Better Off Without Him by Dee Ernst Page A

Fitz.”
    Both Patricia and MarshaMarsha stared at him blankly.
    “You know.” Anthony waved his hands around. “Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy. Pride and Prejudice? The bookstores are full of sequels.”
    Patricia raised an eyebrow. “And you actually thought Mona should write a book using somebody else’s characters? Like those people who write about Star Trek or Jessica Fletcher?”
    Anthony looked a little hurt. “Well,” he muttered, “when you put it that way…”
    Patricia had sat back down beside me on the couch. She patted my hand. “Our Mona is better than that.”
    I smiled gratefully. “Actually, I started writing a contemporary romance.”
    “Well, that’s very exciting,” MarshaMasha said brightly.
    “It is. And I was doing really well. My character is a twenty-something who has her own graphic design firm in Manhattan, and her husband of just a year leaves her, and she becomes involved with two very different men, and then hubby comes back and wants to try again.”
    “That sounds full of possibilities,” Patricia said. “You should be taking those ideas and running all over the place with them.”
    “I know I should, but I’m stuck. I can’t decide who she should end up with. And I’m having a hard time getting into the head of a twenty-seven-year-old metro girl. Now I’ll never be able to finish. How can I write about a woman who lives happily ever after with some man when right now I think all men suck?” I looked over to Anthony. “Except you, of course.” Anthony smiled.
    “Well,” MarshaMarsha said, “why don’t you write about a happy ending where she doesn’t end up with anyone. She’s just happy by herself.”
    I frowned at her. “Happy by herself?”
    “Sure. Have her be one of those women whose life changes so much for the better after she’s dumped. It happens all the time.”
    I shook my head. “Whose lives are so much better?”
    MarshaMarsha pursed her lips. “Well, there’s my cousin, Vicki, who fell apart after Dan left, but ended up getting a scholarship to law school and she’s a junior partner now, with a great place on the Upper West Side and a hunky boyfriend. Ellen Mitchell? Down the street? When she divorced her husband, she was forced to go into business for herself, and that’s how she ended up with her catering business. You know how well she’s doing.”
    “There’s also a client of mine,” Anthony put in.” I just did a gorgeous Parrish in her bathroom, a take on ‘Dinkybird,’ you know, the one with the nude on the swing? When her husband left, all she could do was babysit kids, and now she owns six private daycare centers and is absolutely rolling in it.”
    I looked at Patricia. She shrugged. “Darling, all the women I know see marriage as an investment. They always ended up better off than they were before.”
    I shook my head. “I still can’t get into this girl’s head.”
    Anthony shrugged. “So don’t make her a girl. Make her somebody more like you. Make her forty-something instead.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Nobody wants to read about a middle-aged woman who gets dumped.”
    Patricia looked thoughtful. “Maybe that’s because nobody’s ever written about a middle-aged woman who gets dumped, unless she’s a ridiculously rich middle-aged woman who ends up getting lots more money, revenge and some hot boy-toy. But really, how many real women can identify with that?”
    MarshaMarsha was nodding in agreement. “She’s right. All you get right now in books are young single girls who spend half their paychecks on shoes. The women who are over forty are all in quilting clubs or knitting clubs or solving mysteries with their cats. Maybe it’s time for a real person to have a real crisis and get over it. And live happily ever after all on her own.”
    I stared into my coffee cup. “So, she’s in her forties and ends up alone. But a better person? Let me think. This is not a romance. It could still be a love story.