacher is saying. If you are swing dancing, don’t do aerials in a crowded room. Save that kind of showing off for performances. No one will be impressed with you when someone gets hurt. Watch for “wallflowers.” I don’t care what gender role you are following; even if you are at a Vintage dance dressed in a hoopskirt and trying to be historically accurate with ball cards (which were not used yet in the Regency era), if someone has sat out two dances, go over and ask for a dance. Or send your spouse/significant other over to go ask that person for a dance. As a Vintage dancer myself, I like to use the phrase, “Are you sitting out on purpose, or would you care for a dance partner?” because I am living in a world full of gentlemen who will dance with me, even if their feet hurt and what they REALLY want to do is sit this dance out. I like to give them an “out” if they want it. It’s part of being courteous.

10.All dance communities are not the same. There are great dance communities full of wonderful, people, who are great playmates, and your life will be richer for having them in your world. But I have seen many, many toxic dance groups. I have watched dance teachers insult their students, tear down their egos, and then slowly give a little bit of praise now and then, making their students eager for those little nuggets of approval. Those students can pay a fortune in dance lessons, just to earn those little bits of praise that eventually rebuild their ego. It’s horrifying. I always warn my dance students to watch out for those kinds of groups and teachers. You don’t need to take that kind of abuse. It’s NOT you, it’s them. Walk away. Find someplace else to go dancing.

The most important thing that matters is finding a dance community that meets YOUR needs. If you want to perform, find dance groups that perform. If you don’t want people watching you dance, you don’t need to be on a stage. If you go to a swing dance, or an English Country dance, no one is watching you dance. Everyone is busy dancing. The people sitting on the side? They are wishing they were on the dance floor but they don’t have a partner. If you are competitive, studio ballroom and Irish dancing has a lot of competitions. If you are NOT competitive (that’s me. I do not acknowledge that anyone out there has the right to judge dancing. Get off your butt and dance, jerk!), there is a ton of dancing that’s done for fun, not levels and medals.

Blurb

How much would you gamble for true love? Jane Fairfax dreaded her future as a governess. But genteel solitude seemed her fate. Then handsome, charming, rich Frank Churchill asked to marry her – IF his rich aunt agreed. If their secret engagement was discovered, Jane would be ruined. Frank seemed worth the risk; but the stakes got higher when the aunt refused her consent!

Excerpt

Mr. Churchill caught the end of one of the long ribbons from her bonnet, which were flying madly in the strong breeze. He toyed with it for a long while, then looked up into her eyes. “Do you believe in love at first sight?” he asked.

“No, I don’t suppose I do,” Jane answered. Her heart started beating harder. That was a lie. Maybe her breath was catching in her throat because she was lying: she fell in love with him the moment she saw him, rescuing the poor store clerk. Or maybe it was because he was standing so close to her, just on the other end of her bonnet ribbon. She felt her cheeks growing warm, and tried to talk herself out of blushing. He was not standing any closer to her than when they danced together, or sat on the same bench at the pianoforte. Why should it fluster her that he was wrapping the end of her bonnet ribbon around his fingers like that?

“Neither did I.” He tied a knot into the very end of the ribbon, then caught the other flying ribbon, and did the same to its end. “I thought love requires mutual respect and understanding, and complementary temperaments that can only be discovered with a judicious application of time and conversation.”

Jane hid her trembling hands inside her muff. She wished there was a way to hide the fact that she was trembling all over. “I understood you from the first moment I saw you,” she admitted, her voice little more than a whisper.

Author Bio and Links

Jeanette Watts has written three Jane Austen-inspired novels, two other works of historical fiction, stage melodramas, television commercials, and humorous essays for Kindle Vella.

When she is not writing, she is either dancing, sewing, or walking around in costume at a Renaissance festival talking in a funny accent and offering to find new ladies’ maids for everyone she finds in fashionably-ripped jeans.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Pinterest | Instagram | Amazon

Giveaway

Jeanette Watts will be awarding a crazy quilt tea cosy to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour. Find out more here.

Follow Jeanette on the rest of her Goddess Fish tour here.