Today's Woman

Jennifer Lyell hates her job, hates her apartment, hates her boyfriend, hates her life, and the scary thing is, she's gotten used to it. Why isn't she more excited about her recent promotion to Assistant Articles Editor at Today's Woman magazine? Her boss Jane makes up questions for the "Smart Girls" advice column, her best friend Christine tries to convince the Fashion Director to use real women instead of 16 year-old models, and Jenny wonders how much longer she can read through stacks of article queries like "How to Tell When it's Time to Move On".
Her little sister Claudia is a modern dancer working three different jobs for the privilege of rehearsing and performing without getting paid. Claudia thinks Jenny leads a glamorous life with her Chanel knock-offs, publishing parties and studio apartment. But Jenny would kill to be an artist like Claudia. One woman's glamour is another woman's drudgery.
So what does Jenny want? That's what her boyfriend Paul keeps asking, and it's annoying the hell out of her. Jenny is 28 years old, lives in a fourth floor walk-up studio in the East Village that reeks of curry, and has fallen into a predictable routine with Paul after dating for two years. She dreams of quitting her job, breaking up with Paul and becoming a writer, but how does anybody really know what they want? Some days all she wants is just to be happy. Is that too much to ask?
This book follows Jenny's struggle to integrate the savvy sexy person Today's Woman urges her to be, with the dissatisfied depressed person she sees in her bathroom mirror every day after work.

Pamela DeCarlo currently lives in Portland, OR. She lived in New York City in the late 80s, early 90s before Manhattan got cleaned up and Disney-fied. Today's Woman is her first novel.