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In Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict, Miss Jane Mansfield, recently transplanted from Regency England into the body and life of 21^st-century Los Angeleno Courtney Stone, is torn between elation at the range of choices in Courtney's wardrobe (the fact that women can wear trousers is "a revelation") and horror at the number of pieces that expose far too much skin for a lady.

Jane is also bewildered by one particularly exotic item:

One of the garments...consists of two bowl-shaped pieces of fabric in a pale yellow, connected with strips of fabric and decorated with lace and embroidery of the same color.

Is the mystery garment:

(A) a soft bowl with a built-in cover for gathering strawberries at Donwell Abbey.

(B) an ugly, two-headed bonnet that not even Lydia Bennet would consider giving a makeover.

(C) a double bowl for white soup at the Netherfield ball.

(D) none of the above.

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How many of us who love "bonnet dramas," as our friends in the UK call period pieces, wish we could travel back in time? Or even believe we were born in the wrong century?

And how much of our longing comes from the Hollywood-BBC vision of those byone days rather than our knowledge of the real thing?

It's a question explored in my first novel, Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, in which a twenty-first-century Jane Austen fan named Courtney Stone awakens in the body and life of a gentleman's daughter in 1813 England.

The more I got into the research for that book, the more I developed a renewed appreciation for all the mobility and technological wonders of my own time. Sure, there are things I still love about Jane Austen's world, like the music and the dances and the clothes and the handsome men wearing them and, of course, the respite from information overload. But I would find it hard to bear the dearth of women's freedom and choices, not to mention the absence of tampons and mascara. Or the withdrawal from my iPhone, information overload notwithstanding.

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Each of us carries around our own emotional baggage from past relationships. We may not like it, but it's ours, it's familiar, and we've been hauling it around so long that sometimes we forget it's there.

But what if we found ourselves hauling around someone else's baggage?

Which is exactly what the heroine of Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict finds herself doing. For Miss Jane Mansfield, a sheltered gentleman's daughter from 1813 England, has not only switched lives with 21^st-century Los Angeleno Courtney Stone, she has also switched bodies. And that body has a history quite different from her own.

As for Courtney, who finds herself inhabiting Jane's life in Regency England in Confessions Of A Jane Austen Addict , switching bodies with the innocent Miss Mansfield could be seen as a bit of a do-over.

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There are oh so many ways for a single woman in today's world to meet men. From parties and clubs to work or just shopping in the produce aisle, men are everywhere.

Or are they? If men really are falling from trees, then why is it so hard to meet one, let alone "the one"? After all, things are a lot easier for single women today than they were in Jane Austen's time, a comparison I spent a lot of time thinking about while writing my novel Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict . In Rude Awakenings, a gentleman's daughter from 1813 England named Jane Mansfield awakens in the body and life of 21^st-century Los Angeleno Courtney Stone. To say that Jane is shocked by the freewheeling ways of Courtney's time would be an understatement.

In Jane's world, her opportunities to meet men were limited to whom her parents and friends deemed respectable enough for an introduction. A man couldn't just approach her and strike up a conversation in a public place. And he certainly wouldn't start dancing around her suggestively without so much as a how-do-you-do, as a perfect stranger does to Jane the first time she ventures into a 21^st-century dance club.

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When you publish a novel, people immediately start saying, "So when is it going to be made into a movie?"

 When you tell them it's been made into a web series, all of them will say "Wow, that's great!"

Many of them will add, "Uh...what's a web series?"

There was a time when I, former Luddite and current new-media convert, would have asked the same question. A web series is no different than a TV series except that it's made specifically to watch on your computer or smartphone. Oh, and it's a lot shorter. A typical web series episode (or webisode) runs anywhere from a minute and a half to 4 or 5 minutes. I've seen 8-minute episodes, but that's sort of pushing the attention-span envelope.

My episodes will run about two minutes. Two funny, pithy minutes. Twenty of them.

Sex and The Austen Girl and it's a comedy web series inspired by my novels Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict and Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict.

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Laurie Viera Rigler is one of our guest bloggers during the week of May 17th. If you have any questions for Laurie Viera Rigler, add a comment to any of her posts.

Here is more information on Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict:

 The time-bending parallel tale to the national bestseller Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict

In Laurie Viera Rigler's first novel, Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, twenty­first-century Austen fan Courtney Stone found herself in Regency England occupying the body of one Jane Mansfield- with comic and romantic consequences. Now, in Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict, Jane Mansfield awakens in the urban madness of twenty-first-century L.A.-in Courtney's body. With no knowledge of Courtney's life, let alone her world-with its horseless carriages and shiny glass box in which tiny figures act out her favorite book, Pride and Prejudice-Jane is over her head. Especially when she falls for a handsome young gentleman. Can a girl from Regency England make sense of a world in which kissing and flirting and even the sexual act raise no matrimonial expectations?