I’ve always been a Jane Austen fan. In the last decade, my creative writing classes have been populated by young Sex in the City gals who also love Jane Austen. Invariably, the contrast between our present era and Jane’s comes up in discussion, and I’m constantly surprised at the similarity in courtship rituals and romantic dilemmas.

That’s what inspired me to write Sex & Sensibility. I’ll be reading from the book at an upcoming meeting of the Jane Austen Society. The theme of the meeting is: “Is it possible to lead a Jane Austen-inspired life?”

Well, can we?

I didn’t notice the Casanova craze until I was halfway through my own novel about the celebrated Venetian. I’d scoffed when an aging family member recommended Casanova’s 12-volume memoir, History of My Life, and said the passage describing Casanova’s escape from the prison in the Ducal Palace was the most gripping escape narrative he’d ever read.

Somewhat disdainfully, I took away the memoir and began to read. All I knew about Casanova was his reputation as the most notorious rake the world has ever known, one of those playboys your mother told you to avoid. I’d also seen Fellini’s movie, Casanova, which cemented the womanizer myth. This film doesn’t show the intellectual and literary side of Casanova, the European man of letters who had translated the Iliad, written poems and operas and essays and engaged in scientific discussions.

I read most of the 12 volumes of Casanova’s History of My Life and decided my family member had been too stinting in his praise. Casanova had written brilliantly about his escape from the Leads, the famous Venetian prison. But as far as I was concerned, History of My Life was one of the great works of Western literature. Soon I was writing my own version of Casanova’s tale, a novel about him returning as an old man to Venice for a last look at the city he loves and running off to travel in the Mediterranean with Asked For Adams, a descendant of Puritans and cousin to president John Quincy Adams.

A belief that your own book is unique shores up the creative trance writers need to work. But somewhere in the midst of writing my novel, I stuck my head above my desktop and noticed that I shared my Casanova obsession with a host of fellow authors. By last count, at least eleven other books have dealt with Casanova in recent years.