From Making Commercials to Writing Commercial Fiction: Local Author’s Dream Comes True with Debut Novel Beware the Mermaids

By Carrie Talick

When I was a kid, my mom would take me on road trips around the US. Wherever we went I would send postcards to my dad back home. My goal was to make him laugh and to tell him I loved him in equal measure. I learned how to write from my heart but I’m pretty sure those postcards are where my sarcasm blossomed.

My brand of irreverent humor landed me in advertising where I could write funny scripts and witty headlines. I spent decades working in big agencies around Los Angeles. My entire career culminated in a sixty second commercial for Hyundai that aired on Superbowl LIII, February 3rd, 2019, starring Jason Bateman as a friendly Elevator Operator from Hell. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mfJ0EsqLWs

Not content with writing in a 30- or 60- second format, I longed to write something more substantial, like a novel. I knew I had at least one story to tell. And I knew the first one would be about my mom. She died young, at the painfully young age of 46. I wanted to write a story that had her spirit in it. And in my own way, I could give my mom the ending she deserved, instead of the ending she got.

It took 23 years of building a life in California to really get a handle on what I wanted to write. And then, inspiration struck … I was visiting a dear friend when her mother-in-law, Tena joined us. She told us a story of her three best friends who talked about how weary they were of sailing with their grumpy, stubborn husbands. So, in a margarita-fueled move, they decided to pool their money and buy a boat of their own. The spousal outrage only fueled their fire. These women, all over the age of sixty, cast off the bow lines and took on the old guard. They were the only female-owned boat in the entire marina. They took on the boys in the sailing races. And won. They called themselves the Dynamite Girls. And suddenly I had a beginning…

My novel Beware the Mermaids is about finding one’s value in a world that never assigned women of a certain age enough. It centers around a woman willing to redefine herself, even at an age when some women might think they’ve got nothing left to give. The underlying theme is “as long as you’re still fogging up a mirror, you still have a chance to turn it all around.” My protagonist Nancy discovers, among other things, her husband cheating on her with another woman. She could return to her incorrigible husband, or she could forge a new life as a liveaboard on a newly purchased sailboat with the help of her best friends. Nancy must find the strength to reinvent herself and, in the process, rediscover her own strength.

It took me nineteen months to complete this novel from my first disorganized draft to polished manuscript. And a little over a year to find an agent. Then, six weeks later, I found a publisher who loved the book almost as much as I did. My debut novel, Beware the Mermaids was published on August 10th, 2021, by Penguin Random House and Alcove Press.

The South Bay and the PV peninsula play a prominent role as I truly believe we live in paradise, and I wrote about it that way. I channeled my hilarious, brave mom, my colorful friends, and some sailing experience of my own in crafting the story. At the heart of it, my novel is a meditation on how life is a complicated, heartbreaking, glorious, and an ultimately rewarding quest to find meaning, purpose, and love where you least believe it to be; within yourself.