Marda's Muse: Ladies Who Lunch #5

By Patrizia Murray

Feeling like Joan Wilder in Romancing the Stone, Marda is sniffling her way through allergy season, nearly finished her newest romance novel. Marda is the best friend of Justine, (Justine’s Auction, 2010). Since Justine’s marriage to Ryan, Marda has been feeling like a fifth wheel whenever she’s around her friends. Now, as she finds herself wishing for a hero like those she writes about, opportunity for a new life is about to knock on her door. As she embarks on a Joan Wilder type adventure, will her life imitate her art? Logan is a most unlikely muse for Marda, but he turns out to be the best, the only, the sexiest muse ever! Now if only Marda can save several lives, including her own and Logan’s, things will be great, won’t they?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patrizia Murray
• Release date: Sep 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311694386

Book preview

ABOUT THE E-BOOK YOU HAVE PURCHASED:

If you find an Durragraphix e-book being sold or shared illegally, please let us know at [e-mail]

A Durragraphix Inc book

Marda’s Muse

Copyright © 2014 by Patrizia Murray

First E-book Publication: September 2014

Cover design by Bella Media Management

Published at Smashwords.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission. All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

PUBLISHER

Durragraphix Inc

PO Box 1146

Phoenix AZ 85022

Letter to Readers

Dear Readers,

If you have purchased this copy of Marda’s Muse by Patrizia Murray, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

Regarding E-book Piracy

This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment. This is Patrizia Murray’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. Murray’s right to earn a living from her work.

***

Dedicated to Family, who indulge my writing, without understanding it or making judgments on the inner workings of my mind, and the Ladies who Lunch.

***

Acknowledgements

Valley of the Sun Romance Writers of America, Glendale Chocolate Affair, and readers of like minds to mine.

***

Foreward

Marda was at what she called her ‘Joan Wilder’ stage of her latest book. The stage was so-called because of the heroine of that same name in the movie Romancing the Stone. In the opening scenes, Joan/Marda is unwashed, unkempt, a greasy bun in a clip on the side of her head. She wears old sweats, no makeup, and her space looks like Tropical Storm Sandy just swept through.

There are partly empty pizza boxes, rotting green stuff that used to be Chinese takeout, foil burger wrappers, submarine bags, dirty clothes, piled dishes, books, cola containers, and numerous coffee cups littering the entire condo.

The kitchen resembles a toxic waste dump, with several science experiments lurking in the sink and in the fridge. The dishwasher overflows, and if Marda, aka Joan, wanted to actually cook or eat anything, she’d have to choose between hard cheese, hard crusts of bread, and hard milk. The only marginally clean utensils would be an electric wok her ever hopeful mother gave her for Christmas one year, and a set of wonky salad tongs.

Marda had never been one of those housekeepers who wash every dish as soon as it’s dirtied. No, she was the kind of person who used up all the utensils before organizing herself enough to wash everything at once. She reasoned that if she had to force herself to clean up, she might as well make it a Herculean effort, & do it all at the same time, instead of slap-dashing at it as she went along. The problems were multiplied and permutated by her laser beam attention to her novel, to the exclusion of everything else.

While she might be lax about her kitchen cleanup habits, she was normally quite fastidious about her personal habits and outside of the kitchen, she liked to have her surroundings neat and tidy. God forbid she should normally sleep on dirty sheets, but when the muse moved her, nothing else seemed to matter. She just simply had to allow the muse to direct her every thought, with no time or energy left to be fussy about her surroundings or clothes and hair.

There were empty cereal boxes, testament to Marda’s finger food explorations over the past couple of weeks. If she could smell anything through her allergy haze, it would be a ripe old sweatsox smell, overlaid with rotting food.

Since it was summer, the windows were open to the busy street below, and the wrappers and papers ruffled in the breeze. But the open windows also allowed pollen, dust and mold spores to invade the area, causing even more eye watering, nose sniffling, coughing and wheezing. Given the garbage dump smells emanating from all the containers, a runny nose was likely a blessing in disguise, since the olfactory nerves were well and truly blocked to any smells.

Several empty tissue boxes, fallen like dead soldiers, were almost covered by the former resident tissues, now used several times over. (Marda figured that once they dried a bit, she could use them over, rather than make a foray to the grocery store. She rationalized the ‘E-w-w-w’ factor by promising herself that she’d do better once the current WIP—Work In Progress—was done)

She was glad the pizza guy knew her & would take her checks & charge cards, because she had run out of cash at least a week ago. She had a running tab at the convenience store across the street at the gas station, and for an extra tip, the young student who worked there during the day would bring Marda whatever was left over at the end of her shift, plus as many bags of Cheetos, chips, kettle corn, and dingdongs that were on the shelves, as well as the dregs of the coffee machine. She knew she had to go on line in the near future and transfer money to her checking account and even pay the minimum on her cards, but later. Much later.

However, like Joan Wilder, Marda was almost finished her latest book.

***

Chapter 1

After her best friend, Justine (Justine’s Auction 2010) had married her bachelor-for-sale last year, she had disappeared in a haze of romance and was now happily expecting her first child with Ryan. They had bought each other at a Bachelor/Bachelorette auction that was in aid of Breast Cancer Research. They had a pretty rocky time of it, but had managed to put all their trepidation behind them finally. Marda was certainly glad for that, because she hadn’t wanted to listen to any more drama from either of them as they had tried to iron out their differences. Now, she didn’t think she could take much more rhapsodizing about baby names, nursery colors, and early childhood education. Who knew that if you played Mozart to babies both in the womb and after birth, they would grow up more intelligent?

About a year ago, Marda had been bored with her job, and had finally taken an education leave from all the travelling involved with being the major buyer for a large department store, and was even now, as far as her employer at the time was concerned, attending fashion merchandising classes at the local college.

However, Marda had dropped out of the college after only two weeks, because she already knew that she could be teaching any or all of the classes, because of her own expertise and experience. Besides, the young girls taking the courses were wide-eyed and bushy-tailed with enthusiasm, thinking they would be the next Dior or Stella McCartney, Versace, Vera Wang or Edith Head. They had no idea that they’d end up doing costumes for junior high school plays, or for their own children’s Hallowe’en outfits, or buying one thousand different types of jeans for a department store, (Really, how many jeans could one person wear, and how many different things could be done with jeans to make them look different?).

Marda had taken a look at her boring life, and decided to write a book. When she sat down to write, she had had no idea what to write about. She only knew that her central character would be a free spirited gypsy like herself, who would have great adventures, and end up finding the man of her dreams.

It had only taken a week or two to figure out that she had no thoughts on how to write a book. So she joined a local chapter of Romance Writers of America, and began downloading every book on creative writing she could find on line,

Oh my god! There are so many genres of romance writing! How can I decide where I want to be in this? What do I like to write about? Am I doing this for enjoyment? Or to make money? The genres buzzed around in her head for weeks, as she downloaded books from Amazon in every genre or sub-genre she could think of. She discarded vampires, shape shifters, futuristic wars and fairies as subjects for her writing. She didn’t think she could be pure enough in thought or deed to write inspirational or religious romance. The English rakes and ladies with too many clothes to deal with didn’t interest her. Too much buildup to maybe one big sex scene in the last chapter!

She had always loved mysteries and adventure, but after reading quite a few of them, found that a background in the military, law or police work, or private investigation was necessary for her work to be realistic. Westerns briefly caught her eye, and she had tried a few short stories. What finally caught her attention was contemporary romance.

All my friends have nothing but trouble with relationships, and so do I. What’s wrong with all my well educated, bright, attractive, caring lady friends? Why can’t we find an ideal guy? What’s up with a 50% divorce rate? I want a guy like I read about in the romance novels. We all want a guy who will give us the courtesy of listening to us, who will compliment us on how we look, who will help around the house, who will take care of us, but not stifle our careers, and above all, one who will give us lots and lots of lovely orgasms, preferably before he orgasms himself.

We’re sick of the ‘slam bam, thank you ma’am’ kind of guys, who aren’t even aware that we didn’t come, before they roll over and fall asleep on us. The guys in the novels, no matter what genre, seemed to have a personal credo not to come before their ladies did. So far, I haven’t found any man who thinks like that. If I happen to come, it’s as much due to my own imagination & frame of mind, than what he’s doing to me. What does that say for that half of the human race?

She had quit her dead end fashion buyer job, and was now working on Novel Number 5, and still had so many story scenarios jogging around in her heard, that she wished she could clone herself to get more of them down on paper. Well, the ‘paper’ part was figurative, since she worked only on a computer.

Marda kept typing well into the night, almost tasting the sweet moment when she could finally type ‘The End’. She saved her work, intending to wait a few days before doing a final edit, and sending her latest tome off to her editor. About five o’clock the next morning she did just that, and promptly fell across her unmade bed, so exhausted even the allergies didn’t wake her till nearly suppertime.

***

Chapter 2

Marda returned home after an evening with her sisters, and was assailed by the smell of her condo apartment as she opened the door.

This place is a dung heap, and I need to get fresh air in here before I can sleep.

Armed with several large garbage bags, she cleaned up all the wrappers, boxes, tissues, and other detritus and heaved the several bags down the garbage chute. Then she began cleaning in earnest. The scrubbing, scouring, vacuuming, dusting took her till nearly the next morning, but by the time she fell, exhausted onto her newly clean and sweet-smelling-despite-her-stuffed-up-nose bed, everything was a pristine as she could make it.

When she woke up hours later, her stomach rumbled in protest. I’m like Old Mother Hubbard, and my cupboard is bare, not even a bone for my make believe dog! She showered and dressed, then ventured out toward the nearest Starbucks, where she managed to find enough sustenance to make it the rest of the way to the grocery store. Marda’s food supplies were generally limited to diet frozen entrees, frozen or canned vegetables, soups, or anything else that had a long shelf life, just in case she didn’t manage to get back to the store any time soon.

As she unloaded her politically correct re-usable bags full of food from the hatch of her car, a shadow crossed the corner of her eye, startling her so that she almost dropped the bags. She turned, and saw a raggedy man standing close to her, much too close, with his hand out to her.

Ma’am, I’m sorry to bother you, but could you manage some food or money? I could carry your groceries in for you to repay you.

No! My Good God, you startled me out of a year’s growth. Go away. There’s no panhandling allowed on private property. I’ll call the manager or the police if you don’t go away. She backed away from the man as if he were a leper. She almost stumbled as she climbed the steps to her building, looking back at the man the whole time, as if afraid he might follow her. She juggled bags, packages and keys, purse and cell phone as she hurried into the vestibule where the mailboxes resided. Once the outer door was locked behind her, she stole another look at the man.

He was of medium height, maybe six feet, or a bit less, and his face looked unhealthily thin, from what she could tell. His jaw was stubbled with reddish brown beard, and long, greasy hair that might be auburn, showed below the dirty wool hat, his hollow