Joy in Early Work

Though I am completely obsessed with Eleanor of Aquitaine and the early Plantagenets, there are other genres I love to write as well. I have written historical romances, a fantasy novella, and chick lit.

The summer I wrote the first draft of THE QUEEN’S PAWN, after putting down all of the machinations of Eleanor and Henry on paper, and after facing all the things that Princess Alais went through, I was exhausted. It is a policy of mine to leave a finished manuscript untouched for at least six weeks before working on the second draft. (A lovely luxury that I have not always been able to afford since becoming published.)

Though I put THE QUEEN’S PAWN aside, I still needed to be writing something. It’s an obsession, the love of the written word. If I am not working on at least one project, I get very antsy. To be completely honest,  I can not remember the last time I did not have at least three ideas cooking at once…maybe 2000… My fellow writers will know what I mean when I refer to this obsessive need to create. And other artists, too, no doubt.

So in the late summer of 2006, THE QUEEN’S PAWN’s  first draft was in the can, so to speak, and I needed to be doing something. So I took up an old chick lit idea of mine, titled DIAL “L” FOR LOSER after a short play I wrote by the same name, about a young woman’s ridiculous dating adventures. I finished that short novel in a couple of months. Over the years, I have taken it out and revised it a little here and there, tinkered with it the way some people tinker with the old car that still doesn’t run in their garage. Finally, this spring, I decided to do something with it. Because I love Marty, the protagonist of that book, and I love DIAL “L.”  The short play I wrote, the companion piece, is being produced this summer by a theatre group in Wilmington, NC, and I thought, “Well, why not pull out that novel?”

So I have polished it once more, and now it is available on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Dial-L-For-Loser-ebook/dp/B00533W638/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1306692359&sr=1-2

So in honor of all my old projects, and in honor of all the characters we live with and love, who do not always see the light of day, here is Marty Angelo, the opposite of Eleanor. A bit of a nut, a woman who can’t seem to get it right, but I love her anyway.

Between smooth-talking Actor Boy, prim and proper Lawyer Boy, and the illusive Dr. Perfect, Marty can’t catch a break. Will she have to give up on men for good?

In the romantic chick lit novel, DIAL “L” FOR LOSER by Christy English, Marty Angelo has had enough of the wrong men. Then she meets feckless but charming Ben, AKA Actor Boy, who sweeps her off her feet and makes her think that love may not be a four letter word.

But after a dating drought of six months, the gods of love have decreed that one new man is not enough. Enter Brad, AKA Lawyer Boy, the man hand-picked by Marty’s mother so that Marty will not have to go to her cousin’s wedding alone.

Just when the law starts to look better than it ever has, Marty meets Dr. Perfect whose eyes gleam with mischief and whose devilish smile promises more than she ever bargained for. Rich, gorgeous, buttoned up or buttoned down, none of these men seem like the Prince Charming of her dreams. Will Marty ever find love, or will she be destined to date losers for the rest of her life?