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Mr Perfect is alive and well and living in Auckland. Oh, and mince-pie-gobbling British grannies can rap. Delusional? Possibly, but all part of the fun of being a writer who's moved beyond the old borders and constraints.
Auckland author Jill Marshall laughs at the suggestion there's a Kiwi male conspiracy behind her latest book, The Two Miss Parsons - a romance novel in which a British solo mum travels to the other side of the world with her daughter to find cafe society and true love in Auckland.
It's great propaganda for unreconstructed Kiwi blokes, to think their ranks could conceal a Prince Charming or Mr Darcy. "Why not?" asks Marshall. "They've got to be around here somewhere, it's an optimistic book." Optimism is a quality the British emigre to New Zealand is not short of.
In 2003, Marshall completely changed her life, moving to Auckland, sight unseen - bringing along her daughter Katie and a dog called Lewis - and embarked upon a new career, aiming to fulfil a long-held ambition to be a writer.
Five years later, she's the author of the popular Jane Blonde children's series, published in Britain and sold there, in Canada, Australasia and Europe, and is one of just nine authors - the first from New Zealand - whose work was shown at this year's annual World Book Day in Britain, a charity event to promote reading.
The writers are commissioned to produce a short story, which is produced as a mini-book and put on sale in Britain for $2.50. "It's a real honour to be selected," Marshall says. Her mother - her best PR agent, she reckons - has been excitedly relaying reports of bookshops stocking her Jane Blonde books.
And Marshall is thrilled to be in such illustrious World Book Day company as Paddington Bear author Michael Bond and Robert Muchamore, author of the top-selling C.H.E.R.U.B. series. But she is firmly committed to her new life in New Zealand, which went well from the moment she arrived.
The 42-year-old Mancunian, who lived most of her adult life in the south of England, settled into her new stomping ground of inner-city Auckland from the moment she arrived. "I'm boringly in love with the place, I refuse to hear bad things about it." Marshall had a high-flying career as a training and development manager for a huge telecommunications company, when she decided to chuck in the corporate life to pursue her childhood dream of being a writer.
"I just had this creative burn, and I thought 'now's the time, it's now or never'. I was 35, half my three-score-years-and-10, and I thought, 'I really want to do this so I can look back in later years and think, I've given it a go, at least I've tried.'" She embarked on a masters degree in creative writing for children.
"The timing was right. My daughter was just starting school, so I could write during the day, be a mum the rest of the time and do the course in the evenings." She arrived in New Zealand with a portfolio of half-finished books, got an agent immediately, and "literally a week later", Jane Blonde, "the sensational spylet", was commissioned and on her way to being published in Britain.
Now Marshall runs a writing consultancy business alongside her writing career, but says she's almost at the magic point where she can afford to write full-time. The Jane Blonde series is a winner with girls, as its plain heroine, Janey Brown, is transformed into a glamorous, sparkly-suited, platinum-pony-tailed super-spylet with a clutch-purse full of gadgets, and is whisked off around the world for each adventure.
In the latest one, Jane Blonde Goldenspy, the girl-power answer to James Bond is off to Florida, accompanied by G-Mamma, her spy trainer and pie-loving, rapping grandmother. The idea for the series came from the pet names she called her daughter when she was young and blonder - although the character is not based on her daughter, she stresses. Another central idea came from watching a natural history television show - each of Jane Blonde's adventures features a different, unusual animal.
"I got an email last week, that said: 'Can you tell me how you get Janey to transform into Jane Blonde because I really hope it will happen to me'. I think it appeals to the girls who tend to feel a bit ordinary and maybe feel like they don't quite fit in and would like to have something extraordinary happen to make them feel special." Her "hen lit" novel, The Two Miss Parsons, performs the same service for an older audience. And yes, while the main character's trip to New Zealand with her daughter is based, in part, on her own odyssey, most of the rest is fictional.
"My daughter doesn't have a Kiwi father and there are none of those three men in existence, I'm sorry to say. "I've never actually got on a plane and sat next to an attractive man - unless I got on the plane with him in the first place." But for the optimistic Marshall, there's always room for good things to happen.
On the kitchen table sits a box of her Jane Blonde books ready to be sent off to an interested producer in the United States. Then there's a whole new series of books in the pipeline, this time for boys. And a follow-up to The Two Miss Parsons. And there's the view from her window of the Sky Tower.
"I get to work in this beautiful place and look at the sunshine and the sheer ease of living here makes it easier to write." To the old adage of New Zealand being a great place to bring up children, now add: and a great place to base an international writing career.
* The Two Miss Parsons (Penguin, $28) and Jane Blonde Goldenspy (Macmillan $17.99) are out now.
