If you enjoy women’s comedy fiction, maybe with a feminist element, washed down with lashings of black humor, you’ve come to the right place.
Have you ever stayed in a five-star hotel, or gazed at the lobby and dreamed of spending the night in pampered luxury?
Have you ever wondered, in establishments designed to make visitors feel coddled, cosseted and indulged, how far hotel staff will go to please their most demanding customers?
Or how they deal with guests whose demands are unreasonable, excessive or, perhaps, illegal?
Women’s comedy fiction: Seven Hotel Stories
The Seven Hotel Stories, set in luxury hotels, are blackly comic case studies of how the world’s most brilliant hotel manager, Ms N, and her beautiful but naive ally Tatiana sort out some of the nastiest customers – and colleagues – you can imagine.
One reviewer said the Hotel Stories were “like Roald Dahl short stories, crossed with W Somerset Maugham“. Another said “Tatiana is Watson to Ms N’s Sherlock Holmes – except more deadly“.
The Hotel Stories are written with an insider’s knowledge of how hotels work and the extraordinary things which happen within.
You won’t find Ms N’s methods taught in any hotel school. But I have it on good authority that at at least one hotel school, they are required reading.
To get a taste of the Hotel Stories, you can read an excerpt from each one at the links below. Click!
Britches
The first story, “Britches” shows how Ms N and Tatiana first met; and sorted out Mr Minas, the hotel owner from hell, using a Combined Burns Night and St Patrick’s Day Ball (I’ve been to one); the President of China; and a handsome Scotsman’s kilt.
The Two Rooms
The second story, with a startling twist, is called The Two Rooms, and features an obnoxious hotel guest who will not leave; some Russian ice-hockey fans; a Prime Minister on a moral crusade; and an angry Japanese chef, locked in a battle of wills. As Ms N says to Tatiana: “It is time to start solving some problems.”
The Swedish Woman
The third story is The Swedish Woman. In an elevator awash with blood, a man lies murdered. But who is the killer? The suspects are many, including the mysterious Swedish woman, who checked in with a dead rabbit a few hours earlier. If Ms N and Tatiana cannot identify the murderer before the untainted-by-corruption-of-any-kind Minister of Justice can summon his portly Chief of Police, disaster looms.
The White Blouse
The fourth story, “The White Blouse“, is set somewhere in the Former Soviet Union. Ms N, with Tatiana’s help, delivers the ultimate lesson on how to demolish an immovable bureaucratic obstacle in the form of Mr Kagit, who works in the President’s office and whose brother is the Minister of Planning. As Ms N says: “There are many things about this hotel we need to change. Some of them are small things. Some of them are big things. We will start with the big ones.”
Gents
The fifth story, “Gents“, is set in sunny Florida and involves a congress of hoteliers; too much testosterone; and alligators. Ms N wants a certain job as a General Manager. But as she says to Tatiana: “These so-called gents have a habit of fixing up appointments amongst themselves. It is a kind of male-bonding. Of course I could not play these games, even if I wished to do so.”
The Mystery Shopper
The sixth story is The Mystery Shopper, which takes Ms N and Tatiana to the Caravanserai Ultra Platinum – “the coolest and most ecological as well as the most luxurious hotel on earth”. You will find why Tatiana says “every paradise contains a serpent”; how Ms N solves a problem no-one else can even identify; and how much nonsense you can talk about the environment to sell hotel rooms.
The Three Heads
The seventh story is The Three Heads. Can brilliant marketing, social media and the coolest pop star on earth save Tatiana’s hotel, the Caravanserai Ultra-Platinum, nestling inside a hollowed-out mountain above a relic-strewn plain and accessible only via three separate and perhaps not entirely modern or safe airlines? Is there really a flea infestation? Only Ms N knows the answer.
Women’s comedy fiction: where to find it
Where can you find this treasure trove of women’s comedy fiction? Lots of places:
- You can read excerpts of each story at the links above. See what you fancy;
- You can buy Seven Hotel Stories via the “buy now” buttons on my book page;
- If you fancy trying a single hotel story, you can read for free The Two Rooms by way of an introduction.
- If you don’t want to pay for a story, contact me via the form below and I’ll send you a Word copy of one of the stories. We try to please!
