Jane and the Very Damned, A Contest

The Contest is over, and thanks to everyone who participated! There were some great suggestions and I've had quite a bit of trouble picking a winner because I liked so many of them. But...drumroll...I've decided to take the suggestion of Krista who posted on August 16...Les Sales, which means the unclean or dirty ones. Brilliant, Krista, and contact me for your prize--a signed copy of Jane and the Damned and some other goodies--at jmullanyATcomcastDOTnet.

I need to tap into the creative, snarky brilliance of the paranormal reading and blogging community. That's YOU, folks.

I have this problem. I'm writing the second book about Jane Austen as a vampire, a loosely-related book set in Chawton, Hants, where Austen lived with her sister Cassandra, her mother, and her friend Martha Lloyd from 1809 until her death. I visited her house, now a museum, where you can see her writing table and many of the family's possessions, just over a month ago. There's an account of my visit at riskyregencies.blogspot.com.

After several years of moving around, experiencing deaths of loved ones including her father, and the realization that at this late age (33 when they moved to Chawton) she probably wouldn't marry, Jane pulled out her neglected manuscripts, and produced. There are many theories why Austen, after the burst of creativity in her late teens-early twenties, had a massive case of writer's block for a decade. Was she too busy partying in her nomadic existence and found the stability she needed at Chawton? Was she secretly writing all the time? Or observing and mentally, or physically, taking notes? Since so few of her original mss. survive and so many of her letters were destroyed by family members, we just don't know.

Although I do. She was coming to terms with recovery from vampirism and lost love and you can read all about it in my October release JANE AND THE DAMNED.

And therein lies my problem for the next book. By 1810, the Damned, the gorgeous, sexy vamps of Georgian England, are out of favor with high society. The Prince of Wales (soon to achieve his dream of becoming Prince Regent) has dropped them, as he tended to do with many of his friends. Some of the Damned decide their survival depends upon integrating themselves into a less exalted sphere and lying low for a few centuries. Other Damned are just mad at the fall from favor and start behaving badly, going feral and attacking instead of seducing.

So here's the Contest: What do I call the feral Damned? At the moment I'm referring to them as the Very Damned for lack of a better term, which is very, well, lame!

I have definitions of a few expressions of the Damned here where you can also read an excerpt, (and there's another regular sort of contest on the site here). The term has to sound eighteenth-century/Regency, sophisticated, and avoiding such terms as fanged or feral which are quite modern. French is great--for instance, en sanglant means to have a fang-on. Basically, I want a good, juicy euphemism (and how often do you hear that?).

How to Enter: Post your suggestion here. I'll take entries until the end of August and announce the winner at the top of this post in September.

The Prize: A signed copy of JANE AND THE DAMNED plus some chocolate and Austen-related goodies, and a mention, if you like, in the acknowledgments of the book.

So get your thinking fangs on! I'm really looking forward to what you'll come up with.

JANE AND THE DAMNED an impressively compelling Jane Austen mashup full of humor and poignant irony. Publishers Weekly (October 2010).