Gert Loveday

The hugely-popular novelist Marcus Goddard and the avant-garde poet and performance artist Lilian Bracegirdle are running a writing workshop at Gagebrooke, an idyllic country retreat. Marcus's secretary Lester, having discovered a dark secret about Marcus' famous first book, is blackmailing him, and Lilian has seriously offended her indispensable secretary Marjorie. Without Marjorie's guidance, stout, lazy Lilian falls into the clutches of the fitness fanatic John Brow, who is determined to make her the subject of his book Superhuman fitness in 26 days. Preoccupied with their own problems, neither Marcus nor Lilian can be bothered with their students, who are wrestling with novels ranging from the Raymond Chandleresque to the sadomasochistic punk...Author Bio: Gert Loveday is the pen name of sisters Joan Kerr and Gabrielle Daly. Gabrielle’s background is in nursing, medical research and music, while Joan is a widely-published poet and short fiction writer. Since 2006 they have written several comic novels together. Writing is Easy, which was shortlisted for a Varuna Publisher Fellowship in 2011, is the first to be published. Gert Loveday writes with authority on peculiar diets, exercise regimes, body makeovers, extreme fashion, gurus, pigeons, religion, poetry, politics, the health bureaucracy, gourmet cooking, reality TV and literature from the Norse Sagas to Jeffrey Archer, with a sharp eye for character foibles and the pricking of pomposity.