October 2025

Hello Friends,

As you may know by now, Universal Truth is out in the universe now. I am so proud of this book, of this series, of the whole thing. I am now officially halfway through the series. Well, I’m halfway through the fifth book in the series, but the world has the first three. It is really like an out-of-body experience every day.

With The Austen Chronicles, I’ve done my best to write a love letter to Jane Austen, while creating my own stories. If I didn’t think I was doing that, I would stop. I’ve been trying to tell stories that are entertaining, enlightening, and cathartic, while also tapping into some kind of, dare I say it, Universal Truth.

While I may be a Dean now, and while I enjoy that work, inside my core, I am still a book nerd who wanted to be an English teacher so I could read books, think about books, and talk about books. You may have noticed that the past few newsletters have been a little literary analyses, and thus, in that trend, I present to you the following argument:

My reimaging of Pride and Prejudice is sort of like wearing a hat on a hat, because Jane Austen wrote what for her was a modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. 

Don’t go…hear me out…

In Much Ado About Nothing, our leads Beatrice and Benedick meet and sort of hate each other. She thinks he is a smug turd, and he thinks she is a know-it-all. They are both right. She has a friend called Hero, and he has a friend called Claudio, who are considered to be much better looking and exponentially nicer than either Beatrice or Benedick. After a lot of trials and tribulations (including Hero faking her own death), the best friends end up getting married. Before we get to that, there are a lot of side-quest adventures that include some miscommunication, some mischievousness, a duplicitous villain in Don John, and a fool who is unaware he is a fool in Dogberry. When it is all said and done, Beatrice and Benedick fall in love and inextricably end up together.

Austen gives us the contentious lovers in Lizzy and Darcy. She gives us the forlorn lovers who are pushed apart, only to find each other at the end, in Jane and Bingley. She makes sure her villain, Wickham, is a cad AND a rake who takes advantage of young women while trying to hurt the hero because he feels his birthright was taken from him. Mr. Collins is the most comic of all comic relief because he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Like Shakespeare, Austen’s characters talk past each other, things look lost, but in the end, the people who deserve to be happy are happy, and the baddies are cast out.

Austen made some changes, of course. Most importantly, she made Lizzy and Jane sisters and then gave them three more sisters, one of whom is victimized by Wickham. We care so much more about what happens to them because of this. If Mary, Kitty, and Lydia were simply friends from town, they wouldn’t be memorable, and we wouldn’t care as much. Of course, Austen had a lot more room to move. Writing a novel is different from writing a play. Austen had an unlimited amount of space to tell her story, while Shakespeare had to get people out of the theater in a few hours or less.

I have no way to know if my argument is right. Cassie Austen burned almost all of her correspondence with Jane, so we don’t know what she was thinking. Wouldn’t it be grand if she had done a monthly newsletter of her musings and inspirations?

I am sure, if I could read old English better, or ancient high German at all, I could find some story that Shakespeare read that inspired him to write his comedy of errors that inspired Jane, and countless others, until it got to me and to whoever does it next. I freely admit I have not improved upon the literary giants, which are Austen and Shakespeare, but a good idea is a good idea. One story is powerful enough that it demands to be told and retold so that we don’t lose it.

Notes from my headphones

When I was in high school and college, there was a noisy, punky, rock band called The Replacements, who hailed from Minnesota. I knew of them, but I didn’t really give them the time they likely deserved. They were not on the radio much, and then they broke up. 

A few weeks ago, I wondered if Cat Morland would like them and help her story along. Turns out, she does, and they do. Here’s a really good song called “I’ll be You.” They haven’t made their way into the book, Haunting Northanger, yet, but they will. 

Notes from my Bookshelf

I picked up this glorious ode to first love and being fourteen. It is called Dreamover by Dani Diaz. I just love it so much. The characters are such a mess, but, you know, they are fourteen, so...they don’t have a choice. 

At the other end of the spectrum, Jill Lepore wrote We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution. She is following in Howard Zinn’s footsteps, and we need that. Please, read this book. 

 Notes from my keyboard

I took a short break from writing Haunting Northanger to write a short story. It is a political commentary on the state of things now, but it takes place ten years in the future. I have submitted it for publication…Now I wait. I received one rejection already. It happens.

I am back at Cat’s story now, and it is coming along nicely. One more villain is about to arrive. He is awful. Poor Cat. I hate it for her, but you know, she’ll grow and learn. 

Finally, I had the honor of appearing on Tonya Todd’s Banned Books Conversations series again this year. Please check

out my show and the rest of the series. Words matter. We can’t let them die.