Blog Tour and giveaway - Tracy Bloom No-one Ever Has Sex on a Tuesday

Today I am excited to welcome Tracy Bloom to my blog and share with my readers the first chapter of Tracy's bestseller 'No-one ever has sex on a Tuesday'. 

There are those who get to choose the father of their child and those who don’t. Those who spend years sifting through the giant haystack that is the male population and those who get unexpectedly ambushed.

Katy never thought that she would be one of those who got ambushed. She certainly never thought that at thirty-six she would be pregnant, unmarried and with a boyfriend eight years younger than herself. A boyfriend who was now sitting beside her dressed in his football kit, as they drove off for their first antenatal class.

She felt sick. She put this down to pre-class nerves and the fact that Ben had come straight from school, where he was a PE teacher, smelling unpleasantly of gym shoes, teenage-boy sweat and mashed potato. As she stared across at him she comforted herself with the knowledge that at least she could rely on him to offer up some well-thought-out words of wisdom to help calm her fears.

“So this guy at work says that all you do in these classes is talk about tits and fannies for two hours. How good is that?”

Katy continued to stare at Ben for a moment then sighed and put the car into gear.

“Please don’t say that,” she said wearily as they drove off.

“Say what?” asked Ben as he fiddled with every knob, switch and dial he could reach on Katy’s dashboard.

“Fannies,” said Katy, slapping his fingers.

“It’s better than a lot of other words for it,” said Ben. “I mean I could say…”

“No, no more words,” interrupted Katy “You know my Gran wouldn’t like it.”

“Why? Is she coming with us?” said Ben, pulling open the glove box and peering inside.

“Her name was Fanny, I’ve told you that before,” said Katy, starting to lose patience.

Ben turned to stare at Katy in complete admiration.

“You have never ever told me that. That’s exactly the sort of information that makes my life worthwhile and certainly not something I’d forget.”

“Really,” said Katy. She hesitated, wondering if she wanted to continue the conversation before realising that what she was about to say would probably make Ben’s day. “So I’ve never told you her surname either then?” she asked him.

Ben paused for a moment deep in thought until he erupted enthusiastically.

“Vagina. Must have been vagina,” he said, bouncing up and down. “Please tell me it was vagina and I will die a happy man.”

“Mycock actually,” said Katy more than a little triumphantly.

Ben stared at her again in shock, his mouth hanging open.

“You are kidding me,” he said finally. “Her parents called her Fanny with a surname like Mycock. Were they insane?”

“No stupid. Mycock was her married name. She wasn’t born a Mycock.”

“She was called Fanny and married Mr. Mycock?”

“Yes.”

Ben was quiet for some time before he declared solemnly, “Your Gran was a comedy genius.”

They didn’t speak for the rest of the journey as Ben was fully occupied with texting or calling his friends to share the funniest name story of all time. He was still on the phone as she started to muster up the effort to get out of the car. She eased her swollen belly in the vague direction she wanted her body to go in, hoping the rest would follow. Looking down at the carefully chosen acre of magenta poly-cotton flowing in all directions over her lumps and bumps she hoped she looked like a woman in control of her pregnancy. But the memory of the lack of control that had landed her here in the first place led to the all too familiar sensation of a fist grasping tightly around her heart. She looked over her shoulder seeking Ben for some reassurance and caught sight of his knees for the first time which were decorated in school pitch mud.

“Your knees,” she exclaimed, pointing at the offending items.

“I’m not proposing now,” said Ben in mock anger.

She shook her head in despair, took a deep breath and set off towards the hospital entrance. She thought she’d pretty much nailed life until this. All the big boxes had been ticked. University, career, homeowner. Admittedly the marriage box had remained conspicuously empty, but that was exactly the way she wanted it.

A truly traumatic experience with her first love as a teenager had left her heart never quite able to recover its full emotional capacity. Since then the slightest flutter of love had alerted her to heartbreak fast approaching, allowing her to lock down the situation quickly with a clean and swift break-up. She knew this approach had served her well over the years as she watched her friends suffer the humiliation of being dumped from a great height, over and over again.

She had lost count of how many times her friends had declared that they had met the one. It saddened her to know that approximately two weeks later they would be on her doorstep sobbing out a tragic but predictable tale of the one, clearly not thinking she was the one, by getting caught with another one. She would patiently pour the wine whilst they poured out their hearts until inevitably the night would end in drunken dancing and singing round her dining room table to boy band music. Then there would be an emotional love-in where they told her she was the best friend in the world. Finally in the early hours one of them would throw up over the balcony.

It amazed her that they couldn’t learn that if they put their heart out there for someone, they would be cast aside as carelessly as last season’s away kit as soon as the next piece of skirt passed by.  These days, though, nights spent consoling the lovesick seemed to have dried up. One by one they had finally all found a man who appeared to want a relationship for longer than five minutes and had enjoyed the weddings they had always dreamed of.

She had, in her opinion, suffered two years of near mental torture as the cream invites lined up frighteningly quickly on her living room shelf. Her heart sank every time she picked up yet another painstakingly selected envelope, which no doubt had been chosen to match the bride’s knicker elastic, and tipped out the invitation, handmade by the future bride herself. She would close her eyes in despair as she read the words Miss Katy Chapman and Partner. Why oh why was it the law to go to weddings as a couple? Why couldn’t she just go on her own? Was there some terrible fear that single people at weddings were bound to run off with the bride or groom given half the chance? Was it one of the wedding vows? Thou shalt always have attached friends to prevent any possibility of straying. It made her dread the so-called happy events, forced as she was to find some random chap she had once had a drunken snog with, who in exchange for free food and alcohol could endure the steady stream of well-meaning relatives saying, “So will it be you next?”

Eventually she had decided enough was enough and that she should make a stand for all strong, independent women and stop pandering to the stereotype that happiness was attached to a man.

When she was next invited to a wedding she made the genius decision to take Daniel from the Advertising Agency where she worked. The look on the face of Laura’s great aunt, who was making polite conversation during the wedding breakfast, was a joy to behold. Daniel sweetly told her that yes it could be him next as he had been seeing his boyfriend Rob for over six months now and neither of them were having sex with anyone else unless you counted the night he’d had sex with Stanley, his ex. However he didn’t think that counted as he had been very drunk at the time and Stanley had been dressed as a Navy Officer because it was at a fancy dress party and who could resist a man in uniform?

From that moment on Daniel had become her new best wedding partner.

Katy jumped when Ben caught hold of her hand as she walked through the doors of the hospital.

“So what do you reckon then?” he asked, spitting on his other hand and leaning over to try and wipe the mud off his knee as he trotted beside her.

“Sorry I was miles away. What did you say?” asked Katy.

“I said what do you reckon the other people in the class will be like?” said Ben.

“Oh they will all have read every book, know exactly what they are doing and ask really intelligent questions,” replied Katy feeling the panic rising again. She was painfully aware that up until now she had put her pregnancy firmly in the “deal with it later” file. It was clear that “later” had most definitely arrived.

“Mmmm,” said Ben, absorbing what Katy had said. “So you think we’ll be the trouble makers sitting on the back row while the swots hang on the teacher’s every word at the front?”

“Probably,” sighed Katy.

Ben glanced over to her.

“The back row always has more fun,” he said grinning.

She couldn’t help but grin back.

“You’re right,” she replied, feeling better. Ben knew exactly how to stop her taking life too seriously. That was what had first attracted her to him when they met on one of the worst nights of her entire life.

My review of this funny book will be on the blog soon. The publishers, Arrow Publishing, have also provided me with one copy of the book to giveaway to one lucky blog reader.

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