It’s November, and Manners & Mannerisms is a tale of two Novembers. In the first November—2018, that would be—I wrote it. November is, of course, NaNoWriMo, and that particular November I had an ambitious goal. I would write two books. One, an omegaverse novella (which became Omega Released), and the other, a Regency romance. Which, let me tell you, is a balancing act. At least they were both in third person past tense, but the tone was obviously different. When I was editing later, I kept finding sentences where my wolves suddenly sounded like Shakespeare.
Omega Released got released a few months later, but I spent more time getting M&M to market, and that was primarily because I didn’t expect it to sell. My other foray into historical didn’t do well, and I didn’t have a historical fan base. On top of that, M&M is very Jane Austen—maybe a little stilted for modern readers. My beta readers didn’t love it, and I had no reason to think anyone else would. So it didn’t get published until November 2019, a full year after I wrote it.
I didn’t do a lot of research prior to writing M&M. What I did was read. I re-read every single thing Jane Austen ever wrote, one book after another. I started with Northanger Abbey on the way to GRL in Virginia (on audio), and by the time I was back home a week later, I’d read them all. I really like Jane Austen. My idea for M&M was to write what Jane would’ve written, if she’d ever written M/M with explicit sex. I think I succeeded too.
Anyway, the punchline is that the book sold better than I expected. Maybe because Joel Leslie did the audio. Maybe because it practically shares a cover (accidentally) with a Cat Sebastian book. Or maybe people are just hungry for MM Regency romance. It sells well, but not everyone likes it. Because it isn’t a Cat Sebastian book. It’s a Jane Austen book. So if you’ve ever wanted to see all the typical Jane Austen scenes—like picnics, balls, long walks, and dinner parties—only with two guys, this is your book.