Christy English

New Review for Dial L For Loser

Monday, October 17th, 2011 | Chick Lit | 1 Comment

A friend of mine, Sandy Vaughan, who is also a reviewer I respect, read my chick lit comedy, DIAL “L” FOR LOSER, and really enjoyed it. It is such a relief to hear that someone else gets what you’re doing, especially when you are stepping out of your comfort zone, from historical fiction to modern comedy. She not only reviewed it for Goodreads, but on her blog:

http://hodgepodgespv.blogspot.com/

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11521383-dial-l-for-loser

Sometimes when I’m struggling with historical necessity, it is fun to turn to something light and frothy, something that makes me laugh. Because with every book I write, I get to hear the story first.

Dial “L” For Loser and a Smile

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 | Chick Lit, The Writing Life | 4 Comments

My chick lit/ contemporary romance novel,  DIAL “L” FOR LOSER got its first review on Amazon yesterday. I am thrilled! It is so fun when our books get read, and it is even more fun when people like them. Here is the first section of the novel, so you can have a glimpse at my non- Eleanor baby…

Chapter 1

Repos and Italian Food

“Son of a …!”

Betty slammed the phone down, and I jumped.

I glanced over my shoulder at our boss’ office. His door was shut, and showed no sign of opening. Bob was on the phone, repossessing another Lexus, too busy to notice that we were not working. He kept to himself and ignored us completely.

“Blown off by a hippie wanna be. What the hell is that?”

Betty’s brown eyes had turned a shade darker, and her knife hand was flexing. Luckily, we were secretaries in the repossession department of a major bank. Banks frown on keeping knives in the office, especially the repo office. Not that we ever actually repossessed any cars or trucks ourselves. That was Bob’s job.

“So Lenny’s not going with you to the play tonight?”

Betty turned her glare on me for stating the obvious, and I promptly shut up.

Carolyn looked up from the romance novel she was reading in her desk drawer. She gave Betty a thoughtful look, and I braced myself for what our Buddhist friend would say.

“Perhaps you should make a rule about not dating men in tie-dye.”

Betty went to get herself a cup of coffee down the hall, and by the time she got back, she had calmed down. She did not drink the coffee, because Bob had made it, and it was vile, but the time away from her desk had given her time to think.

I could feel her eyes on me, so I knew I was her target. For the first time that day, I powered up my computer and glanced at the clock above Bob’s door. It was ten-thirty. Too early for lunch, but the perfect time for a morning snack. I stood up to go to the vending machine, but Betty’s voice stopped me. She did not make a demand, but spoke companionably, like the old friends we were.

“That’s the last time I agree to go out with a blond,” she said.

I laughed and sat back down. Maybe her eyes were not really gleaming. Maybe she was not as scary as she looked. I settled back in my desk chair, and spun around once. My computer had finishing booting, so I pulled up my internet connection to check my horoscope.

I glanced at Carolyn, absorbed in her novel again. She was blonde, blue-eyed, and gorgeous. Hitler’s perfect fraulein. “What do you have against Aryans?”

Betty grinned. I knew she was not including Carolyn in her censorship of all blonds. “Bunch of pansies,” she said. “Hitler can have them.”

She leaned over to me, and I glanced up from my computer screen. “So I’m stuck with two tickets to Elaine’s show tonight.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “Forget it.”

“Marty.”

My name is Marta, but in college Betty started calling me Marty, because I am short and Italian like Martin Scorsese. I am now twenty-seven, but the name stuck.

“Marty, I am not going alone.”

“Don’t look at me.”

“I’m looking.”

Betty’s brown eyes bored into my amber ones, and I felt myself beginning to cave.

“Give me a break,” I said. “Didn’t I go alone to the ‘Sound of Muzak’?”

“Yes. But I sat through the show starring the dog that was supposed to symbolize the decay of the Western world. I took a bullet for you that night, my friend. I told Elaine you had typhoid, while you were really out with that rugby player from Wales.”

His eyes had been electric blue. Sam. No, Stan. No, something British. Simon. That was it. He had been compact, short for a rugby player, but he had packed a wallop. I smiled at my computer screen, not seeing it, happily taken back to the days when I still occasionally had sex.

“Hey, Marty. Focus.” Betty snapped her fingers and I returned to my sexless present. “I covered for you, and you are not going to abandon me now.”

She knew I was on the edge, so she pushed her advantage. “I watched that dog eat his own poop, Marty.”

I groaned, and lay my head down on top of the Purple Lexus file. I was supposed to have called the owners already, since they were two months behind on their payments. I was putting it off until tomorrow, because today was sunny, and I hate to ruin people’s day when the sun is shining.

Elaine was one of our blood sisters from college. She was an actress, but refused to move to New York where she might actually break into the business and where we would not have to see her shows. Instead, she stayed in San Francisco, where she played in performance art pieces opposite dogs that ate their own feces, and where she sang the role of Mariah in the “Sound Of Muzak” for a gay theatre company down by the bay.

I beat my head against the Purple Lexus file. It was soft with many pages of notices. The owners of the Purple Lexus had missed payments over the last few years, but they had always paid up in the end. Another month and the file would go to Bob, and the Lexus would go to the big clearing house in the sky.

Maybe the owners, Patty and Paul Lebonowitz, had seen the light. Maybe they were simply waiting for the bank to rescue them from their ridiculously overpriced car.

Betty spoke low in my ear, and I realized why she got every man she ever wanted. “I’ll buy you dinner.”

I looked up. “Where?”

“The Spaghetti Factory, down by the wharf.”

“No way.”

“Way.

“I love the Spaghetti Factory.”

“I know.” She smiled her smug, Cheshire Cat smile, because she knew she had me.

I thought about the sauce that could be found only at the Spaghetti Factory. I thought of the melting cheese, and the garlic bread. I felt my thighs expanding even as I sat in my ergonomic desk chair, but I was not sleeping with anyone. What did I care if I got as big as a cow? I could always go on the Atkins diet if I ever got a date again.

“The show has a plot and everything,” she said.

“Not another musical.”

“No music, I swear.” Betty focused the full force of her charm on me. She gave me the smile that had won over many a man’s groin. “Come on, Marty. Be a pal.”

I sighed, thinking of manicotti dripping in cheese. “When am I ever anything else?”

Betty leaned back in her chair, mission accomplished. “That’s why we love you. That and your marvelous singing voice.”

I sounded like a frog that swallowed an ostrich when I sing, and Betty knew it. “Kiss my derriere.”

“With pleasure.”

“Dyke.”

“Perve.”

Carolyn came up for air when she heard the word dyke, but frowned because she did not know what we were talking about. She read a romance novel every morning, and a tome on the teachings of the Buddha every afternoon. Her novel was almost finished, and she looked up at the clock above Bob’s door. It was almost noon.

Betty leaned over and coded our phones to the switchboard three floors below us. It didn’t matter if she did or not. No one ever called the auto repossession department. They avoided us and our calls like the plague.

“How do you guys feel about Italian?” Carolyn asked. Betty smiled at me, and I shrugged.

“Italian sounds great,” Betty said. I knew that she would only get a salad and some Italian ham, leaving the pasta to me.

I finally read my horoscope as we were heading for the elevator. It said, “Lucky in love. The stars are with you tonight. Go for it!”

I never went for it, and love was something I had given up on. But I clicked print before I powered down my computer. I taped the horoscope to the inside of my desk drawer. A little encouragement never hurt.

Joy in Early Work

Monday, May 30th, 2011 | Chick Lit, The Writing Life | 4 Comments

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?

Eleanor of Aquitaine and Chick Lit

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011 | Chick Lit, Eleanor of Aquitaine | No Comments

As a reader, I have always enjoyed fun chick lit.  I take the time to pull myself out of the 12th century, and relax away  from the political machinations of the early Plantagenets.  Henry, Eleanor and their sons are endlessly fascinating to me, but there are times when I need to be closer to the here and now, and to read something with a happy ending. When that is true, I turn to authors like Rachel Gibson and to humorous tales of female woe, like BRIDGET JONES’ DIARY. To me, even the title of that book is funny, before I open page one.

Of course, in my mind, all roads lead back to Eleanor, and I ask myself what she would think of this proclivity of mine, the joy I find in light, humorous tales, where no matter what ensues, in the end, love conquers all. Romance novels fit into this category as well, and I enjoy those, too. Romantic love is not a concept Eleanor would allow to take root in her daughters, but for a peasant like me, Eleanor might shrug one elegant shoulder and say that whatever fairy tales I like to tell myself to wile away my hours is my own concern, and can certainly do no harm.

This is the attitude of most of the world, actually, when the subject of chick lit and romance is brought up. A bit of sneer, hidden behind a condescending smile. And yet, there are a lot of us who read these books and love them.

Happy endings are, of course, one huge draw. The familiarity of a known plot arc, with the assurance that the character who is making us laugh at her life, will by the end find true love.  But some of this chick lit romance goes a step further, the heroine learning something more than how to brave the wilds of the dating world, or how to find love in the arms of her chosen man.

Here are a few things good chick lit consistently brings to my mind, things I think even Eleanor of Aquitaine would not protest as peasant foolishness.

Value yourself or no one else will. By the end of these novels, if the characters have not come to learn this, they are certainly closer than when the book began.

The discovery of inner strength. Eleanor was no doubt born knowing her own strength, or at least that it was there to be discovered. A lot of us find our strength by trial and error, and learn to cling to it and nourish it as we get older, so that in turn it can nourish us.

So as summer begins to rise from the ground, I turn to the occasional book of chick lit or romance novel. Sometimes the lessons are less important than having fun. Maybe that’s a lesson, too.