Screwball Comedy You Should Not Miss

 

Scratching the Seven-Month Itch

By Jeff Salter

After seven months of being with Jason, Amanda hopes for the best… but has to assume the worst. Their stake-out will determine whether Jason does have the seven-month itch and which tramp might be scratching it.

If you love the old Hollywood screwball comedies from the 1930s and 1940s – as I do – perhaps you can understand how I was led to try my hand at writing one.

During an especially productive 24-month period [from August of 2009 to August of 2011], I completed four full-length novels. These were my fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh novels of the total twelve I’ve so-far completed. [To better understand this period of my writing, you need to realize I had not yet received any publishing contracts for fiction. So I was writing these – indeed, all of my first seven novels – totally because these stories inside me were screaming to get out.]

As I’d begun the first of these four particular pieces – Curing the Uncommon Man-Cold – I realized Amanda Moore and Jason Stewart (and their many friends/acquaintances) had a lot more to tell me. Even before I finished the Man-Cold novel, I was constructing a timeline for Amanda’s and Jason’s evolving relationship and wrote some 20,000 words on an unfinished story about how they first met. Between their first encounter and their awful experience during Jason’s man-cold, I also realized that they’d gone through a crisis about seven months after they began officially dating. It was that crisis which became my fifth novel, Scratching the Seven-Month Itch. I could hardly wait to finish Man-Cold so I could start Itch.

As I explain in the endnotes to that novel, one of the catalysts for a key set of scenes was a conversation I had with a young (age 23, then) cousin-in-law who related that she had accompanied a friend who was driving around town trying to “catch” the friend’s boyfriend because she suspected him of cheating. I no longer recall whether that duo caught anybody or even saw anything, but my brain began cranking out a storyline that Amanda and Jason would play out.

It’s immodest to admit this, but as I wrote some of the Itch sequences, I was laughing out loud.

Question:

Do you enjoy screwball comedies? Have you ever been involved in a comedic caper?

Scratching the Seven-Month Itch

The prequel to “Curing the Uncommon Man-Cold”
Released by Dingbat Publishing
Part of the Amanda Moore or Less Series

Cover Tag: If Jason does have the itch, Amanda is after the tramp who’s scratching it.

Hook:

Amanda can’t believe her new lover is already cheating, despite “proof” from her domineering older friend. But she reluctantly complies with this posse of amateur investigators to determine whether Jason does have the seven-month itch… and which tramp might be scratching it.

Blurb

Amanda can’t believe Jason, her new lover, is already cheating — they’ve only been a couple for seven months. But her domineering older friend, Christine, has “proof” and insists Amanda should take it seriously. Knowing Jason spoke with a woman in the mall food court and another in the grocery store isn’t exactly an iron-clad case.

But when she hears rumors about a different woman stalking Jason at his workplace, Amanda reluctantly finds the evidence sufficient to allow her boyfriend to be tailed… provided Christine and her posse of amateur detectives can be discreet. Unfortunately, Christine’s idea of discretion is akin to blowing up a billboard.

The more Amanda learns about Jason’s unusual behavior, the more their recently shaky communication crumbles. Unable to resist the momentum of the mounting case, Amanda joins the investigation and stakeout.

Does Jason have the seven-month itch? If he does, which tramp might be scratching it? And is it remotely possible for their relationship to grow even closer despite the clumsiest surveillance efforts bossy Christine can devise?

“Scratching the Seven-Month Itch.”

Dingbat Publishing, 2014.

Only $2.99 in digital formats. Paperback also available at different price.

Also available in the digital “boxed set” Amanda Moore or Less — both full-length screwball novels for only $3.99.

http://tinyurl.com/S7MI-JLS

[JLS # 273]