Nora Goes Off Script

Annabel Monaghan's Nora Goes Off Script, published in 2022, centres on Nora Hamilton, a screenwriter who writes romance films for television and knows the formula because supplying it is her job. Her husband walks out on her and their two children, and she puts the wreckage of the marriage to work: the script that comes out of it is the strongest thing she has written. To her own astonishment it is bought, and the shoot is scheduled for the century-old house where she is raising her children.

The production puts a film crew in her kitchen and casts Leo Vance, once named Sexiest Man Alive, as her ex-husband. When filming ends and the crew packs up, Leo is still there: Nora comes across him on her porch, a bottle of tequila half drained, and he makes an offer of a thousand dollars for each day of the week he stays. The money, seven thousand in all, would ease things, and it also drops a film star into the ordinary routines of her house and her children.

The novel is set in the small town where Nora has lived and works, and it places her working life as a screenwriter in the same rooms as the household she is raising.