Taking it to the limit

When Carol Mason decided to write what would be her last attempt to get published, she was driving to pick up her husband from work three years ago.

The Crescent Beach author had been writing for four years, but the two novels under her belt had both been rejected.

The books were “too chick lit,” the United Kingdom publishing houses told her. (She markets her work there not only because the market is larger than in Canada, but because the expatriate is more adept at writing British humour.)

“I’m not opposed to chick lit,” she said, referring to the genre geared towards young, working and socializing women. But to be lumped into that is a bit of a worry, she said. The women’s fiction market is competitive.

By 2005, Mason was working as an advertising copywriter. She grew up in Sunderland, England, and moved to Canada in the 1990s to attend Ryerson University in Toronto for broadcast training.

“I spent so long trying to get published. You can’t imagine how sinking it feels,” she recalled thinking. “Maybe it’s not meant to be.”

So Mason was out on the road one morning on the way to her husband’s work when her ears perked up to the lyrics of the song on the radio.

Don Henley was crooning the Eagles’ 1975 hit, Take it to the Limit.

“Well, maybe I should do that. I’ll write my best,” she recalled saying. She would take her writing talent to the limit, as her husband had been encouraging her to do as well, before honourably throwing in the towel.

Her newfound inspiration made tears swell in her eyes.

Mason - whose influences include Rosie Thomas, Terry McMillan and Jonathan Tropper - spent the next several months typing her soul into her laptop.

“I knew you had to write something fresh, but with something commercial.” she said. “I like books that work on more than one level, with a bit of laughs.”

She wanted to explore how marriage works around infertility. People always think it’s the woman who gets so distraught when she and her husband cannot bear children, Mason said, but what if it devastated the man instead?

She was also fascinated by how people choose to handle infidelity, “especially in someone with a strong conscience.”

Her three characters, Jill, Leigh and Wendy, live in northern England. Jill feels utterly bored in her marriage after she and her husband learn they are infertile, Leigh must ask herself if she can live with having an affair when an opportunity arises, and Wendy’s life seems to be perfect, but she appears to be hiding a large secret from her husband.

“I wanted some emotional angle on marriage that was more than ‘I’m bored and I want to have fun,’” said Mason. “I really enjoyed exploring the dynamics of long-term marriage... about the affairs and the emotional fallout.

“It’s the excitement of being taken out of your humdrum life, like you’re single again.”

Months later, in April 2006, her agent called one morning. She told Mason her husband should put a bottle of champagne in the fridge, because Hodder and Stoughton had bought her book. Mason said she “just stopped.”

“This is pure happiness, in the least egotistical way,” said Mason. “I really thought, ‘You did it, Carol!’”

The Secrets of Married Women was released in Canada early last month. To boot, the critics even said her book had more grit to it than the usual chick lit fare.

After The Secrets of Married Women, she got to writing about a woman whose husband dies, but promises to send her someone to care for her. Her second volume, Send Me a Lover, will hit U.K. shelves in November, and Canadian stores in January.

For her third novel, yet to be titled and about a divorce that shouldn’t have happened, Mason recently spent five days of solitude working on Galiano Island. She’s due to hand in that manuscript at Christmas.

Mason considers herself a career writer now – her publishers originally signed her to a two-book deal, and now have her writing a book a year.

“I always thought that getting published was my dream. And I’m tremendously lucky to be published,” she said. “But there’s more to achieve.”

Though she said it’s extremely difficult, “I would love to be a household name.”

Mason, who signed copies of The Secrets of Married Women at the Strawberry Hill Chapters on Friday, said she hopes to arrange an appearance in the South Surrey/White Rock area soon.