Thank you for any help!!
*Edited to add first 300 words*
Dear [AGENT],
Liz Miller is totally fine. Except everyone keeps telling her she’s not. So what if her husband walked out on her after three failed rounds of IVF? Or that the coworkers who now function as her only “friends” keep leapfrogging her up the corporate ladder? Or that her aging mother needs more mothering than she ever provided? Liz feels fine. Really.
But on her 42nd birthday, something odd happens – an episode her coworkers are quick to diagnose as the first flare of perimenopause. Overnight, every frustration in her life is reframed as a hormonal malfunction. Her irritability? Hormones. Her outburst in a work meeting? Definitely hormones. Liz feels the world squeezing her into a box she never asked for, one labeled with symptoms, supplements and solutions she’s supposed to buy her way out of.
As she attempts to push back against this narrative, she’s drawn even deeper into the world of wellness, beauty and self-improvement until her mind begins to rebel. Internally, she finds herself slipping into dark fantasies of fighting back against the people who treat her as a problem to be fixed. Externally, she throws herself into the pursuit of becoming thinner, younger, calmer, more optimized. But the closer she gets to her “best self”, the more her inner self starts slipping over to the dark side. Ultimately, she gets what everyone’s been telling her she wants this whole time. But what’s actually left of her?
TOTALLY FINE is a 60,000-word work of psychological literary fiction combining the bodily unease and female reinvention of All Fours with the dark workplace humor of The New Me, alongside the emotional fallout of marital and reproductive loss explored in The Wedding People.
BIO INFO
First 300 words (really 269)
On Tuesdays, I went to the coffee shop on Paddington, the one with the adaptogen turmeric lattes. On Thursdays, I got oat milk iced matcha at the cafe on Blandford but since today was Wednesday, I went to the coffee shop on Chiltern, the one with the coconut collagen cappuccinos. I was sipping my cappuccino, trying to think about nothing, when that girl from work (was it Julie? Jennifer? Jessica?) plopped down at my table, completely interrupting my train of thought.
“Liz! I thought that was you! What are you doing? Meditating?”
“Not exactly,” I said.
“Okay, weirdo!” She laughed, like we were good friends. “Aren’t their cappuccinos the best? They’re my fave. Though, I guess coconut milk is on the outs now. We’re such little rebels!” She winked at me. She had a line of coconut milk foam on her upper lip. “How are you?”
“I think I killed my Pilates instructor this morning.” My voice was surprisingly calm. Maybe that ashwagandha supplement I’d been taking was finally kicking in.
“Oh my god, I know. Pilates kills me! It is so hard!” Julie/Jennifer/Jessica was staring at her phone, her thumb furiously scrolling.
“No, like. I think I broke her neck. I hid her body in a storage closet.”
“LOL Liz, you are so funny. By the way, did you get that Partiful link I sent out? I’m doing this very cool, very chic, wellness party at mine. I needed your RSVP, like, yesterday.”
Nobody ever listened.
I drained the rest of my cappuccino. The collagen powder was gritty on my tongue.
“Count me in,” I said.