A ROMANTIC comedy called No-One Ever Has Sex On A Tuesday has given a huge lift to the career of Derbyshire author Tracy Bloom.
And the success of the novel has now landed the 43-year-old a major four-book deal with Penguin Random House.
Tracy, from Duffield, says she cannot believe she has come such a long way since enrolling in an evening class in writing.
Tracy's writing career began shortly after the birth of her first child, Tom, now seven, when her husband Jon, a commercial director for Rolls-Royce, landed a three-month contract to work in Connecticut in the US 2007.
Leaving behind her friends and the career she called her "dream job" in marketing for Alton Towers, Tracy decided to write a novel.
Tracy said: "I enrolled on to an evening class in writing in America – I absolutely loved going.
"I took a chapter in every week and they seemed to love my British sense of humour."
Her first novel, No-One Ever Has Sex On A Tuesday, is a romantic comedy which follows the story of two childhood sweethearts, Matthew and Katy, who meet at a reunion, have a one-night stand and agree to never see each other again.
"It's about a one-night stand that leads to chaos," she said.
Tracy, a mum-of-two, originally self-published No-One Ever Has Sex On A Tuesday as an e-book on Amazon.
She said: "It just went crazy, and it got to number one in the Kindle chart for three weeks last June. Seeing it shoot up the charts was so exciting."
Selling more than 220,000 copies of No-One Ever Has Sex On A Tuesday, Tracy received rave reviews for her novel.
"The best thing was seeing all the reviews come in and having people saying that they liked it and that it made them laugh out loud."
Since then, Tracy was approached by Penguin Random House to pitch for a UK book deal.
She said: "When my agent was approached by Penguin Random House, we got invited down to London. Walking through the doors of a publisher – that, as a writer, was just fantastic. I was all starry-eyed."
Tracy now has to complete four books in the next two years.
"It's not quite as bad as it sounds. I have already written the first two – No-One Ever Has Sex On A Tuesday and Single Woman Seeks Revenge.
"I will be releasing a new book in October. It's called I Will Marry George Clooney (by Christmas)."
Tracy's editor, Jenny Geras said: "Her writing is smart, fresh and genuinely laugh-out-loud funny."
No-One Ever Has Sex on a Tuesday by Tracy Bloom is published in paperback by Arrow on April 24, £6.99.
