Letters from the Heart by Kay Bea Genres: Austenesque
The Bennet sisters of Longbourn lack both decorum and connections and do not possess a decent dowry between them. Even the best of the them is in every way unsuitable for a man whose income is as a good as a lord. But love is not so easily set aside and in January 1812, Mr Darcy persuades Mr Bingley to reopen Netherfield Park, the country estate from which they both fled only two months before. On returning to Hertfordshire, they discover a near tragedy took place three days after the Netherfield Ball and has changed the lives of the Bennet family forever. Mrs Bennet’s relentless fear of losing her place in society has led her to condemn her least favourite daughter to a life of isolation and pain that will greatly complicate Darcy and Elizabeth’s journey to happiness. Old bonds are strengthened, family ties are severed, and unlikely allies emerge as each of them struggles to make sense of the changes they face.
Hi, all! Thank you for inviting me to join you today to take a look at Letters from the Heart. These past few months have been a bit of a whirlwind and I’m really excited to be here.
What an incredible journey this has been! Letters from the Heart has developed from half-formed ideas sketched out on legal pads to a novella length story and it all happened almost without my noticing. The initial story had been complete and available online for years and aside from periodic reviews had become something that I rarely thought of, despite my abiding affection for it. Then I received an email from Amy and Jan at Quills and Quartos asking if I would be interested in publishing my story. I squealed like a fangirl, grabbed my husband for a celebratory hug, and wrote what I hoped would be a coherent acceptance.
Then came the request for more words, twelve-thousand or so of them. More words? How was I going to find more words for a story I hadn’t really done anything with in years? I replied with a quick, “Of course, I can do that.” Then I closed my email and had a panic attack. I came up with all sorts of complicated and convoluted ideas. Thankfully, Amy had a few much less complex suggestions and suddenly, the prospect of coming up with more to say didn’t seem intimidating in the least. I would finally have a chance to write some of the scenes that had previously only happened in my head. My favorite of these is the proposal scene (who doesn’t like to finally see that?), followed closely by the conversation between Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam at Ashford Lodge. It’s Darcy’s “Hunsford moment” and I had long wanted to be in the room for that conversation.
In most of the stories I’ve read, we get to see something of a traditional courtship between Darcy and Elizabeth once they finally reconcile. Since the majority of my story is told in letter format, there is much that happens off-the-page. When I first started writing Letters from the Heart, I knew that once Darcy and Elizabeth were free to be together, they would already be at least half in love. Since there would be no formal calls, I had to find a way to show the reader the growing affection between the pair. What we see in LFH are two people who come to know each other primarily through their mutual connections.
Even though Elizabeth is married and there initially seems to be no hope for change, Darcy spends the better part of his time conducting an indirect courtship. We get to see their affection grow simply in the way they are always present in one another’s letters. They are rarely out of each other’s thoughts, even before Elizabeth is free to consider, much less acknowledge, what that might mean. It is that deep and abiding love I wanted to shine through this story.
Kay Bea is an administrative assistant and Jane Austen lover living in Kansas City with her husband of twenty-five years, her mother-in-law, and her fur kids. She has written several short stories and drabbles on fanfiction.net as “I Found My Mr. Darcy” and on A Happy Assembly as MrsDarcy2032.
Kay grew up in Wyoming, enjoyed a two-year adventure in Maryland, and now calls Missouri home. When she isn’t writing, Kay enjoys photography, cooking, and spending time with her adult children and three granddaughters.
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