Synopsis

Once a best-selling romance novelist, 55-year-old Fran Carter is now dealing with a slow but steady drop in book sales and a major case of writer’s block, complicated by the knowledge that her lover, a professional photographer, has been on the wrong side of the camera (so to speak) with his models. (So much for her author brand, built on the premise that women in their fifties and beyond can still find love and happiness.) Her solution is to spend a week in isolation at a northern California bed-and-breakfast. There she hopes to resolve her professional and personal conflicts, and ultimately create a new and better future for herself by writing a new “story” for the Fran she wants to be!

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Excerpt

“Ms. Carter, I started reading romance novels when I was in my teens,” the woman began. “I bought into the whole ‘a white knight will come and sweep you off your feet’ myth. That’s what I was waiting for, and that’s what I thought I married. And I kept reading the books and doing everything they said to keep the romance alive. I served romantic dinners by candlelight—after feeding the kids, of course. I made sure my hair was done and my makeup was perfect, even after spending the whole day cleaning the house or running to pediatrician appointments or school meetings. And I never, not once,” she emphasized, “said ‘no’ regardless of how I felt physically or emotionally. Nope, I was the perfect little wife that romance books said I had to be. I did it all, but it didn’t make a bit of difference. The kids grew up and left home, and pretty soon, he left, too.”

She raised her hand to forestall any sympathetic outpouring. “Hey, don’t feel sorry for me! That was the best thing that could have happened. I don’t regret having my children, but looking back, I realize our marriage never gave me what I wanted. I’d been so caught up in the fantasy that books like yours create that I never asked myself what kind of life I really wanted. So, I hung on a lot longer than I should have. My whole life was focused first on finding a man and then on keeping him. These days I’m concentrating on me—and I’m a damned sight happier than I’ve ever been! There are no ‘white knights,’ Ms. Carter. So why do you keep writing about them? Why don’t you write about real life?”

I started to take another sip of water but saw the glass was empty. Unfortunately, so was my brain. I didn’t know how to answer or what to say. I was publicly forced to justify my books’ existence—my existence—at a time when I was wrestling with the very questions she had raised.

Surprisingly, another audience member came to my rescue. “Now, don’t be too hard on her,” she said. “I’m sure Ms. Carter knows that reading her books is our way of taking a break from our real lives, right?” looking up at me.

“Yes, of course,” I said, so grateful to have someone on my side that I didn’t stop to analyze my words. “I mean, these books,” waving at the shelves behind me stocked with novels featuring women with heaving bosoms and half-dressed muscular men on their covers, “they are fiction after all! No one really believes life is like that. It’s like in the movies when the lovers wake up in the morning and start kissing each other. Did the directors never hear of morning breath? It’s all make-believe, all of it! A fantasy! Escapist literature! And if you try to turn your life into a romance novel, you are bound to be disappointed.”

My words echoed in the sudden silence, and I realized too late what I had said. I had trashed not only my own books, but the entire genre. Worse, in so many words, I had told them that if they were looking for information on how to rejuvenate their lives, they were wasting their money buying my novels.

What had Vanessa said to me—that my readers wanted to believe that life and love hadn’t passed them by? And now I had told them that it was all a load of crap.

Reprinted with permission from Chapter 3 of Finding Fran

About the Author

Nancy Christie is the award-winning author of eight books—two novels: Reinventing Rita and Finding Fran; three short story collections: Mistletoe Magic and Other Holiday Tales, Traveling Left of Center and Other Stories and Peripheral Visions and Other Stories; two books for writers: Rut-Busting Book for Authors and Rut-Busting Book for Writers; and the inspirational book, The Gifts Of Change. Her short stories and essays have appeared in print and online publications, with several earning contest placement. The host of the Living the Writing Life podcast and the founder of the annual “Midlife Moxie” Day and “Celebrate Short Fiction” Day, Christie teaches writing workshops at conferences, libraries, and schools. She is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), the Florida Writers Association (FWA) and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association (WFWA).

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