Big Hats, Satisfying Stories

Who is Gailie Ruth, and what does she love?

Originally posted January 10, 2021 - Still true in 2025.

I’m a thirty-something Millennial that was force-fed technology just long enough to view old books as a treat. Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, you name it, I had it for dessert after long days cramming school work through word processors and clunky, quickly developing software systems in the ’00s. And I fell in love with those stories and two other good things:

• BIG HATS!

• OLD HOUSES!

As a grown-up now out of college for some years, I now have several more loves: my little family (hubby and two wild little boys), cats (always have at least two of those!), big hats, big hair, dancing, singing, and writing. The last is something I have turned to, often, when life seemed to press in and I felt the need to press out with something–a story, a poem, a journal entry, a random post here and there. Work in the non-profit realms and motherhood made these endeavors fewer and far-between as time went on, and I missed it with a fierceness not unlike one grieves (and that is something I know by experience as well, but that is another story).

Fearful Symmetry: A Love Story Finished During the Pandemic

You might imagine my surprise when, just before the “Pandemic shutdowns” happened in the US in the early spring of 2020, I received an email about a piece of JAFF (Jane Austen Fanfiction) I had half-completed and posted on the Derbyshire Writers’ Guild Board some five years before. It was from Jan Ashton at Quills & Quartos Publishing, asking if I’d be interested in finishing, then publishing the work.

After some due diligence, I committed eagerly, and then spent nine months balancing what was to come, which was a challenge to me (and many other women): the COVID-19 closures, with two small children, feeling rather adrift from reality on an island made busy with bored children, where there was a lot of hand sanitizer and involved planning for even small forays to the grocery store.

Out of this bizarre realm, I produced the manuscript for Fearful Symmetry at last: a work that celebrates the triumph of love over unforeseen difficulties, set down upon the palimpsest of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It felt like a purge at times as I wrote, and as I shaped the story and “listened” to the characters interacting with the challenges set forth, I felt the stirrings of recovery as their courage rose to the occasion. After all, how can Elizabeth and Darcy, united against adversity, ever disappoint?

As I enter 2021, I’m happy to say that I’ve added this novel to my list of favorite things. I hope it becomes one of yours. Check it out on the “Author's Works page.”