Well, yes, that's exactly my point! Jane Austen mashups can work; Jane Eyre, no.

Thanks, Susanne and Katharine. Susanne, I thought I had, or at least I meant to; but it turns out there will be other opportunities. Katharine,clearly I need to use the Preview button occasionally. I hadn't realized I'd blotted Antonietta out. There is a video that includes BWBB but it's too long to post on YouTube & it's hard to download, so we're still figuring out what to do with it.

MJ, thanks so much. There's no video of Monday night's performance, but our actual cabaret performance may be filmed, and if so I'll share it if it's not too embarrassing.

Yes.

What a fascinating suggestion--I will look into it, thanks!

Argh, I meant Stephen, not Steven! So sorry!

MJ, one of the (many) things I love about your reincarnation novels is that the "coincidences" both deepen the resonance of each separate incident and seem natural and inevitable. I had not known that about mystery novels, so thanks, MJ and Katharine. And, Steven, that's a fascinating point, of course we are "fate" or "God" when we're writing. Thanks!

Actually, I should have said that these occurrences DO seem uncanny to me, in that they're weird and not often accessible to rational explanation. But they don't seem unusual, yet if they occur in a book they read as tacky and overwritten.

Jack, yes, you did, and you have a lot to answer for. Katharine, the point is that these coincidences DON'T seem uncanny in life, but they do in literature, and why is that?

Katharine, those are beautiful points and examples. This is not exactly what I meant, though. Of course there are recurring patterns and motifs throughout novels and memoirs. But they're understood to be in the service of the story or theme, not ordinary expectable occurrences. When coincidences like the one I described do show up as simply part of life (not that anything simply shows up in a well written piece, but when they are folded in the way brushing one's teeth would be--significant to the plot for whatever reason, but also ordinary) they seem overwritten. I'm also not talking about characters commenting on the strangeness--my point is just that earlier generations, for example, accepted the hand of God as a valid plot device. Acts of God also served other purposes in a well-written piece, but they were understood to be ordinary parts of life. These coincidences that so many of us seem to experience could serve a similar function, but they don't seem to be woven into narratives as themselves, if that makes sense.