the lady's guide to death and deception Archives

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Hours Spent Writing Per Month in 2022. January: 103 hours 39 minutes. February: 80 hours 59 minutes. March: 84 hours 4 minutes. April: 58 hours 12 minutes. May: 108 hours 44 minutes. June 66 hours 52 minutes. July 57 hours 21 minutes. August: 47 hours 30 minutes. September: 108 hours 49 minutes. October: 93 hours 28 minutes. November: 77 hours 5 minutes. December: 49 hours 58 minutes.

Big Mary Bennet Energy: 2022, A Year in Review

December 31, 2022/1 Comment/in Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet, Updates, Year in Review /by Katherine Cowley

And now, as we reach the final day of 2022, it is time for my annual writing year in review.

I spent 937 hours writing in 2022, and my year looks like a series of waves.

Due to a variety of outside factors, my writing time varied from 47 to 109 hours each month, but it did so in an aesthetically pleasing way, which is definitely a win.

(Note: 937 hours is less time than I spent writing in 2021, when I wrote for 1000 hours, but more than I spent writing in any previous year.)

Which leads us to the next chart: how did I spend my time?

Hours Spent Per Writing Project in 2022. Website, Guest Posts, Book Launches, Presentations, Marketing 309 New Murder Mystery 227 Development 148 Board of Directors for Writing Nonprofit 75.5 Jane Austen Writing Lessons 54.5 Journal Writing 49 Mary Bennet Book 3 32 Novel I'm abandoning 24 Other 18

This year had big Mary Bennet energy, and that determined a lot of my writing hours. True, I only spent 32 hours doing final revisions on my third Mary Bennet novel. But the second and third books in the Mary Bennet spy series were both released:

The True Confessions of a London Spy in March 2022

The Lady’s Guide to Death and Deception in September 2022

Katherine Cowley at This is a Bookstore/Bookbug with Ladys Guide to Death and Deception

I had my launch party for The Lady’s Guide to Death and Deception at This is a Bookstore/Bookbug in Kalamazoo, MI.

It was exciting to have these books released in close proximity, because then readers could enjoy the full story arc without having to wait very long. As you’d expect, two book releases takes up a lot of time, and I spent 309 hours on everything from my website to guest blog posts to presentations to marketing tasks.

This year was also thrilling for the first book in the series, The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet, which had several award wins and nominations:

-Winner of the LDSPMA Praiseworthy Award for Best Suspense/Mystery novel

-One of five nominees for the Mary Higgins Clark Award

At the Edgar Awards: me with three of the other finalists for the Mary Higgins Clark Award

-One of five finalists for the Whitney Award for Best Mystery/Suspense novel

The Big Question: Will we see more of Mary Bennet?

I have had so many readers finish the third book and ask, “Will we see more of Mary Bennet?” Others have asked if I will write a Kitty Bennet series.

The series was originally conceived as a trilogy. I wanted it to feel complete and have a satisfying resolution for Mary (and company) by the end of the third book.

However, there are other stories that I would love to tell about Mary and her sisters. So I think it’s fair to say that there will very likely be more books in Mary and/or Kitty’s futures.

That said, I have been working on this series non-stop from 2017 to 2022. Five full years. That’s a lot of time to spend in one story world, with one set of characters. A book takes me at least a year or two to write, and it’s very all-consuming. So I decided that the time had come to work on a brand new murder mystery.

The New Murder Mystery:

I’m still keeping this largely under wraps, but I will say that my new murder mystery is set in Paris in the late 1800s, with a number of fascinating historical figures. The main character of the book is a determined woman in her thirties trying to make her way in the world. But then there is a theft and a murder, and she is drawn into solving the mystery.

I spent 227 hours on this book in 2022. While I had to do a lot of research for the Mary Bennet novels, I already had a strong background on Jane Austen and Regency England. I did not have that same background for my new murder mystery, so I’ve had to do a lot of additional research on everything from politics to architecture. Fortunately, I love research. One thing I didn’t count towards writing time was studying French. I’m fluent in Portuguese, and reading Portuguese definitely helps with reading French, but knew I needed to study French itself to help me read some of the sources (including newspapers and a few biographies) that are only available in French.

A few of the research books I’ve read for my current novel

While I love research, one cannot research forever. One of the things that I am most happy about for this year is that I found my main character’s voice, I found my narrator voice, and I found the voices of many of my other characters.

I’m now at the 60% mark on the first draft. In the new year, I plan to finish the first draft and then revise, revise, revise.

What Else Counted as Writing:

There are endless other things that counted as writing this year, but here’s a few of note:

-Choosing out formal gowns. I rented dresses for both the Edgar Awards and the Whitney Awards, and I definitely counted the dress search as writing time. (Under my Development category, which includes all writing and career development.)

Katherine Cowley in her dress for the Whitney Awards

My dress for the Whitney Awards. Both my dress for the Edgars and the Whitneys were from Rent the Runway.

-I ran a successful Kickstarter for a writing nonprofit and helped publish an anthology.

-I abandoned a novel. I went back and began another revision on an old mystery novel I wrote in the mid-2010s. And then I decided it’s not the right book, so I am officially abandoning it. We’re all better off.

-I wrote 17 new Jane Austen Writing Lessons, focusing on what Jane Austen can teach us about writing dialogue and writing emotions.

-I worked on a few short stories. And I had two short stories published, both with a bit of a religious bent: “The Gift of Undoing” in Saints, Spells, and Spaceships, and the darkest story I’ve ever written, “Burdens,” in Irreantum.

My Writing Plans for 2023:

I have a number of goals, including setting up bookstore and library visits (note: if you’re a bookseller or librarian, I am available for both in-person and virtual visits).

Mostly though, I’m going to buckle down and write, so you can read more of my short stories and novels in the future.

The Original Title for The Lady’s Guide to Death and Deception

October 10, 2022/1 Comment/in Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet /by Katherine Cowley

I told this story at my launch party in Kalamazoo, Michigan, but I wanted to share it here. The original, working title for The Lady’s Guide to Death and Deception was The Lady’s Guide to the Art of War.

In late 2019, my agent Stephany Evans was preparing submission materials for the first book in the series, The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet. Now, when you are pitching a book, even if you would like it to be the first book in a series, you often say, “It’s a standalone novel with series potential.” Publishers sometimes just want one book, and you want them to be interested in the book without them feeling like the book is incomplete and requires a series. And indeed, the first book does stand on its own. But “series potential” means you have further books in mind. In case a publisher was interested in the sequels, Stephany asked me to create a several sentence pitch—with a title—for books 2 and 3.

I had already written a first draft for the second book, which made it much easier to settle on possible titles. After a bit of brainstorming, I ended up settling with The True Confessions of a London Spy, which ultimately ended up being the final title for the book.

Book three was trickier. I knew that it would be set in Brussels. I knew that the book would include Napoleon Bonaparte and the hundred days from when he escaped the Isle of Elba and was defeated one final time. I also knew the book would include a romance, and feature Mary’s sister Lydia. I had enough that I could write a pitch. One of the themes that I knew would be present in the book was war—how war impacts individuals and communities. War is played out not just on the battlefield, but in smaller interactions with huge consequences. And so I came up with the title, The Lady’s Guide to the Art of War.

I have a history with the book The Art of War. We had a copy in my house growing up, and we would discuss Sun Tzu and other military theorists at the dinner table or after watching movies. I got engaged to my husband, Scott, a few weeks before Christmas, and for Christmas that year, my dad gave Scott a beautiful knife from Spain and a copy of The Art of War. Which from my dad is a very excited “Welcome to the family!”

When I got to writing the book, I didn’t draw upon The Art of War as heavily as I thought I would. Its influence is definitely in the book, and Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington likely owned copies and would’ve been quite familiar with it. Mary and Mr. Withrow do discuss The Art of War in one scene, but I realized that it wasn’t quite the right title for the overall themes and focus.

So it was back to the drawing board. I spent hours brainstorming other titles, and after some really useful thoughts and perspectives from my editor, I settled on The Lady’s Guide to Death and Deception. What I loved about the title is it captures what Mary must face—deception on the part of others, and the deception she must use in order to unravel the mystery and deal with death. I sent the title in, it was approved by the publisher, and it became the final title for the book.

The book is dedicated to my dad, and despite not including The Art of War in the title, it has a lot of his influence. He helped me choreograph every single action scene in the entire series. I would video call him and say, “I need these things to happen, without these things happening, and this is who the characters are and their skills and strengths,” and he would help me figure it out. After I wrote the scenes, I would send them to him for further feedback.

Titles tend to either come to me easily or they are really difficult and take a lot of work. There is no in-between. But I have been really happy with all my titles so far, and hopefully that’s the case in the future!

The complete series: The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet, The True Confessions of a London Spy, The Lady's Guide to Death and Deception

Everything You Wanted to Know About Newspapers in the Mary Bennet Series

March 11, 2022/0 Comments/in Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet, Writing /by Katherine Cowley

Some of the most common questions I get about The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet and The True Confessions of a London Spy relate to the epigraphs at the start of each chapter:

Are they from real newspapers?
What inspired you to include these epigraphs?
What purpose do they serve?/ What do they mean?
How did you find them?

In this post, I’m going to give readers the answers to each of these questions.

The first page of The True Confessions of a London Spy, with an epigraph from The Times

Are they from real newspapers?

Almost all of the passages are real excerpts from real newspapers, with the exception of three headings in Secret Life and two headings in London Spy. In the upcoming third novel, The Lady’s Guide to Death and Deception, only one is from my own imagination, and one is from a letter instead of a newspaper.

What inspired you to include these epigraphs?

I loved the short newspaper excerpts at the start of each chapter in Mary Robinette Kowal’s alternate history science fiction novel The Calculating Stars, and I thought that they would fit well in my own story.

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

What purpose do they serve? What do they mean?

The newspaper excerpts do a number of things:

Historical underpinning: unlike Jane Austen’s contemporary readers, most of us today don’t know the full historical context of the Regency. I wanted to Mary Bennet to solve mysteries that deal directly with the historical events and social issues of the day, and including these excerpts helps provide that context for the reader. For example, I wanted to establish the widespread dread of Napoleon Bonaparte, which is clearly present in the newspapers.
Mary and other spies read a lot of newspapers: In the books, Mary, Lady Trafford, and other characters read numerous newspapers. I wanted to give a sense for some of the stories they encounter.
Direct commentary on the content of the chapters: Because I use real historical events in the novels, many of the newspapers made direct commentary on these events. For example, in The True Confessions of a London Spy, the account that The Times made of the customs house explosion is devastating, and in the third novel, The Lady’s Guide to Death and Deception, I wanted to showcase some of the alternative viewpoints on the war that aren’t held by the main characters of my story.

A portion of the first article in The Times about the Custom House fire, printed on February 14, 1814

Parallels and Alternate Experiences: Some of the epigraphs are not specifically connected to any of the events, but they create parallel narratives and showcase alternate experiences. For instance, in each of the books I include excerpts about women in disguise or as spies. In London Spy, the weather acts as a sort of character and so receives a number of newspaper excerpts.
Other Purposes: At times the newspaper excerpts are in conversation with the subtext of the novel, deal with the themes of the book, or add humor or satire to elements of a chapter.

How did you find the excerpts?

For each of the books, I waited until at least the third draft to start looking for newspaper headings. I needed the overall story to be mostly solidified, and I wanted the date each chapter occurred to be relatively fixed.

I used two newspaper subscriptions: a personal subscription to the British Newspaper Archives (which has digitized hundreds of newspapers), and a university subscription to The Times.

The tricky part is that computer programs have a hard time reading old newspapers, some of which were not well preserved. If you do a search in the British Newspaper Archives for the name Napoleon or Bonaparte in the year 1814, you’re lucky if the computer program finds 10% of the actual references. (It also doesn’t help that some of the newspapers wrote his name as Buonaparte to try to delegitimize his rule.). Most of the time instead of searching, I would download half a dozen different newspapers for a given day and read them.

Sometimes I had something very specific in mind that I was looking for—I was looking for a news story Bonaparte, crime, the stock exchange, the or the Viennese Waltz, or the weather. Yet most of the time I didn’t have a specific type of news in mind. Instead, I would read the articles with a sense of discovery, letting myself wander to columns or advertisements that drew my attention, and finding endless connections to my book. Sometimes I would find the perfect article quickly; other times I would choose three or four possibilities and then consider which really had the effect I wanted for the chapter, and fit the overall arc of the epigraphs.

I quickly got a good feel for different newspapers of the news, which ones were liberal or conservative, had the most interesting ads, included a regular fashion column, published poetry, or wrote the best opinion pieces. There was also a variety of different formats—while many of the newspapers only printed ads on the first page, others included articles from the start. Newspapers would reprint articles from other papers, and sometimes the news would be about events weeks or months in the past, depending on how long it took the information to reach England’s shores.

Sometimes I shifted the dates and timeline for a book because I really wanted to use as particular newspaper heading. And I definitely revised numerous details in the chapters because of things I learned through reading the newspapers—for example, in London Spy, Kitty’s reference to ice skating in Hyde Park came from a newspaper reference.

I have now read hundreds of newspapers from 1813, 1814, and 1815, and I feel like doing so has not only helped my books, but made me a more interesting person at parties—after all, who doesn’t want to hear 1814 trivia?

More About My Journey with Newspapers

All this newspapering has influenced my readings of other Jane Austen texts.

I was recently a guest on the podcast The Thing About Austen, talking about Anne’s newspapers in Persuasion.
I wrote a post for Jane Austen’s World about how 1814 newspapers should impact our reading of the snow scene in Emma.

I also did a guest post on My Favorite Bit, talking about some of my favorite newspaper excerpts.

Coming Soon!

Next week, on this blog, I’ll be posting about my trip to London and how that influenced the setting of The True Confessions of a London Spy. I’ll also be showing some of the actual dresses that were influences for Fanny’s designs. So come back to the blog, keep a watch on social media, or subscribe to my newsletter!

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