What Happened on Box Hill – Book Excerpt

Hi everyone! Today is a very special book excerpt post. I am hosting author Elizabeth Gilliland today and tomorrow, I will be back with a review of this awesome book, What Happened on Box Hill. 😀 This is a very fun Jane Austen inspired series. Did you guess that from the title?

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Get to know the author: Elizabeth

Welcome to Armed with A Book, Elizabeth, first of many appearances! Tell me and my readers a bit about yourself!

Hi, Kriti! (And readers!) My name is Elizabeth and I teach English at the university level (mostly composition, but also some British Literature when I’m lucky). In addition to writing and teaching, I am a mom to a wild child, a co-founder of Bayou Wolf Press, a cheesy Christmas movie connoisseur, and an aspiring audiobook narrator.

What inspired you to write this book?

I earned my PhD in 19th Century British Literature and Adaptation at LSU and wrote my dissertation on Jane Austen adaptations. Naturally I procrastinated by planning out my own Jane Austen variation series, and my husband persuaded me that I should actually write it instead of just talking about it all the time, so here we are today! 

How long did it take you to write this book, from the first idea to the last edit?

Ugh, a long time. I think I actually started writing this in 2017 and made my last edit just a few months ago – so, about four years altogether? 

What makes your story unique?

With what some might call an unhealthy obsession with Jane Austen adaptations, I’ve experienced many different versions of her stories and her characters; my novel sees these features not only updated to modern day, but also squashed together in one story. So it’s not just about seeing what Elizabeth Bennet would be like in the 21st century – it’s also thinking about who Elizabeth Bennet would get along with from the other novels, while attending a small Southern university where basically everyone has to join a fraternity or sorority. The combinations and connections between characters who have never met before necessarily will change some of the plots, plus there’s murder thrown in, so the experience should both be kind of familiar but also completely new.

Who would enjoy reading your book? 

Austen fans, people who like modern variations, people who love a funny cozy mystery, people who like new adult/academia settings.  

What’s something you hope readers would take away from it?

I think the best modern-day variations use a familiar story to look at our world in a new light, and to call into question the assumptions we make about characters, themes, and ideas that can seem a little more removed when they’re set in a different time period. I hope the novel will be a fun experience, but I also hope people might start to see some of these aspects in a new light.

Do you have a favourite quote or scene in the book that you find yourself going back to?

There is one scene toward the end of the book that I don’t want to spoil, but it will be a VERY familiar scene for any Emma fans that will suddenly be put into some new context. It was one of those darling scenes of mine that I refused to kill in earlier drafts because I knew it was too important, and I hope the payoff will be worth it for readers.

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What Happened on Box Hill

Book Excerpt from
What Happened on Box Hill

Before her body had even begun to decompose, Isabella Thorpe had been almost universally branded by the press, the public, and her peers as a slut. Had young Isabella lived to see her newfound fame, she would have been tickled pink, instead of the grayish-bluish tint of her current color palette. She might have been delighted by the sight of her photographs plastered across the media, even if her carefully applied makeup and the outfit she’d spent hours choosing proved to be ultimately less than durable. Seeing her name pop up on all multiple threads and comments—some sympathetic, but others making her the punchline of a slew of wincingly morbid jokes—might have made her giggle, because the internet was forever and she was, like, totally famous now.

Even the word “slut” itself might not have given her much pause, because wasn’t she always yelling that at her sorority sisters as they laughed and danced and put on a show? It didn’t mean what it used to. It was a term of endearment now, empowerment. 

But not, as it turned out, when it was being whispered behind her back—or, to be more accurate, over her dead body. Not when major news outlets were discussing, in detail, the number of people she’d hooked up with during her brief time as a freshman at Austen University; and boys were coming out of the woodwork to testify she’d been the aggressive one, pursuing them; and the same girls who’d laughingly grinded with her only weeks before were giving “special interviews” about how out of control she’d been. Anything for those fifteen minutes of fame.

It all started out innocently enough, this frenzied piranha-feeding of Isabella’s reputation. Before the school issued a formal warning to the students about commenting to the press, Isabella’s roommate, Catherine Morland, was ambushed as she left the sorority house. Petite, wide-eyed Caty looked terrified in the video clip that eventually went viral, and the wolves circled in on her, expecting her to be easy prey. Indeed, when asked about her relationship to Isabella, Caty was barely able to stammer out she was her “best friend” and that “Bella” had been girlfriend to her brother James. (Both claims were later torn to shreds in online forums, in which people speculated why a girl like Isabella who had a “boyfriend” also had an active Tinder profile, and why Caty would claim to be her best friend when she appeared in hardly any of her Instagram pictures.)

But the moment that pushed the video into viral fame was when one of the reporters asked Caty if she had any idea what happened to Isabella. Suddenly small, trembling Caty went still, looking straight into the camera. “Of course I do. She was murdered.” 

That was when the president of Pi Kappa Sigma, Emma Woodhouse—tall, blonde, and with a formidable Southern-belle glare—swooped in to wrap a protective arm around Caty. “No more comment, y’all,” she insisted before guiding the younger girl to the safety of her waiting Mercedes. Online, however, no one could protect Caty or Isabella from the ensuing media circus.

Perhaps in the end, even Isabella would have shied away from this kind of attention—regardless that her name briefly became the top “Isabella” in search engines in North America and trended in hashtags, too. The kind of fame she daydreamed about in her lifetime came through merit or achievement. Miss Louisiana, for example, or winner of a televised singing competition, or top Pharma rep in the Southeast U.S. Division.

This kind of fame? It was not earned—it was taken, and turned against you. Voyeurs, gobbling up every gory, illicit detail, just so they could teeter to the edge of danger, then pull back at the last minute. All the while reassuring themselves they were okay, this could never happen to them.

Isabella could have told them differently, of course. This couldn’t have happened to her, either, until it did.

Interested?

Find this book on Goodreads, IndieStoryGeek and Amazon.

Connect with Elizabeth on Goodreads, Twitter and check out her press website for updates. I will be back with a review of the book tomorrow! 🙂

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If you are an indie author and would like to do a book excerpt, check out my work with me page for details.

Cover image: Photo on Unsplash