Dared by friends, she write a novel

By Derek Liebig

It started with a dare.

A few years ago, Granville resident Michele Sargent was having lunch with some friends when they began discussing things they had always wanted to do, but had never gotten around to.

The close-knit group of women, who had been friends for 40 years, had reached “that certain age,” as Sargent described it, and decided it was time they actually did some of those things they had been pining over for so many years.

“Mine was to write a book,” Sargent said. “It’s something I’d been talking about for 20 years and they told me to go ahead and do it. They dared me and when your girlfriends dare you to do something, you do it.”

Sargent embraced her friends’ challenge and earlier this year she released her first novel, “The Glory Girls.”

“It’s a story of four women who are pushing 50 and spend a great deal of time together,” Sargent said. “It has some wonderful and diverse characters. One is divorced, one is widowed and another has a husband who is never around.”

In the book, which is set in the fictional town of Glory, Vt., the women create a game called “flipping,” in which each places an idea inside an envelope. They get together over lunch and flip a coin. If it lands on tails, one envelope is chosen and thrown away. If it lands head, the envelope remains on the table.

“They continue to do that until only one is left and then they have to do what’s inside the envelope,” Sargent said.
Mayhem ensues when they land in a class that teaches the art of seduction. Along the way they discover what is truly important in their lives.

“It’s very funny,” said Sargent, who describes the book as a romantic comedy. “It’s really a wonderful read for women. The characters are so different from one another. There’s not a female reader who couldn’t identify with one of the characters.”

Many of the characters and events in the book were inspired, at least in part, by Sargent’s own group of friends, who she described on her website as “wonderful fodder” for her fictional characters.

“Some are based on real life and the rest is done with literary license,” she said, joking that, in time, her friends will speak to her again.

Sargent, who works at H&R Block in Manchester, Vt., and moved to Granville 10 years ago, describes herself as an eclectic reader and cites Ken Follett’s “The Pillars of the Earth” as her favorite book.

And while she has dabbled in writing off and on for years, “The Glory Girls” is her first full-length novel.

“I was amazed at how much work it was. It took about a year to write and get published,” Sargent said. “It required a lot of perseverance. There were days when I looked at the computer and couldn’t figure out what to write. It took a lot of discipline.”

She will continue to need that discipline. “The Glory Girls” is the first book in a trilogy she has dubbed “The Shady Lane Series.”

She is already at work on a second book, titled “Almost Paradise,” which follows the same cast of characters as they embark on a month-long vacation in a town called Paradise, located in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

“It has a host of marvelous characters,” Sargent said. “It’s coming along beautifully. I actually like the plot line more.”

A third book is the midst of being outlined.

“There may be more if it gets popular,” Sargent said. “I wanted to write something that makes readers laugh. If there’s no laughter, what’s the sense? I’m delighted with how it turned out.”

Copies of the book can be purchased on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, kobo, Google+ and iTunes Connect.