Literary duo team up for novels that get under skin of the corporate world

Friends Joanna Berry and Penny Avis turned away from jobs in big business...to write novels about that very world. Sheena Hastings reports.

Desperate to impress her boss in order to gain promotion, Rachel becomes snarled up in a Catch-22 moral situation when she discovers that he is embroiled in an affair with the nurse who’s up to her neck in the embezzlement. Meanwhile that no-good boyfriend, Harry, decides to make some cash on the side by plundering the list of names of celebrities having secret breast implants and facelifts and offering the information to a tabloid. Rachel panics and the house of cards comes tumbling down.

A good read for the beach or the commute, Never Mind the Botox – Rachel has been touted as doing for cosmetic surgery what Absolutely Fabulous did for fashion. A nip here, a tuck there, and you could imagine this tale of high heels, sharp suits and afternoon sex hitting the small screen in the same sort of niche as Mistresses, say, although it aspires perhaps to follow the impressive Manolo footprints of Carrie Bradshaw and her three chums in the late Sex and the City.

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Few novelists, and even fewer of those who have spent most of their adult lives until recently pursuing an entirely different profession than writing, find their first efforts rewarded with interest from a television production company. But Penny Avis and Joanna Berry have signed a joint venture agreement to develop a series of programmes based on their series of four Never Mind the Botox books, of which Rachel is the second. They’re coy about the sales of the first book, except to say “we were delighted with how well it did...” Successful enough for international film and TV production company Future Films to see a glittering future for the tales, which centre on a strand of celebrity culture that helps to sell milions of gossip magazines each year.

Jo and Penny, who met “years and years ago” through their then boyfriends (now husbands), found it relatively easy to plunder the world of the law and corporate finance to lend credibility to the quartet of novels which looks at the world of big business through the prism of one deal and the different experiences of four women involved from different angles – including Stella, the cosmetic surgeon who’s given to occasional spasms of conscience over doing so much private work, Alex the lawyer and Meredith the banker. Each of the four books views the ongoing cut-and-thrust of the transaction from the point of view of one of the women involved, but the shenanigans amid the double-entry book keeping and legal contracts is balanced by the colourful private lives of the gals who may work long hours but still manage to freight gallons of white wine each week.

Jo, who’s from Doncaster and studied at Oxford before working as a solicitor in London and Leeds, moved from Eversheds to Yorkshire Television then Manchester. She left full-time work in the law when pregnant with her second child (she has three), and later went part-time as an in-house lawyer for a chain of care homes. These days she lives in “WAG-land” Wilmslow, Cheshire, and in between novels, school concerts and taxiing the kids, is heavily involved in work for Children in Need.

Penny, a mum-of-two now living in London, studied at Sheffield University, trained as a chartered accountant and by her 30s was a partner at Deloitte. The two women reached a point of “what next?” at around the same time. Over a Sunday lunch they realised they harboured the same desire to take an entirely new direction and have a go at fiction.

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“It was funny that we had separately had the same thought and never discussed it until then, although we’d known each other for so long,” says Jo. “It seemed natural to create a plot around the kind of world and people we knew – the meetings that go on until 4am, or even days on end, the endless arguments about where full-stops should go... And some of the egos involved, too.” Jo says the accountancy and legal press are very taken with the two Never Mind the Botox novels so far. Well, how often is a chartered accountant or a corporate lawyer the heroine of a novel?

“We were both daunted by working on our own on the novels, as we’re used to teamwork. Having each other made it more enjoyable and bearable. We each take the lead in writing two of the four books, and we edit each other’s work. I naturally took on Alex, the lawyer, and Rachel is very much Penny’s. Our editor said early on she was surprised how little she had to do to ‘merge’ our styles.”

The writers plotted all four books before deciding how they’d get the series published (see panel) and, seasoned and cautious professionals that they are, they googled all of the names invented for their characters to check for uncanny coincidences that could possibly lead to litigation.

Rachel and her friends have legendary powers for sinking alcohol – sometimes with dire consequences. “There’s an element of exagerration,” says Jo. “You might not drink for three weeks while working long hours on a job, but once it was over you’d all go a bit mad. Reading those bits of the story back does remind me of days...” The excessive hours put in by some city executives are not overblown, she says.

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“I remember one guy in his early 40s whose wife was so used to him working all night or not coming home for days that she wasn’t too worried when he didn’t appear or call over one particular weekend. He was found dead at his desk on Monday, and they reckoned he’d had a heart attack on Friday night.”

The writers wanted the book to have wide appeal, including to women in the business world, so the details had to be highly- recognisable, if sometimes overblown. When it came to deciding on the nature of the deal that runs through the four books, Jo and Penny felt that choosing the world of cosmetic surgery was to capture part of the zeitgeist. “You can’t pick up a magazine without seeing stuff about how people look. During our research we spoke to surgeons and I went to one of the well-known clinics for a consultation about thread vein removal. Things very quickly got to ‘anything else we can do for you?’ – the full sales pitch.”

Penny, who still does some work for Deloitte, is amazed at how quickly writing – and writing in a partnership – became comfortable and fun. “I loved my job before, even though I was taking a career break, but I really enjoy this. It’s such a laugh, and so much less stressful than the world of finance. My ex-colleagues think it’s hilarious, but they all want to know how the plot develops through the four books and what happens to our four characters.

“We’re very excited at the thought that the books might become a TV series. I imagine the programmes with a feel that’s between This Life and Cold Feet.”

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What gave them the confidence to persist with the project and self-publish, even after literary agents told them that the women’s fiction market was pretty well saturated? “The fact that we seemed to work so well together as a team buoyed us up and that we’re writing about a world that hasn’t really featured in chick lit before,” says Penny.

“We agreed early on that we’d stick together for the four books and see where they took us. After that, we’ll decide which direction to go in next...”

Never Mind The Botox – Rachel is published by Matador, £6.99.

Journey to publication

Joanna and Penny researched both the traditional route of publication and self-publishing. Feedback from literary agents said the women’s fiction market was already crowded. The turnaround time between completing a manuscript and publication is halved when self-publishing. “We decided to go for a hybrid model,” says Penny. “We didn’t need an agent but used a publishing house that deals in self-published books, then hired in a designer, taking retail standard as a minimum, but going for the high-quality end of the scale. Choosing this option meant we had control over the the end product and we we also owned the copyright, which isn’t the case if you go down the conventional route.”