QK Agent Round: (Women's Fiction) Make a Baby with Socks On

Entry Nickname: Make A Baby With Socks On
Title: You Can Still Make A Baby With Your Socks On
Word count: 60,000
Genre: Women's Fiction

Query:  

When her husband announces to their entire New Year’s Eve party that having sex with her feels hollow and empty, Aida realizes that she just might be the kind of person who makes truly terrible decisions. Especially about men. What’s even worse is that her divorce therapist believes Aida’s over-involved, hilarious eighty-year-old Italian grandmother might be the key to turning her life around. To prove her point, she challenges Aida to follow one piece of advice from each of her grandmother’s letters.

From telling her to go out on a date before her breasts droop from old age, to having sex without taking her socks off, Aida learns that good things come when she follows her grandmother’s advice. Especially when it comes to men. It’s because of her that Aida finds love again in the most unlikely of places, and realizes that her grandmother knows more about life than just how to make meatballs and go to confession. But after that love leads to a proposal and wedding, tragedy strikes. Aida finds out she’s pregnant with a baby that will most likely die at birth and she’s faced with the hardest decision she’s ever had to make – to keep the baby or end the pregnancy. Her gut tells her one thing, but her grandmother says another. Now she’s left doubting the one person who has helped her the most. A wrong decision could spiral her back into a deep depression and potentially end her new marriage, but the alternative jeopardizes a relationship that has transcended every obstacle in her life.

First 250 words:

Dear Aida,

I hope you got the socks I sent you. When I first mailed them, they were in a regular-sized envelope with one of those return address labels from the Easter Seals. I always feel bad using those since I only donated $5 back in 1992, and since then they've sent me enough labels to cover the Great Wall of China. Of course, I would never actually use those labels on the Great Wall because I wouldn’t want that many people knowing where I live, but it doesn’t matter because two days later the letter I wrote to you was returned for not having enough postage and I had to switch the tube socks out for trouser socks so I wouldn't have to pay more.

How is the new apartment feeling? I know it will take a while to feel like home, but you will heal from this, Aida. You will.

I never liked him. I know you thought it was because he wasn’t Italian but that’s not true. I didn’t like him because he drank too much. It would be different if he was Italian and enjoyed a few glasses of wine at night, but he liked all that beer and I heard that beer is the drink that turns most people into alcoholics. I think that’s why you don’t see any Italian alcoholics.

You’re too young to be sad. Wear one of those bodysuits you used to wear in college, the one that snaps down in the crotch (it’s really amazing you never got an infection down there with how tight those things are). You’re beautiful. Go have some fun before your breasts droop.

Loving you always,
Grandma