Book Extract: Dating Daisy by DaisyMae_224

Today, I’m so pleased to be a part of the blog tour for Dating Daisy by DaisyMae_224 which was released by Clink Street Publishing on 27th July 2017. 

Here’s a little about Dating Daisy…

What do you do when you’re a newly divorced 52-year-old mother, keen for a second chance of romance? Why internet dating of course! Daisy Mae_224 embarks on the internet dating process with trepidation.

Having not been on the dating scene for nearly 30 years, and with fairly rudimentary computer skills, she finds herself embroiled in a series of haphazard and hilarious situations.

Daisy keeps a diary of her internet dating life and reveals detail by detail, the ups and downs of her midlife dating extravaganza. Soon after starting out, Daisy realises her true mission. With no past experience and no-one/nothing to guide her, she needs to produce – Internet Dating lessons.

Read on to find out about PLONKERS, muppets and MAWDs, and a whole host of amusing anecdotes, tips and ideas. Working by day as a Sexual Health doctor, the story as it unfolds contains accounts of Daisy’s clinical experiences with patients in the Sexual Health clinic.

She also reflects on her past life with Voldemort (the dreadful ex-husband). With advice and encouragement from Imogen, her 17 year old daughter, her surrogate parents known as the Amigos, with a big house and swanky swimming pool, her friend Pinkie and from Jeannie, her nonagenarian friend from the Nursing Home, Daisy resiliently persists in her quest to find a long term partner.

This is a heartfelt story that will ring bells with anyone who has ended a long-term relationship and now wants to find somebody new. It is humorously written, full of emails, poems, limericks, and even a recipe!

Daisy can’t resist her pages of advice on topics like “Kissing” and “Anti-Snoring.” It is a unique and highly amusing book, which will make you laugh out loud! So read on and see. Will Dating Daisy find her “prairie vole?” Or will the whole process end in disaster?

Thanks to DaisyMae_224 and Clink Street Publishing, I have extracts from Dating Daisy to share. These also include notes from the author. Enjoy!

Dating Daisy is a humorous novel about Daisy, who aged 52, and newly divorced, plucks up the courage to start internet dating. It is a fiction book but based on the authors’ experiences. In between the dating, she works as a doctor in the Sexual Health Clinic. The book follows the up’s and down’s of this period in her life, and reveals some unpredictable, escapades, that may just make you laugh out loud!

In this first extract, Daisy has bravely done all that was required. With trepidation, as she has not had to think about any sort of dating for three decades, let alone advertise herself on the internet, she has actually completed the profile, uploaded the photo., and then went to bed to sleep on it. The next morning, full of anticipation she logs on, expecting to find a row of possible suitors.

*
Not one wink, smile, email or anything else. I am deflated.
Oh, wait a minute, 37 men have viewed me and one has listed me as a favourite.
One! Out of 37! How can I be so unattractive!

Didn’t I say rhinoceros earlier? Time to think of ugly mammals. Hopefully not because I’m one of them!, but because I have to behave like one. The thicker the skin the better. Didn’t the elephant get his saggy baggy skin by scratching it in the Limpopo River? I need to scratch mine somewhere. It’s getting very itchy.
“What’s wrong with me,” my brain asks Daisy. “Am I so ugly no one wants to speak to me?”
“Now come on,” says the brain, “there are lots of reasons nothing has happened – yet. And it is early.

“You only loaded your profile less than 24 hours ago. It has to be checked by Trust HQ!
“And anyway, remember men are like ostriches, they see a beautiful woman, they stick their head in the sand. You, Daisy, need to lead the way.

“Think about the men on BritainonSunday.com. The Britain on Sunday readers of the UK have just risen early, downed a cooked breakfast and boarded the 6.48 to Clapham Junction. They are probably only now unfurling the daily newspaper, and may not even yet have reached the dating section.

“And how many will be actually online-now? In the rush hour? Don’t be ridiculous!

“And those who do like you, may be shy, they may be poleaxed, frozen with desire, helplessly in love with the tantalising image in the red dress, but uncertain how to make the first move.

“Daisy, you will just have to make the first move yourself. Now what did I say?
“Dazzling, beautiful, smart and alluring.
“Be brave! The world CAN be your oyster.”
*
I chose this extract because disappointments when internet dating are all too common. This is fairly early on this story, and Daisy is quite dismayed to see that the man who gets off the train, is a different person to the one she saw in his photograph on the internet.)

*

Anyhow, I was now driving to meet Henry, this talkative, charming, perfect soulmate who wanted to be my teddy bear, and today Dating Daisy had a date. Nothing was going to get in the way. Jeremy took my love and threw it away. Jeremy is history.

I arrived at the station. The train was due in 20 minutes but it seemed the longest 20 minutes in history. He had texted that he was in the front of the train. I waited in the waiting room as it was very cold that day. I popped in to the ladies to brush my hair and apply a bit more lipstick. What would he think of me, this 53-year-old, Dating Daisy? I was aware that I had my love poem, Finding True Love, folded in a an envelope in my hand bag.

Would I, oh would I, in my wildest dreams, be able to give this to Henry?
The train slowed, a whistle blew, the doors opened. A lot of people were moving about, getting on and off the train. I scanned the front of the train for a tall, balding man with a smiley face.

But what was this. A carriage door opened and a man was smiling and walking towards me. But it wasn’t, it couldn’t be, Henry? I guessed it must be as he was hugging me and grasping my hand. I looked over his left shoulder as he enveloped me on that station platform. I am 5ft8½, and he is shorter than me.

First lie.

Second lie. He didn’t look anything like his photo. The picture I had seen must have been a picture of someone else.

This man had had seriously bad acne, and had a very scarred face. Deep craters peppered his rough complexion. In addition, his cheeks had caved in, rather like an old person who has taken out their false teeth. I knew he didn’t have any hair, so that was not a surprise, but he was very, very bald. And you know what else? He was wearing a purple and green striped shirt over a pair of tatty jeans, and what had I said? No Morris dancers!

*
Daisy continues to work at her day job in the Sexual Health Clinic. The book is interspersed with anecdotes and stories from the clinic.

*
A patient made me laugh today.
She said, “Can I ask you something doctor?”
“Of course,” I said.
“The thing is, I keep getting this pain in my vagina.”
“Ok. Pain in the vagina?”
“Yes, I get it whenever I use two vibrators at once. Have you heard of that before?”
I considered this.
“Well, have you tried only using one vibrator at a time?” I said.
“Now there’s an idea,” she replied.
People can be very strange!

*
Daisy decides early in the book that she wishes someone could give her advice on how to do the internet dating. If only there was a course, or a self help guide. So she decides to use her experiences to help other people new to the dating scene and complies a list of internet dating lessons. Here are the top 5 listed below:

*
Dating Daisy’s Internet Dating Lessons

Rule 1. Start this whole caboodle with a very deep breath. It will be a marathon and not a sprint.

Rule 2. My advice is to be totally honest. Don’t lie about your age, or use someone else’s photo. It will only end in tears at a later date.

Rule 3. Make an effort with your own profile. You can’t blame the guy at the other end for having a blank page, if yours is pretty similar. Think about how you want to come across, mine was dazzling, beautiful, smart and alluring. I also wanted someone who was bright, who could tell stories and had a personality. So my profile had to reflect that I had those qualities.

Rule 4. Decide what is really important to you and stick to it. I started with the basic building blocks of mankind: two eyes, a nose and a mouth. But, then I whittled it down to Looks, Personality, Education, Solvent and Local. Don’t forget that!

Rule 5. Which brings me to my next point. Long distance relationships just don’t work. I would stick to a radius, of say 30 miles. Just far enough to get home safely after a night out, or to escape if things go pear-shaped. But these long-haul jaunts for example to Cornwall are soul destroying. At our age and stage, it’s very difficult to relocate, so my advice is don’t get started on that one. Look at Love Bug. Sad but sensible won the day.

*
Daisy write hilarious self help sections in the book. I couldn’t resist reproducing the following:
*
Dating Daisy’s Anti-snoring Tips
Ok, Ok. So it’s not romantic. End of.

He snores in a curiously enchanting way. Not a peep as he breathes in, but a cataclysmic earth shift as he tries to breathe out. It’s like the air trying to rush out of a leather balloon under pressure, a sort of suffocated pneumatic drill. Having said that, it pales to insignificance when you think about Voldemort, and Stuart too, and I actually don’t dislike it.

But he is worried about it, and too true, if it’s damaging his health, he needs to deal with it. So, I did my bit. Gave it my full attention.

I sat up and filled in the partner’s section on the snoring questionnaire. I couldn’t have tried harder. Where it said “partner’s name” I wrote Daisy, and it looked good, seeing my name on the paper next to his. Even if it was just a snoring questionnaire.

Now here apparently is the orthodontic solution – the Snore Guard. And it looks like it’s here to stay. Not ‘Marley and Me’ but ‘The Snore Guard and Me’, and I guess I just have to get used to it. (My sceptical self says the orthodontist has been watching too many horror movies, and has his heart set on a new Maserati, but heh ho! Who am I to cast aspersions?)

So, in all seriousness, if it stops the insidious sleep apnoea and the incipient heart failure and the probable premature death, not to mention it saves this relationship … its fine by me.

Really. Let’s just get our heads around it …’er, quite literally! …

So – The Snore Guard. It’s a Hannibal Lecter anti-snoring contraption. None other.

Designed to frighten off the nastiest of witches and vampires.

About the author:

Living in the South of England Daisy_234 shares many similar professional, life, and dating, experiences as her protagonist; for this reason she has chosen to write under a pen name.

View Dating Daisy on Amazon UK – Amazon UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dating-Daisy-Mae-ebook

by

Laura

I’m Laura. I started Novel Kicks in 2009. I wanted a place to post my writing as well as give other writers like me the opportunity to do the same. There is also a monthly book club, a writing room which features writing prompts, book reviews, competitions, author interviews and guest posts.

I grew up by the sea (my favourite place in the world) and I currently live in Hampshire. I am married to Chris, have a cat named Buddy and I would love to be a writer. I’m trying to write the novel I’ve talked so much about writing if only I could stop pressing delete. I’ve loved writing since creative writing classes in primary school. I have always wanted to see my teacher Miss Sayers again and thank her for the encouragement. When not trying to write the novel or writing snippets of stories on anything I can get my hands on, I love reading, dancing like a loon and singing to myself very badly. My current obsession is Once Upon a Time and I would be happy to live with magic in the enchanted forest surrounded by all those wonderful stories provided that world also included Harry Potter. I love reading chick lit. contemporary fiction and novels with mystery.