My love affair
with writing began in childhood but didn’t blossom until my midlife crisis. At
the age of forty-something, I traveled the country interviewing men for what I
thought would be a serious book on how men really felt about women and
relationships. That adventure turned into a bittersweet dark comedy novel
titled The Adventures of a Love
Investigator. Emotionally spent from interviewing over five hundred men, I turned
to writing a series of riffs on classic fairytales. Novels like The Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland, Age
42 and Three-Quarters, were loosely based on some of my misadventures.
Enter Wendy
Darlin: Spun from the essence of Peter
Pan, Wendy became my alter-ego. She did things I would never dare, and
things I did and regretted. She is a blending of Lucille Ball and Indiana
Jones. After finishing five books in her screwball series I wondered: what next?
JAFF author
Elizabeth Ann West suggested I bring my quirky sense of humor to Jane Austen’s
timeless stories. I hesitated. It would be like wearing tennis shoes under a
ball gown. My sense of screwball inserted in the ballrooms of Jane Austen?
Could I do this?
I began the first
in my Mister Darcy series – Mister
Darcy’s Dogs – this summer. I discovered Elizabeth Bennet had much in
common with Wendy Darlin and yours truly. We share an insubordinate sense of
humor and a talent for mumbling under our breaths. We are attracted to and
irritated by gorgeous men with chocolate-colored eyes and quirky personalities.
We rarely hesitate leaping in to help a friend and occasionally regret it.
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