Like what you’ve read? Keep going, especially if you are a literary agent on the prowl for a completed manuscript, women’s fiction, 92k words. In fact, let’s save some time. Here’s my query:
Cheat. Binge. Deny.
Forged in a household where control and possession masquerade as motherly love, unsurprisingly, the Shore women’s ways of coping with relationships aren’t working. What they really need to do is to stand up to the creepy family patriarch. But standing up to Dad would mean standing up for themselves, which none of them—even as adults–know how to do. So their twisted understandings of love continue to hobble them.
Jenny, a recently divorced mother of two, is devastated to learn of her ex’s perky new girlfriend and wonders whether an affair might cheer her up. Meanwhile, her sister Lucy is being devoured by a secret eating disorder she knows only as the Food Monster, born as a shield against her parents’ judgment. Their mother is so desperate to hang on to her husband’s wandering attention that she’ll sacrifice anyone and anything in her way…including her own daughters.
One woman just might find the courage to break free.
And here are the first few lines:
CHAPTER ONE
Jenny
“Darling, your father and I knew we’d find you home, given your personal….” Jenny’s mom paused, idly stroking her chin as she collected her thoughts. “Well. Your personal situation. You know. Given your personal circumstances.” Her mother dropped her hand and smiled pleasantly.
Jenny’s cheeks burned as she glanced from her mother to her father. Matching navy roller-bags at their feet and a bouquet of white lilies clutched in her mother’s hands, they stood outside Jenny’s front door. Moments earlier, she’d been standing on a chair, trying to hang a large oil painting of a single Bartlett pear. She’d leaned too far forward and fell, planting her foot through the canvas and landing flat on her ass, where she’d burst into panicky sobs.
She couldn’t even hang a painting without Nelson.
Her marriage was over.
Her husband was gone.
Her children were gone.
Well, the children weren’t gone forever, but they were with Nelson for ten whole days. They’d never been apart for more than a single night. But the divorce decree now divided their time, so he’d taken the children to New Mexico where he was filming a documentary about contaminated ground water. Their unfamiliar absences left holes in her life and her heart that she filled only with dread.
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If you’d like to read more–and I’d like you to– gimme a shout.