How it Started

How RUBY’S REVENGE began….

Some years back when I was raising my two sons - which meant being at home and having to do something with my brain! – I wrote a book titled The Woman’s Book of Revenge, a tongue in cheek humorous self-help book that basically said if you’ve been done wrong, forget lying around crying, forget therapy, just take revenge. The book was full of mostly funny stories of things real women had done to take revenge on husbands, boyfriends, sisters, friends, anyone who’d crossed them badly. It laid out a whole system of rules of revenge – what was okay, what was not okay, and was packed with delicious ideas on how to plot revenge in all kinds of scenarios.

To my surprise, the book took off like a rocket. It was picked up by a worldwide news service and suddenly I was bombarded with phone calls to appear on TV and radio shows across the globe to discuss what, at that moment in time, was a startling and novel way to deal with personal angst. I was on numerous TV shows including the Today Show, GMA, flown to London to be on various breakfast shows (the English seemed to get the humor better than the Americans). Even the BBC had a good chortle over my little book and mentioned it on a serious morning radio show.

The book was picked up and republished by Random House in the UK – I loved their cover, a mischievous buttoned-up 50's lady with an array of scissors. The book was next bought by a publisher in Germany – their cover was soft and spongy like a toilet seat which I thought was fabulous.

Meanwhile I was busy creating an advice website Ask Revenge Lady which was sort of like Dear Abby on acid. Revenge Lady was very prim and proper, but boy, could she come up with some wild ways to retaliate. People sent in advice requests, revenge stories, loads of real-life hilarious tales. Revenge Lady was a big hit – the site had millions of hits a month and led to tons of radio interviews and newspaper stories including The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, New York Magazine, The Telegraph. I flew around to lots of TV shows including Breakfast TV in the UK, and Australia’s Nine Network. It was loads of fun at the time.

I went on to do other things – writing The Woman’s Book of Divorce and The Divorce Party

Handbook – I created the Divorce Party concept and went on to form and operate a successful Divorce Party planning company in Los Angeles.

I could not however forget a juicy file of funny revenge material sitting in my closet - which I was determined to eventually turn into a novel. But as John Lennon reminded us, life happens when we make plans. It took some time but now at last I’ve written it. In many ways, Ruby’s Revenge may be a nice amalgam of the humor I learned as a child growing up in Northern England with all the good stuff I learned later in life as a psychotherapist. Ruby’s tale is funny. And it’s sometimes heart wrenching. Thankfully Ruby goes through a big life change that makes her finally get her life together. I still chuckle when I read it some parts of it. I hope you enjoy it too!