Christine Ardigo - Women's Fiction

By Christine Ardigo

Victoria Elling

Hello, I'm Victoria, and what Heather said about us being great friends here, is true, but everything else is false. Not that she's lying, but she doesn't know what I'm really going through.

I'm not a rock, well at least not anymore. My father raised me to excel in everything, and I'm the classic definition of a perfectionist, but that's not how I'm feeling now.

Sure I was the only one of my friends to attend college and then later receive a masters degree. I started many successful programs in the hospital too, not to mention the work I do at the Cancer Foundation. But my son is in his junior year of college now, my daughter's about to graduate high school and they're both moving on with their lives. It's basically just me in our home now.

Well, me and my husband......Ed.

Okay, I know he's not much to look at but he was rather cute thirty years ago when we started dating in high school. We just went to our 35th reunion and the room was filled with Eds! Imagine seventy-five Ed's in one room. Isn't anyone my age still in shape?

The worst part is that Ed is in love with someone else. Yes, he is. He's fallen madly and deeply in love with his TV. TV Land to be exact. Any show before 1980 catches his eye.

I shouldn't complain. It's not like we have sex anymore anyway, so why care? But I do have fantasies, no one knows about those either. But they're with guys that look like this:

But then again, what guy wants a fifty-three year old woman? I don't look like I did in high school either. I think I'd actually be afraid to show my body to another man, especially after being with the same one exclusively all these years.

Throwing myself into my career isn't fixing my depression. If only I could find something to lift me out of this funk. I guess for now, all I could do is keep fantasizing.

How about you, do you fantasize? Am I the only one stuck in this rut? Any tips to get me out?

Yours sincerely, Victoria

Heather Milanesi

Hey! Heather here. I'm the wacky mom of three silly girls. They're my whole life.

I know what you're thinking, she's got it all. Handsome lawyer husband, great kids, nice house and a pretty awesome job at Norlyn Plains Hospital, right?

On the outside sure, that's what it looks like but no one really knows what I'm going through. Well, except for Victoria, my co-worker for the past five years. She's my best friend, my confidant and the only one that knows what I've had to deal with.

I don't know what I'd do without Victoria, she calms me down. She's like a rock keeping her family and herself together. I'm not sure how she does it.

After years of dealing with a jealous, unsupportive best friend, a self-centered husband, a relentless mother-in-law, and a boss from hell, my normally compassionate nature has been squashed.

I've had it. I'm becoming sarcastic and irritable. If something (or someone) doesn't save me soon, my co-workers are going to kill me.

Toss in the fact that I haven't had sex in years, I'm now starting to check out hot guys at the park.

I know, it's wrong! Don't judge me, but I can't help it anymore. It's all I can think about. I'm even checking out the dads of my daughter's friends. It's not my fault though. When you haven't had sex in five years and everyone around you seems to be having sex, what can you do?

Okay, they don't look anything like that, they're only twelve, but I'm going crazy!

I can't really say I had great sex before my youngest was born either. When your husband wakes up with a hard on, rolls onto you and is done before you're fully awake, what the hell is that?

No kissing, no foreplay...

It wasn't always that way. It used to be good, real good. But not with my husband.

With him.

I think about him all the time. Is that wrong? Tell me I'm not going mad. Is this normal? Surely I can't be the only one that thinks about sex, not to mention having it with other men.

Please tell me I'm not the only one! Anyone out there feel this way?

Yours truly, Heather

As excited as I was to start my Nutrition & Exercise Smoothie website, I'm even more excited about starting this one. After a year and a half of toiling away at my first novel, it's complete.

Cheating to Survive is not your typical contemporary romance novel. Tired of billionaires, heaving bosoms and women wanting to end it all because their husbands dumped them for their twenty-year-old secretary?

Cheating to Survive puts the women in power:

What happens when three co-workers decide to cheat on their husbands? Will they find happiness, or with they be destroyed by the consequences?

I came up with the idea one summer, after driving my two daughters to camp every morning. The 30-minute commute at 7:30am, with two exhausted, cranky girls in tow left us with a lot of radio listening. Unfortunately, my then fourteen and nine year old took an interest in shows like “To Catch a Cheater” or “War of the Roses,” where listeners called in to catch their significant other in the act of cheating.

As much as I hated listening to it, I took it as an opportunity to teach them both a lesson in love and relationships. What I noticed about the majority of these calls, was that most of the callers were women. Pathetic women who’s boyfriends/husbands were not only cheating on them, but the men were arrogant about it. Some laughing when they got caught.

What was worse, once they caught the men red-handed, some of them went as low as to insult the women, tell them it was their fault, said “too bad deal with it” and a host of other derogatory statements. The worst part, after the women were humiliated on public radio, some of them begged their men to take them back or cried because they still loved them! And the men laughed harder.

I discussed each show with my daughters daily, but the images stuck with me. Hence, the creation of Cheating to Survive. Let’s turn the tables. Let’s have the women cheat on the men this time. Let them enjoy it. Fully. Let them skip down the halls, dance in the middle of the cafeteria, laugh behind their husbands’ backs.

But of course, in life, nothing is that seamless.

Meet Victoria…Heather…and Catherine, three dietitians working in the same hospital for a horrendous boss, and married to husbands anyone would want to strangle, dump in the trash, and watch the garbage truck pulverize along with the maggots.

Will the three of them be triumphant with their scheming, or are they headed down a wrong way path?

The outcomes could be worse than they imagined.

Now Published! Along with Book 2: Every Five Years. 

http://amzn.to/1xUdCfH