Campbell Jones has it all: an intelligent and successful therapist about to be married to her dream man/soul mate. But Campbell is filled with self-doubt and anxiety. How can she tell her single women clients to stop measuring their happiness by their success in finding the perfect partner when her own life couldn't be happier since she met Chand? To make matters worse she is about to be granted an award for her work. Now she must choose between accepting the award for something she no longer believes in and saying yes to a man that she hopes is her real Prince Charming.Smart but lonely Missi Morgan in her frenetic search for a new mate realizes that a middle-aged relationship bears little resemblance to the kind of romance stories her editor wants her to write. Yet, will she ever stop looking in the wrong places for a true sense of belonging and fulfillment? More importantly, will she ever overcome her obsession over her ex-husband?Emotionally fragile but a self proclaimed queen of online dating, Suzy Paradise feels that her life is in shambles. The passion for her career as a French teacher is gone. Will her search for younger men rescue her from a dead end life or will she finally face the truth behind the melancholy that haunts her?Successful Felicity Starr has given up a career as an artist to follow in her father's footsteps managing his transport company. Her father dislikes each of her boyfriends and she is stuck between pleasing him or herself until she realizes that her father is not the man she has placed on a pedestal.When these women's lives intersect they learn how to let go of the past in order to create road maps for their happy-ever-after futures. I hold an undergraduate degree with a major in English Literature and a graduate degree in Criminology. I have taught English in various colleges in Montreal, Concordia University and Ho Chi Minh University of Technology in Vietnam. During this phase of my teaching career, I developed teaching material including Open For Business (Harper & Row), Windows on Sci-Tech (Thomson Publishing).In the second half of my teaching career, I taught criminology in Police Technology and Corrections Programs. My area of expertise was in drug addiction where I worked in a methadone clinic with heroin addicts. I helped set up and animate a writing workshop for women in prison and have worked in halfway houses and drug rehab centers.My short stories have appeared in Room Magazine, The Canadian Anthology of Fiction, Mindful.org, Between the Lines, Carte Blanche and I was awarded an honorary mention for a play submitted to The Canadian Playwright Competition.I also manage a blog where I write about: Women Nobel Prize winners for literature, writers' desks, Femmes Fatales, book reviews, India. and my dog, Bau. www.carolbalawyder.com/blog
