Kay Kerr is in-conversation with Katherine Collette discussing her new novel The Competition.

Frances quite honestly isn’t that excited about the SpeechMakers annual national conference and public-speaking competition. What she’s excited about (relatively speaking) is that this year there’s a major prize. Frances has a few small problems and forty thousand dollars would go a long way to sorting them out.

Keith is Frances’s probably-ex-mentor, it’s hard to tell since she’s not talking to him, and he disapproves of the prize money. He thinks SpeechMakers should be about self-improvement, not self-enrichment. He wants to win the competition, though. He thinks it might help the situation with his wife Linda.

Neil doesn’t care about the competition at all but Judy, his mother and coach, does, so. 

And Rebecca…

Actually, what the hell is Rebecca doing here? Rebecca belongs to Frances’s past, not her present. And certainly not her (hopefully) less-disastrous future.

Katherine Collette's debut novel, The Helpline, was published in the US, UK, Germany and Italy. She also co-host books podcast The First Time.

Kay Kerr is the author of Social Queue and Please Don't Hug Me.