Spare Me the Drama

"Whenever someone goes... someone else comes along..."

Love a good soap opera?

Humor and heart walk hand in hand in this contemporary story about second chances and family life.

When widowed father of eight Martin Leon remembers that he forgot to invite an important guest to a birthday party for one of the kids, who can blame him? Since his wife’s death, he’s struggled to juggle the demands of a large family with the equally demanding job as head writer of the daytime soap opera he and his wife once co-wrote together but which he must now pen alone in the face of a dwindling audience, an executive producer only too happy to alter the course of his stories at her slightest whim, and a nagging case of writer’s block.

Martin might love a good soap opera, but that was never the case with Roxanne Hunter. She parlayed her sexy role on After the Loving into a lucrative, luxury-bedding business years ago and didn’t look back. Just when she was on the brink of having it all, the universe pulled the rug out from under her, leaving her to nurse a devastating double loss of her own.

Accepting Martin’s last-minute invitation, Roxanne decides it’s the perfect getaway to take her mind off her lonely life. All she wants is to fulfill a promise she once made to Martin’s sister and find out how he and his brood are coping with grief. Though Martin may wake up one of these days ready for a woman again, Roxanne has no intention of reliving the days of her youthful, secret crush on him.

But the females in Martin’s family have other plans. Startled by the revelation that she is as much a stray as anyone else Martin has taken into his household, Roxanne nevertheless allows herself to be enfolded into the embrace of family life and a romance with him.

Can she fulfill her promise to him to get through fate together, or will the universe – and the past – pull the rug out from under her one more time, just as she’s about to get the happy ending she always wanted but never dared dream she’d have?

Fans of feel-good contemporary fiction for women will want to pick up this witty, insightful story of a flailing handsome single father and the femme fatale who brings him back to life.

By debut author Karen Tomsovic.