Partner Pursuit

October 18, 2021

Partner Pursuit

Partner Pursuit

by Kathy Strobos

women's fiction with romance/romcom/chicklit

When a workaholic lawyer meets a fun-loving music marketing executive for opposites attract, friends-to-lovers adventures, which partnership will she choose?

Workaholic lawyer Audrey Willems is not going to take any chances with her bid to become a partner at her New York law firm—especially with only six months until the decision.

Until she bumps into Jake—her new neighbor.

Jake is a fun-loving music marketing executive who might just be The One.

He’s funny, caring, supportive—and able to kill water bugs in the bathroom.

But Jake will never date a woman married to her job. His father was a workaholic lawyer who never had time for family.

And she’s just got the case of a lifetime—the one she needs to win to make partner. Working 24/7 at the office may not even be enough hours to pull off a victory.

If only she had not met him now.

Audrey is determined to prove that she can juggle

work and romance—even if managing court cases, candlelit dinners, and bike rides around Manhattan is a lot harder than it looks. She keeps canceling dates for yet another case crisis.

But when making partner is like a game of musical chairs and the last seat is a business-class alone, which partnership will she choose?

Excerpt:

Jacket on the back of the chair. Check.

Desk light on. Check.

Now, Ms. Willems, your mission, should you choose to accept it: Get out of the office on the sly. Audrey snorted silently at her own badly-played movie line. She stuffed the Save the Children t-shirt she’d gotten from a Central Park Zoo benefit in her Tory Burch brown leather satchel, added as many legal pads as could fit, and plumped the bag to look like it held at least four case files. She casually leaned the bag against the side of her desk, in view of her open office door.

The excited chatter of the exiting assistants filled the hallway. She typed up the Popflicks engagement letter and then entered Popflicks as a new client into the law firm database. Yes. Her pulse quickened.

The office was now quiet. She put an uncapped red pen in the middle of a legal pad on her desk. It looked like she’d be right back. The scene called for something more. If only she had a permanently steaming cup of tea. She poured a bottle of water into a glass.

She should depart boldly, but leaving early was frowned upon by the partnership powers-that-be. They might even think she needed another assignment. She definitely did not. She had just landed Popflicks. She had stayed until 11 p.m. every night this week. Okay, so I’m not always very good at saying no. But now was not the time to say no to a partner—not when she’d been working so hard for seven years, her life on hold. Now that she was in the homestretch, she could practically see “Audrey Willemson, Partner,” embossed on her law firm’s business card.

About the Author

Kathy Strobos is a writer living in New York City with her husband and two children, amid a growing collection of books, toys and dollhouses. She grew up in New York City and graduated from Stuyvesant High School and Harvard-Radcliffe University magna cum laude. She previously worked as a lawyer. She left law to pursue her dream of writing fiction full-time and getting in shape. She is still working on getting in shape.

Q&A With the Author

When did you first consider yourself to be a writer?

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a little girl. But I first considered myself a writer when I quit my job as a lawyer and wrote full-time. Then I started calling myself a writer publicly.

What advice do you have for a new writer?

Take writing classes, read in your genre and just start putting words down on the page.

My first draft is very rough, but once you have a first draft, you have something to work with.

Take writing classes. I have learned so much from writing classes, and it helps to add all these tools to your writing toolbox so that you can fall back on them when you’re stuck. I highly recommend Linnea Sinclair’s classes (new classes posted here: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063591436317).

Also, classes are great for meeting other writers and finding critique partners. Chatting to other writers is so helpful and inspiring! And my critique partners have been amazing in pointing out where I need to raise the stakes or add more tension.

I also recommend joining writers’ associations like the WFWA and the RNA. There are also so many great writers’ and readers’ groups on Facebook. Also, I found entering RWA-related contests helpful. The feedback is very useful. Placing felt like a validation of my writing.

Read in your genre. You can learn a lot from other authors, plus you will need to find comparables when pitching your manuscript or marketing, so you will need to know your genre.

What is the easiest part of the writing process for you?

When I’ve got the first draft written, and I read it over and I realize that some scenes are good, some scenes are falling flat. Still, things start to click, and I have loads of inspiration for more scenes or ways to improve the scenes that are not working.

What is your favorite part of this story?

That’s a hard question. I don’t think I have one favorite part of this story. I do like the waterbug (large cockroach) scene a lot. That was inspired by one of my first dates with my husband when we were eating dinner over at my apartment, and a flying waterbug suddenly appeared. And then we spent the next half-hour trying to find it and kill it by vacuuming it up.

Which character was the most fun to write about? Why?

I loved writing both Eve and Winnie as the best friends. I’m just so thankful for my closest friends, and so I hope I captured all the love that underpins our relationships. I also enjoyed writing Jake and falling in love with him as a book boyfriend. And I also had a lot of fun writing Whitaker as the feisty helpful older partner.

Which character was the hardest to write? Why?

In the end, Audrey was the hardest to write, because she is probably closest in character to me. I am taking a CBC romance writing course with Jenny Colgan right now, and she said your first book has oodles of you as the author. My editor kept asking me, “but what does she feel?” And I had to dig deep to figure out what she was feeling in response to what was going on.

GIVEAWAY:

Kathy Strobos will be awarding a $30 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway