Myra Kendrix

Ms. Communications by Myra Kendrix

“When do you need me to finish this?”

“By last Thursday. Can you meet that deadline?

Gwen Mongan is a Marketing Communications executive at an innovative startup bent on saving the world from global warming. Her job is exciting, her co-workers’ antics entertaining and her salary has allowed her to restore her dream home.

But then there’s her boss: the impossibly demanding and maddeningly charismatic hi-tech superstar, Jake Folton. When Jake finally pushes Gwen too far, she begins to think it’s time to move on. A former social worker who dabbles in matchmaking and runs a support group, Gwen longs to revive her youthful ambitions of bringing people together.

But Gwen soon discovers it’s going to take more spunk and ingenuity than she knew she possessed to extricate herself from a boss with a stellar track-record of getting exactly what he wants. In fact, it’s going to turn her tidy existence upside-down.

Can an unknown racehorse named Purple Lemonade, a deadly Funnel-Web Spider, and a dubious Bachelor-of-the-Year contest finally show Gwen that some people are not what they seem and some risks are worth taking?

Debut novelist Myra Kendrix brings her own experience in hi-tech marketing to this fast-paced romantic comedy, set against the vibrant cityscape of Sydney, Australia.  Ms. Communications gives an inside view of the cut-throat startup scene, where today’s titans are born or burned, and sometimes the impossible becomes a reality.

 

The Book Doctors: I love how we know right from the beginning that our heroine has something she desperately wants. And that it’s fighting global warming, which makes us root for her. And I like that the story is set in not just the world of startups, but in the world of Australian startups. I have not heard that setting for a book yet. And I like her nemesis, “impossibly demanding and maddeningly charismatic high-tech superstar.” That’s a lot of great words put together in very economical ways. I also really like the final paragraph’s list, again it’s really fun. I don’t quite see the romance in this romantic comedy, and that’s a problem. In the very first couplet that we read, the last question doesn’t seem like realistic dialogue.   Do you think it should be something more like, “Is that going to be a problem?” Because we know that they can’t actually make deadline that was last Thursday. I don’t have enough of a sense of where your novel takes us. How do the events become more tense and the stakes higher?