Chris Manby
This author has also released books under the name Chrissie Manby.
Encouraged my by English teacher, Mrs. Pocock, I published my first short story in Just Seventeen when I was fourteen years old. The story was called ‘Whatever happened to the wonderful boy I fell in love with’ and I published it under the pseudonym ‘Carolyn Lane’ because it largely consisted of a transcript of an argument I’d had with my boyfriend. I bought a black denim jacket from C & A with the proceeds.
I continued to contribute short stories to Just Seventeen to help pay my way through university. I studied Experimental Psychology at St Edmund Hall in Oxford. Alas, I devoted rather too much time to my social life and staggered away with an unimpressive 2:2. In retrospect, that 2:2 saved my life. It meant that none of the graduate training schemes I had hoped to join would have me. I wouldn’t become an accountant after all. I moved to London and took a series of temp jobs to support myself. It was while I was working at Prelude Audio Books, a company which took erotic ‘classics’ and put them on tape, that I met my first real novelist: David Garnett.
David is a very well respected science fiction writer, who once dabbled with writing erotica under the name Angelique. Prelude was recording the Angelique novels. One afternoon, David spent a couple of hours sitting on my desk, waiting for my boss to come back from a very long publishing lunch to discuss some unpaid royalties. I told David I’d always wanted to be a writer. He dared me to write a novella like Angelique’s. A few weeks later, I handed him my first full-length manuscript. David cast his experienced eye over my scribblings, helped me tweak it and then passed it on to his editor at Little Brown. Incredibly, she made an offer on it. My dream of becoming a proper writer was reborn.
That first book was called ‘Inspiration’. It centred on the sexual shenanigans of a group of artists in St Ives. Wary of embarrassing my parents, I published ‘Inspiration’ as Stephanie Ash. Four more Stephanie Ash novellas followed, helping me to pay my rent and attract the attention of a literary agent. In 1997, I published my first Chris Manby novel, ‘Flatmates’…
Thirteen novels on the single life as Chris Manby later, I’ve just published ‘Getting Over Mr. Right’ as ‘Chrissie Manby’ (apparently too many people are under the impression that I am a bloke!).
I live in London and when I’m not writing (in fact, even when I’m supposed to be writing) I spend an awful lot of time on Twitter. Follow me on @chrissiemanby.
“That was what true love was supposed to be about. Couples slobbering all over each other, only just able to let each other out of sight long enough to go to the loo. True love was not furtively checking your email, while your other half is in the bathroom to see if you have a message from someone you met out once. True love shouldn't be disappointed when your ex writes with the news that another old girlfriend is back on the scene.'Fuck' she couldn't do this. She couldn't keep pretending. Not a single day longer.”
“Lou felt as though she would rather jump from her bathroom window than open the door and smile at him then, she managed it. And she even pinched his bum as the passed in the doorway. Not because she wanted him to act on the flirtatious gesture. But he deserved it. Because he was a great bloke and she knew she should be grateful to have him and perhaps, one day, if she let herself believe that someone that fantastic might really be the one for her, she'd get over it and they'd live happily ever after.”
“How was it possible to be with someone and yet feel so utterly alone? How was it possible to be with someone as wonderful, warm and kind as Andrew and yet still wonder if love would ever find you?”
“There is never a right time to break someone's heart. And anyone with even a microgram of sensitivity in his or her body will agonise for an age over that timing. Only problem is there is always some reason not to make someone unhappy. The day a relationship end, if that relationship was at all important to the suckers involved, becomes as important an anniversary as a wedding day or birthday.Obviously, the average person doesn't want to kick someone they once loved while that person is down. It's not just hard times when someone is down that become obstacles to making your getaway. After times of bereavement, unemployment and general unhappiness, those events that should be happy ones also make some times off limits for the eager would- be dumper. Christmas, birthdays, Easter all impossible. A clever person with a sensitive lover that they sense is not quite as into them as he or she used to be, could starve off the inevitable for years by carefully spacing out this crucial dates.”
“All that time tying herself up in knots because she simply couldn't think of a good reason not to be with him”
“It didn't matter how wonderful Andrew was and how much effort he was prepared to put into their relationship. While Lou didn't feel the same way, his love was only building a tower without foundations.”
“It's not you it's me' she couldn't use that line. Even though it really was her and not him, everyone thought that line really meant, 'it's not me. It's definitely you.' There was still a part of her that thought perhaps she shouldn't do it at all. In Andrew she had all the raw ingredients for a perfect life. Here was a grown-up, good-looking, solvent, generous, warm-hearted man who adored her. A man who adored her even when she looked like the loch ness monsters little sister and had a terrible temper to match.It didn't take a huge leap of imagination to see Andrew standing at the top of the aisle, looking back at lou walking towards him with a grin as wide as the English channel. She could see him painting the nursery yellow; pushing a pram that contained two lovely brown haired twins (one boy, one girl); presenting her woth an eternity ring on their tenth anniversary, taking the twins to school, teaching them how to play football on long, summer holidays in Tuscany, giving the daughter away at her own wedding, cosying up to Lou on the veranda of their perfect house as their retirement stretched ahead of them- a long straight road of well-planned for, financially comfortable and perpetually sunny days. 'oh god' Lou poured herself a vodka.”
“She remembered something that am old boyfriend had said to her. One that she didn't want to let go of at the time. One person can't be happy enough for the both of us”
“There was no question that Andrew was the most fantastic bloke she had the good fortune to go out with.”