OT: Jane Austen as vampire

I'm feeling a bit undead myself. I'm back home, shattered from cycling and a poor night's sleep on the ferry - I'm not a great sea traveller and the information at the port - "mer peu agité" - did not help!! I managed to pick up the cats by communicating mostly in sign language and was unable to express my full horror over the fact that they have no record of the cats' next stay in September and that they're now fully booked, so the hunt is on for another cattery for next time. The beautiful Foxy was the star and I could hear the carer telling him how much she'd miss him :-).

Anyway, working my way through a few emails, I saw reference to Jane Austen as a vampire. A bit of googling later, this from the author's mouth:

And finally, something I've been waiting for the past month to tell you. I had to wait until it was official, which it was on Tuesday, when Publishers Weekly's "Hot Deals" column broke the news. I've signed a 3-book deal with Random House's Ballantine imprint for a series of novels featuring Jane Austen as a vampire. I know, right? Big Fun. I'm so pleased about this. And already the books are getting attention. Yesterday they were written about in The New Yorker's "The Book Bench" column. Again, Big Fun. The first book is due out in late 2009, and you'll be hearing a lot more about it in the coming months.

And a bit more from Publisher's Weekly:

Liz Scheier at Ballantine won a four-way auction for Michael Thomas Ford's Jane Bites Back, taking world English rights to three books via Mitchell Waters at Curtis Brown. The novel presents an undead Jane Austen, frustrated by nearly 200 years of writer's block and 116 rejections of an unpublished novel she finished just before turning into a vampire; she's becoming increasingly irritated that the rest of the world seems to be getting rich and famous off of her works and her life. The two follow-up books will be derived from the first. Waters said Ford, the author of many books for young readers and adults, is likely to publish this under a pseudonym; pub date still undecided.