Leah watched with amusement as Zeke paced around her boardroom.
“I’m
telling you, she won’t last a week! A more…prudish, repressed woman I
have yet to meet! I doubt she’s done anything just for fun in her life!”
“Doesn’t mean she won’t go the full six months,” Leah replied mildly.
“Oh, please! She wears her hair in a bun! A bun!
And if her face has seen makeup in the last ten years, I’ll eat my
socks! She’ll get scared at the first loud noise and skitter home to
safety.” He shook his head. “This is a non-story. Trust me.”
“Well,
I think you should still take the trip. You can write this blog you’re
currently working on if you want to–but you’ll probably be wrong.” She
frowned thoughtfully. “You know…I wonder if she’d be interested in
writing a guest blog.”
Zeke stopped in his tracks. “What?”
“Sure,”
Leah said, gaining enthusiasm. “That’s not a bad plan B. She could
write updates of her journey–I mean, my subscribers are absolutely rabid
about this–and absolutely passionate about you going with her if the
poll results and the comments are anything to go by. Half want you to
expose her as pathetic; the other half want you to be surprised and
humbled and knocked off your high horse.”
“Hey!”
“Some
love you; some love to hate you–but they all want you to document this
woman’s adventure–no matter how long it lasts, or what you learn.”
“Well, it’s a non-story–I’m telling you. She probably won’t even make it out of town. I doubt she’s ever been anywhere!”
“That’s…actually kinda sad.”
Zeke shrugged. “Yeah, well–those were the choices she made.”
Leah frowned at him. “You don’t know what she’s faced in her life. You shouldn’t be so judgmental.”
Zeke grinned at her. “Hey, that’s why you pay me the big bucks, you know–because I’m so judgmental.”
“You
know, if I didn’t know that sometimes you can actually be a really
nice, understanding guy, I’d think you were the biggest jerk that ever
walked the planet.”
He shrugged again. “People don’t want to read the blog of a nice guy.”
“But they would love to see you taken down a peg or two.”
“Oh, like any tightly wound old lady could do that!” he scoffed.
Leah
gave him a reproving look as she stood and walked over to him, a hand
cupped around her ear. “Do you hear that? That’s the sound of fate
taking aim right–” she poked him hard in the middle of the forehead–“there.”
For
the last fifteen years, Rose “Manny” Mankowski has been a very good
girl. She turned her back on her youthful fancies and focused on her
career. But now, at the age of 45, she’s questioning her choices and
feeling more and more disconnected from her own life. When she’s passed
over for promotion and her much younger new boss implies Manny’s life
will never change, something snaps. In the blink of an eye, she’s quit
her job, sold her house and cashed in her pension, and she’s leaving
town on a six month road trip.
After
placing a personal ad for a travelling companion, she’s joined in her
mid-life crisis by Zeke Powell, the cynical, satirical, most-read – and
most controversial – blogger for the e-magazine, What Women Want. Zeke’s
true goal is to expose Manny’s journey as a pitiful and desperate
attempt to reclaim her lost youth – and increase his readership at the
same time. Leaving it all behind for six months is just an added bonus.
Now,
armed with a bagful of destinations, a fistful of maps, and an
out-spoken imaginary friend named Harvey, Manny’s on a quest to
rediscover herself – and taking Zeke along for the ride.
Buy Now @ Amazon & Smashwords
Genre – ChickLit, Contemporary Fiction
Rating – PG-13
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