PW #136: Adult Contemporary Women’s Fiction: A BRITISH AFFAIR

Manuscript Status: Finished

Mentee Name: Holly Rizzuto Palker

Mentor Name: Melissa Marino

Title: A BRITISH AFFAIR

Category: Women’s Fiction

Genre: Contemporary

Word Count: 96,000

Pitch:

BRIDGET JONES meets LUCK, LOVE & LEMON PIE. Risa Vita Stein, a thirty-something mom and American expat, lives in posh London when she suffers a midlife crisis, early. With a husband who is no longer interested in what is in her knickers, a handsome boot camp instructor who shows interest in more than just her squats and a newfound friendship with a highfalutin socialite, Risa must decide if she’ll live the carefree existence she yearns for or find her way back to her family.

Excerpt:

I’d be more willing to do it if he’d just pin me to the wall and say, “I want you to have my baby, now let’s fuck.”

“Here, pee on this,” Darren says taking a Boots Pharmacy bag out of the inside pocket of his custom Italian suit. He throws it across the bed, skimming the mattress, like a kid skips a rock on the lake. I open it wondering what he could possibly want me to pee on.

“An ovulation kit?” I ask. “Husbands aren’t the ones who buy ovulation kits.”

I can feel the sexiness barometer free falling. I refuse.

A third child. Three isn’t a balanced number. I notice this while I sit in bed and doodle in my gratitude journal. I’m trying to be thankful for something here, but it’s damn hard.

A more attuned husband might introduce the number three at bedtime, after ten years of marriage, for more exciting reasons, like a threesome. Not Darren. Which is fine because I’d be freaked out by another woman, in my bedroom, judging my fat rolls.

“C’mon, Darren. Let’s just haaaaaave sex.”

He ninjas out of my grip, Mission Impossible style.

“Ugh, I’m leaving for Hong Kong in the morning,” he says.

“Oooh, all the more reason for me to hong that kong.”