Too. Funny. I want in.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Austen-inspired first line contests. We really enjoyed reading your fun, funny, and universally truthy first lines.

It was hard to pick a winner, so at long last, we went with the geekiness factor of the entries. Without further ado, our winner is:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman who lives in a home with bare white walls has married an engineer.

Congratulations to Donna Maloy! I have a very geeky day job as a technical writer. (Oh, sure, that sounds glamorous. Not.) I’ve worked with many and engineer (and software developer, and programmers). I’m pretty sure I exclaimed out loud when Donna’s entry landed in my inbox–it is a truth universally acknowledged.

Thanks to everyone for playing along. Donna, we’ll be contacting you via email, but if for some reason we don’t land in your inbox, you can contact us at: geekgirlx2 @ gmail.com (remove spaces).

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

There is perhaps no more famous line than this one, from Jane Austen’s PRIDE & PREJUDICE. It has become a part of pop culture, used again and again in various forms.

Take, for instance, the first line of The Geek Girl’s Guide to Cheerleading:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a high school boy in possession of great athletic ability must be in want of…

A bowl of oatmeal.

And when Darcy and I discovered the first line of Prada and Prejudice by Mandy Hubbard we were geeked out:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a high school girl on a class trip to England should be having the time of her life.”

So, in honor of the similarities between the first lines in our book-and also just to amuse ourselves-we’ve joined forces with Mandy for a one of a kind contest!

The Contest:

To enter just complete this sentence: “It is a truth universally acknowledged…”

The more humorous and amusing, the better!

The Rules:

One Entry for completing the sentence and commenting here. Please include your email address so we can contact you if you win. (Your email address will not be visible to anyone but us.)

Feeling creative? Get 1 Extra entry if you blog about this contest using the supplied HTML code below.

For the extra entry, please leave a separate comment with the link and your first line. (That’s two chances at a first line.)

Contest open until July 31st at Noon Pacific Standard Time.

The Prizes:

An autographed copy of THE GEEK GIRL’S GUIDE TO CHEERLEADING goes to the first line of our choice, and an autographed copy of PRADA & PREJUDICE goes to the first line of Mandy’s choice.

The Code:

Code available below the cut.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jordyn of ten cent notes has the second part of our interview up, so we’re sending you elsewhere today.

And if you haven’t seen this yet, you simply must: Pride and Twitterverse. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice meets Twitter.

Just a reminder. Today is the last day to enter the contest for an autographed copy of Heartbreak River by Tricia Mills. Leave a comment here to enter for your chance to win.

Contest ends tonight! We’ll announce the winner Monday morning, here on the blog.

And don’t worry about Jane. She’s almost done reading.

If you’ve been following the Geek Girl Twitter feed for the past day or so, you’ll see we’ve been twittering about zombies. It struck me yesterday about the lack of romantic possibilities with zombies–I should clarify I mean fiction, not real life.

Later, I Twittered about working out … and Fitness Magazine started following me. So, now I’m a little nervous about the whole zombie twitter thread I had going, because you can never be too sure about these things. Zombies could start following me on Twitter.

After all, they’ve already found Jane:

I know. But wait! It comes with illustrations:

Click on the image to see the full page spread. And yes, it’s a real book.

So, I ask you. Has the Jane Austen/Pride & Prejudice +[fill in the blank] played out? Or are there potentially more combinations we/Hollywood/my next door neighbor’s dog haven’t thought of yet?

More importantly, are you a Jane purist? Or is your philosophy: Everything is better with Jane?

April is for poetry … and bacon.

Mmmm, bacon.

From Bacon Haikus:

Bacon is no plague
It is bless-ed rain, and good
bacon, rain o’er me!

Sicker than yo’ meat
Notorious P.I.G.
Gimme the grease!

 Subliminal bacon

 And where is Jane on this glorious Saturday April morning? Why, at Applebee’s, partaking of bacon, of course.

And then there’s this ode to those little strips of heaven

We’d add more but we’ve got to go fry up some -mmmmmm- bacon

Typically, Charity’s Jane Austen action figure sits on her desk, both inspiring her and cajoling her (Jane is a sharp task mistress).

This, of course, is when she hasn’t been spirited away by Charity’s daughter to join in with The Littlest Pet Shop figures for all sorts of adventures.

Today, however, Jane is much dismayed that April showers are, in actuality, April snow showers.

Very vexing, indeed.

Jane would like to remind everyone that April is National Poetry Month. You can read a poem a day (on the web or via email) over at the Borzoi Reader. They do this in April and only in April, and you wont be flooded with emails any other time if you sign up.