Title: A Breath of Eyre
Author: Eve Marie Mont
Publisher: KTeen
Publication Date: March 27, 2012
ISBN-13: 978-0758269485
352 pp.
Purchased ebook via bn.com
I was totally excited about Eve Marie Mont's debut YA novel, A Breath of Eyre. Jane Eyre is one of my favorite novels, but I'm okay with taking liberties with
it. Jasper Fforde has a ton of fun riffing on it in The Eyre Affair. A
Today's guest was a tomboy/animal lover/aspiring actress who staged lip-synched productions of her favorite musicals since she couldn’t sing. Eve Marie Mont's love for athletics and animals remained, but the acting bug was soon replaced by the writing bug. In fourth grade, she wrote her first chapter book entitled, The Only Tomboy in My Class, and she was hooked. Now Eve teaches high school English and Creative Writing in the Philadelphia suburbs and sponsors her school’s literary magazine. When not grading papers or writing, she can be found watching the Phillies with her husband, playing with her shelter pup, or daydreaming about her next story. Visit her at any of the links at the bottom of her guest post. Stop by and say hello!
Keeping Your Unwavering Passion to Write
by Eve Marie Mont
I’ve had the writer’s bug for a long time. In fourth grade, my school hosted a book fair in which students wrote and illustrated their own books and showcased them for parents and students. I wrote a highly autobiographical story called The Only Tomboy in my Class, and that was it—I was hooked. I have written off and on ever since, even taking a few Creative Writing classes in college, but it was only about six years ago that I began writing with the intention of getting published.
I’ve been teaching English for the past fourteen years so I’ve always loved literature, but I never seriously considered being a writer. It seemed too pretentious. Too unrealistic. Besides, I was a full time teacher; how would I ever find the time? But then a colleague of mine wrote a book and asked me to read a draft for him, and I thought to myself, Why couldn’t I do this? I’d had an idea swimming around in my head for a while—a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. (This was right around the time the publishing world was experiencing a Jane Austen renaissance.) So I plunged into writing the book, and after about a year, I had a manuscript. I wasn’t sure it was any good, but it my first novel—my baby—and I’d created it myself. I went so far as to get my friends and family members to read it, and their encouragement made me think I might actually have a shot at getting it published.
I had heard that if you want to get published, you had to have an agent. So naively, I dashed off a query letter, researched agents who represented women’s fiction, sent the letter out to about fifty of them, and waited like an idiot for the offers to start pouring in. And waited. And got rejected over and over and over again. And cried.
It was a serious wake-up call. I had no idea how competitive the publishing world was or how much work it was going to take to break in. My query letter had been adequate, but not nearly original or polished enough to catch a busy agent’s eye. But more important, I hadn’t earned my writing chops yet. I’d jumped into novel writing without ever having studied craft, plotting, pacing, or characterization. And I certainly hadn’t put in the requisite time revising and editing my manuscript to make it sing. This was long, long ago in the blissful world of “Before.”
That may sound strange to hear that my pre-published days were blissful, but in a way, they were. It was very freeing to write a book just to see if I could do it, not to worry about expectations or sales figures or social networking. I was writing for the sheer pleasur
Classroom Connections is a series meant to introduce teachers to new books.
A BREATH OF EYRE -- Eve Marie Mont
setting: twenty-first century America and nineteenth-century England
age range: young adult
Kirkus starred review: This richly satisfying tale of first and last love transcends its genre—not another breathless, fan-fiction take on a literary classic but an intertextual love letter.
Please tell us about your book.
A BREATH OF EYRE is about Emma Townsend, a girl who seeks solace in books to help her escape her loneliness at her exclusive prep school. She has few friends and even fewer romantic prospects, unless you count her crush on her English teacher. But escape soon arrives in a leather-bound copy of JANE EYRE. Emma feels a strong sense of kinship with the lonely, headstrong Jane, but when a lightning strike catapults her into Jane’s body and her nineteenth-century world, Emma is torn between two vastly different worlds, and two vastly different men. Moving between her two realities and uncovering secrets in both, Emma must decide whether her destiny lies in the pages of Jane’s story, or in the unwritten chapters of her own.
3 Comments on Classroom Connections: A BREATH OF EYRE, last added: 3/4/2012
Expected publication date: April 1st, 2012
Publisher: Kensington
Summary from Goodreads:
Get lost in a good book. Literally.
Emma Townsend has always believed in stories—the ones she reads voraciously, and the ones she creates in her head. Perhaps it’s because she feels like an outsider at her exclusive prep school, or because her stepmother doesn’t come close to filling the void left by her mother’s death. And her only romantic prospect—apart from a crush on her English teacher—is Gray Newman, a long-time friend who just adds to Emma’s confusion. But escape soon arrives in an old leather-bound copy of Jane Eyre…
Reading of Jane’s isolation sparks a deep sense of kinship. Then fate takes things a leap further when a lightning storm catapults Emma right into Jane’s body and her nineteenth-century world. As governess at Thornfield, Emma has a sense of belonging she’s never known—and an attraction to the brooding Mr. Rochester. Now, moving between her two realities and uncovering secrets in both, Emma must decide whether her destiny lies in the pages of Jane’s story, or in the unwritten chapters of her own…
How cool is that summary? I love the idea of a teenager getting sucked into a classic tale, and I adore the classics! I'll be pining for this one.
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By: Monica Zepeda,
on 4/21/2012
By: Adventures in YA Publishing,
on 4/4/2012
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By: Caroline Starr Rose,
on 3/2/2012
By: Ella Press,
on 10/8/2011
This is so true! Thanks for this, it is so important to believe in yourself. I'm definitely going to look for your novels!
Congrats on not giving up! I think that initial query wave for most writers is a real wake up call. It's always gratifying when people's determination and hard work pays off!
Yes to everything you said. And bravo for writing for the love of it! In the end, isn't that why we started? Because we LOVE to write? Many, many authors will never be published, but to me, that doesn't diminish their work and I hope it doesn't squelch their passion. (Though I know it's hard to keep your chin up at times.) Thanks for a great post!
What a wonderful story of perseverance and holding on to your sense of purpose. Thanks for sharing.
I'm so glad my post touched a chord. I know there are probably thousands of stories similar to mine, but for each of us, it's a very emotional and personal journey. That love of writing has to sustain us through some pretty brutal periods, but I love that there are still so many of us who would write whether we achieved public "success" or not. Bravo to all the writers out there who create something every day, armed with only blank paper and their imaginations!