Mona Berman is an expert at Happily Ever After – after all, she’s a best-selling Romance writer and happy endings are what she does best. So when her husband of twenty years leaves her for somebody 15 years younger, 20 pounds lighter, and French, she’s got a lot of adjusting to do, both personally and professionally. Lucky for her she’s got three savvy teen daughters, a few good friends, and Ben, the world’s sexiest plumber, to help her along the way. First she decides that her next book will be the anti-romance – her heroine finds the best part of her life AFTER getting dumped. Next her daughters tell her she needs to start practice dating, and summer at the Jersey shore is the perfect place for that. She’s also juggling her soon-to-be-ex, a loony aunt, and a match-making neighbor, while Ben is sending her romance-driven imagination into overdrive. Can Mona’s life imitate art? Can she write her own happy ending?
Bio
Dee Ernst was born Elizabeth Diane Ascoli in Newark, NJ. Her family moved to Morristown, NJ when she was still a toddler. She started writing stories on a battered Royal typewriter when she was about ten or twelve, and she graduated Morristown High School determined to pursue a career as a writer in some form or another (she considered advertising, but luckily came to her senses). Creative writing majors were hard to find in 1974, so she attended Marshall University as a journalism major. That wasn't working, so she tried Education, but that didn't quite work either. Several jobs and years later, staying home with a three-year-old and trying to figure out what to do when she grew up, Joan Hamburg on WOR radio in New York was interviewing someone who said if you wanted to know what to with your life, remember what you were playing when you were ten, and try to turn that into a career. Since Dee was writing stories at ten, she sat down and wrote her first novel. It went nowhere. Her second novel got her a terrific agent and upwards of fifteen rejection letters (She reread them all in preparation of this biography). Her third novel, Better Off Without Him, garnered even more rejection letters from a much higher caliber of editor. Undaunted, she self-published Better Off Without Him in October 2010. She is now waiting patiently for fame and fortune.
What will readers like about my book?
Mona is a funny, feisty woman, not a wimpering pushover, and she fights back with style and spirit.
She's surrounded by interesting characters, loyal friends, and sexy men.
What's not to like?
Excerpt
You would think that there is nothing in the world more embarrassing,
not to mention humbling, than taking dating advice from your teen-aged
daughters.
Well, there is.
Try taking fashion advice from your teen-aged daughters.
Jessica struck at the kitchen table. “What are you wearing?” she said
around a mouthful the chocolate Pop Tart that was her breakfast.
I was peeling an avocado. For my lunch. It was, after all, past noon,
but the girls and I are on a very separate dining schedules during the
summer. “What am I wearing when?”
“Tonight. With Mr. Keegan. He’s a very young-thinking guy. All his
other dates have been twenty-something, so he’s used to fashion-forward
women.”
“Are you suggesting I’m not fashion-forward?”
She looked at me with skepticism. To be fair, I was wearing khaki
walking shorts with very frayed cuffs and a navy T-shirt that said
“Republicans for Voldemort”.
“Black would be good,” she said. No surprise there.
“I’m not going to a funeral,” I pointed out. “Besides, wearing black
may suggest a pre-assumption of a dreary experience. I’m trying to be
optimistic.”
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