Cathy Spencer...The Dating Do-Over!

I meet so many wonderful authors online, but it's a special rare occasion when I meet one in person. Recently at a meeting of the Toronto Romance Writers, I had the chance to meet the lovely Cathy Spencer. As soon as she told me about her work, I knew I had to have her on my blog. She has a brand-new release and has graciously shared the info with us.
Welcome, Cathy!

Rosanna, thanks so much for inviting me to blog about my new contemporary romance, The Dating Do-Over. The release date was Thursday, September 18.

Here’s a brief synopsis:

Toronto school teacher Viv Nowak has a sympathetic heart and abominable taste in men. She expects an engagement ring when her live-in lover of six years lands a terrific new job in Vancouver. Instead, she gets dumped ‒ on Valentine’s Day! Everyone, from her best friends to her father to her estranged mother, has an opinion on how she should fix her life. Her friends even insist on a dating do-over. But will they like her choice when she finally decides what her heart wants?

There were two things on my mind when I came up with the concept for this story. One was that I was tired of heroines who are always brainy, independent, and spunky. Viv is a thirty-one-year-old woman who was cossetted by her father and dependent on her live-in boyfriend of six years. After her boyfriend dumps her, she begins to doubt her ability to choose a worthy mate. It doesn’t help when her two best friends say she is a magnet for the worst kind of man. So while Viv is big-hearted, generous, and loyal, she’s also naïve and too-trusting.

Secondly, I was thinking about the kind of world women were promised by the feminist movement, a world where women could have it all! But what if we didn’t want it all? What if having it all was just too exhausting? True liberation should mean the freedom to choose whatever makes us happy, whether it’s to have a big career, or no career at all. I explore this theme with the three major female characters: Sabrina, a single woman striving to make it big in the world of real estate banking; Julie, a teacher and single mother; and Viv, who’s ready to give up her career and raise children once she can find the right man.

Throw in home renovation, designer shoes, and dog fostering, and you have The Dating Do-Over! Included in the Afterword is a recipe for the world’s best banana layer cake.

E-book available at Amazon Kindle, Apple iTunes, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords and most e-book retailers.

Paperback available at Amazon.

Visit Cathy at her blog: http://cmspencer.blogspot.ca/