Revising Romance

Can everything in life be fixed with a rewrite? An editor in the deadline-driven world of book publishing, thirty-something Elaine Salter has just inherited the job of editing best-selling author Spencer Stone's long-awaited novel. When she discovers that the book is a disaster, it's up to Elaine to salvage it. As she fends off the author's advances and works frantically to extricate a good story, Elaine begins to revise her own life as well. A single mom, Elaine is in withdrawal from emotional attachments. While fact-checking Stone's novel, she meets Nathan Marks, a local antiquarian book-seller. As she assesses her expectations — emotional, financial, and romantic — Elaine learns that romance isn't dead. It's alive and well, and full of surprises.

"Heatwarming, amusing, and ... downright sexy," Midwest Book Review.

“Dugan’s attention to the position of the woman in the literary marketplace makes this book about much more than falling in love. The text places equal importance on women’s careers, families, bodies, and hearts, implying with clever self-awareness that no literary work is created in a vacuum,” Canadian Literature 190, Autumn 2006, Books in Review, “Gendered Power,” p. 108, Suzanne Rintoul.

“What the reader learns is that there’s something irresistible about those good old story paradigms … Whether Elaine’s tale is a version of Cinderella or Rumplestiltskin, its happy ending does deliver a helping … of the warm glow that accompanies the fulfillment of the reader’s expectations.” The Globe and Mail.

"A fast-paced, entertaining read," Canadian Book Review Annual.

"Melanie Dugan has written an intelligent, light-hearted, and graceful novel about editing and publishing, about mothers, daughters, and ex-husbands, and about taking chances. Revising Romance is like a big slice of lemon meringue pie — sweet, tart, and very satisfying," Kim Moritsugu, author of The Glenwood Treasure.

“Set solidly in the e-mail friendly world of the present, ‘Revising Romance’ is recommended lively reading for late-night moodiness. It is an antidote to worries in what Elaine calls the ‘various circles of Hell that constitute working in the “Real World.”’ Clearly Dugan has decided that if you can’t beat the Real World, you might as well write about it,” University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol. 75, No. 1, Winter 2006 “Letters in Canada 2004,”  Noreen Golfman.

 ISBN: 1-894549-34-1