Hanging by a Thread (Red Dress Ink)

You can take the girl out of Queens. . .
Or can you? Because for five years, fashion. . .what?--assistant?--Ellie Levine was taking a halfhearted stab at it, commuting to Manhattan by day, trying desperately to keep secret her outerborough accent, hair. . .daughter! Until the day fate landed her back in her Richmond Hill neighborhood, the very place she'd sworn to escape.
Only now she had a business to run there-not the business she had in mind, perhaps, designing wedding dresses for Fran Drescher wanna-bees, but a business nonetheless. And the boy next door, who for years had been the married-man-next-door, was suddenly available. And interested?
So maybe there really was no place like home. So maybe the life she wanted and the life she had were starting to merge. And if she wasn't a success by anyone else's definition? Maybe it was time to throw away the dictionary. . .

Ellie Levine had big dreams, but continues to live in Queens with her daughter. Working for a second-tier fashion designer, Ellie is ready for something to happen. When a few unforeseen events reveal secrets and cause a shift in her old relationships, Ellie's left hanging by a thread. Original.

- Loose Screws, Templeton's first RDI had an NSR of over 45%
- Outer-borough woman posing as single Manhattan rising career woman when in reality she's a single mother from Queens.
- Karen's strength is characterization and humor; her chick-lit voice is on the romantic comedy end of the spectrum, a la Jennifer Crusie.
- Her 2003 Silhouette single title, Playing For Keeps, got a rave review in Publishers Weekly.

A Seventh Avenue refugee, Karen Templeton now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she is at work on another novel.