The Romances of George Sand: An Anti-Romantic Novel: Seeking Funding on KickStarter

TUCSON, Ariz. - Feb. 16, 2014 - PRLog -- Funding is needed to release a detailed historical novel that argues that George Sand only found happiness when she became asexual in the last third of her life, while all of her romances were tragic and hurtful. A $25 contribution pays for copy of the book upon its release. George Sand was actively involved in rebellious plots that culminated in the 1848 Revolution, and her life’s story is covered with characters like Emperor Napoleon, Alexander Dumas, Frederic Chopin and Alfred de Musset. News story on this project will help to supply pre-orders that will put this book in the best shape for a great release.

The only major female novelist in the French Romantic Movement, George Sand, or Aurora Dupin, was disillusioned with love, and only attained freedom and happiness after she gave up on love later in life, and focused on loving herself. As a child, Sand wanted to become a nun, and soon after her marriage she regretted not joining the Sisterhood so much that she spent some time at the convent when she first started having marital problems. Of course it was too late for her to take back her marriage and her son Maurice was already learning to walk. So Sand flew to other men, who were also cold in the end, and this flight in an attempt to find affection ended in nympholepsy, or the yearning for the unattainable ideal that she was writing about in her novels. Her addiction to love and search for affection earlier in life cost her millions of francs in charitable and friendly donations, an unparalleled work ethic to fund these, and her health as she ignored it. She was surrounded by a gang of manipulating charity seekers that fed on her desire to finally find a positive romantic relationship to bleed her of funds. This downfall started when she married an abusive husband, Casimir, at seventeen, and had to fight for a decade through a romantic rebellion and relationships with other hurtful men before finally gaining a divorce and only recovering less than half of the Nohant estate that she brought into the marriage with the help of a notorious and revolutionary lawyer. The end of this marriage brought men who wanted to marry her and retake possession of her estate into her life, like the consumptive Frederic Chopin, who left her when he discovered that she was not planning on remarrying and that all of her estate was already tied in her inheritance obligations to her real and adopted children. Sand detested writing romance novels across these turbulent periods, but was forced into the genre by a lack of other routes for professional advancement for a woman, and only stopped later in life when she paid off her debts.

This novel is of interest to modern women who are fighting similar pressures between work, marriage, children, lovers, and their own needs and desires. It is a novel full of revolutions both political and personal, as well as back-stabbing social intrigue, social climbers, social downfalls, and a string of outrageous romances, which while they all turned out badly clearly had some great pleasures to them that kept Sand hooked on love well into her fifties. As you can probably tell, an anti-romance is unlikely to find a traditional publisher, but with the current divorce rates, asexuality movement, and the general state of affairs in realistic “loving” relationships, there are many readers that can benefit from this inverse perspective on self-less love for others, and the selfish love for one’s self.

Dr. Anna Faktorovich is the Director and Owner of the Anaphora Literary Press. Faktorovich has over three years of full-time college English teaching experience. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature and Criticism and an M.A. in Comparative Literature. Her Rebellion as Genre in the Novels of Scott, Dickens and Stevenson (http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-7149-2) critical book has been published with McFarland in February, 2013. Her new book, The Formulas of Popular Fiction: Elements of Fantasy, Science Fiction, Romance, Religious and Mystery Novels (http://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-74...), is completed and will be released with McFarland in June, 2014. Her latest critical book is under review by Columbia University Press and Purdue University Press, which have expressed an initial interest, Gender Bias in Mystery and Romance Novel Publishing: Mimicking Masculinity and Femininity. She is now working on, Wendell Berry and the New Agrarianism Genre: Agriculture in Modern Literature, for which she received a Kentucky Historical Society fellowship, with the intention of publishing it in the Culture of the Land Series through the University Press of Kentucky, which expressed initial interest in it, with an intended completion timeline for summer of 2014. She published two poetry collections Improvisational Arguments (Fomite Press, 2011) and Battle for Athens (Anaphora, 2012). She illustrated, designed and wrote the poetry for an illustrated children’s book, The Sloths and I (Anaphora, 2013). She also published three editions of the Book Production Guide, which gives advice on editing, design and marketing for writers and publishers. She has been editing and writing for the independent, tri-annual and peer-reviewed Pennsylvania Literary Journal since 2009; it is available on EBSCO, ProQuest and in print. She has also presented her research at the MLA, SAMLA, EAPSU, SWWC, BWWC and many other conferences. She won the MLA Bibliography and Brown University Military Collection fellowships.

Here is the link to fund the project via KickStarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/820461906/the-romances-of-george-sand-a-literary-novel

Thanks!

Anna Faktorovich, PhD, Director
Anaphora Literary Press

http://anaphoraliterary.com