Kate frowned. “Nobody wants anyone like that. It’s like saying, ‘I don’t want someone who’ll poke me in the eye with a sharp stick.’ Forget what you don’t want. What do you want?”

Manhunting by Jenny Crusie

Reissue Note from Jenny

Dear Reader,

Fifteen years ago, I decided to write a romance novel. I was twelve. Okay, I was forty-one, but I was young at heart. And I knew what a romance novel was, it was a story about an incredibly beautiful twenty-something executive in a big city who met an incredibly handsome thirty something executive and they bantered and then they had great sex and then they had the Break-Up and then they reconciled and lived happily ever after… my grasp on the romance genre was not exactly firm. In fact, it was downright slack. Not that that stopped me. I wrote thousands of words about my twenty-something beauty and her thirty-something hunk until it occurred to me one day that I wouldn’t have lunch with either one of them.

Hmmmm.

So I put that manuscript aside and started a new one, this one about a woman in her mid-thirties (she was beautiful, it was going to take me until the next book to get past that self-imposed cliche but her body was going and her biological clock was having a fit and she was tired of waiting for Mr. Right to come along, so she made a plan. It was a good plan, too, with a detailed list of exactly what she wanted in a husband, and then she went to a resort that was prime hunting ground for exactly that kind of man, and thats when things began to go wrong, because I don’t know about you, but my plans always go wrong, I even make contingency plans and they go wrong, but the biggest thing that went awry was the hotel handyman who was the exact opposite of her list, and she wasn’t exactly his dream girl, either, and well, you know how it goes. I called it Keeping Kate and sent it to Harlequin and they bought it and called it Manhunting and published it in 1993.

Manhunting is the first novel I ever wrote and I love it. It’s full of flaws, theres some head hopping, theres probably info dump although I tried to edit it out, but I don’t care, I love it. I still think those scenes on the lake are hysterical, and the dates, well, I was on a roll there, especially the mashed potato date, that one still kills fifteen years later. (Why no, I’m not modest. Whats the point?) And the best friend, Jessie is the first best friend I ever wrote and I … well, you know. I love this book.

But the best thing about Manhunting, the thing that will always make it magic for me, is that when I finished it, I printed it out and looked at all the pages stacked up on the table I was using for a desk and I thought, Damn, I did it. And then I cried. Because it was a real book. Until then I didn’t know I could write a book, I thought people who wrote books were special, different, smarter, better than me. Then I finished Manhunting, and there it was. I was a writer. Best day of my writing career. Always will be. Did I mention I love this book?

So I love this book. Heres hoping you love it, too. And if you don’t, hey, cut me a break. I wrote it when I was twelve.

Best wishes, Jenny Crusie

Praise and Reviews

“Jennifer Crusie displays a real knack with witty dialogue and develops a fun relationship with engaging sexual tension.” ~Romantic Times

“Ms. Crusie has a unique talent for making her characters sound and act like people I meet on the street. The dialogue is crisp and witty, and the story is down right humorous, but at the same time, she gives us characters who have real problems to which they must find solutions that are realistic and true to themselves. She does just that with this tale of Kate and Jake, with whom I’d love to spend a lot more time.” ~Rendevous

“Truly comic with even minor characters three-dimensional. The covert-action golf game alone forced me to a buy a copy for a golfing enthusiast friend. Then I had to lend her the rest of my Crusie books!” ~Romance Novel Database