Novelicious - Everything Chick Lit

A Look Inside Expose Lit - Guest Post by Ondo Lady

BY RONKE ADEYEMI
Expose Lit are novels which give us an insight into an industry which is based on the author's experience. 

We have Chick Lit, Lad Lit and Chick Noir but over the years we have witnessed the growth of Expose Lit. It is rather akin to roman a clef which is a depiction of real life experiences without revealing the sources, however Expose Lit has a variety of characteristics. It features a small town rookie who moves to the big city in order to pursue their dreams, lands an entry level position in sexy glam industry and has a tyrannical larger then live boss who is extremely demanding as well as back stabbing colleague. The dilemma of the story features whether or not the protagonist will go over to the dark side in order to get what they want. It was the release of The Nanny Diaries in 2002 that set the trend in the genre with the book being a huge success on both sides of the pond. Then a year later another book would send Expose Lit exploding into the mainstream media. The Devil Wears Prada caught the imagination of readers in the literary world in the story about a young upstart who lands a role as assistant for a demanding editor. Since then everyone has become intrigued about the goings on in glam industries such as book publishing, PR, magazines, music, film and TV. Every so keen to meet demand, the book publishers have been releasing titles after titles to satisfy readers. A lot of these books have gone on to become successful films ie The Nanny Diaries, The Devil Wears Prada and The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing (which was renamed Suburban Girl.) The others remain great pieces of fiction.

 

Ondo Lady's Favourite Expose Lit after the cut...

Guest Post - Jessica Ruston tells us what's on her Bedside Table!

A big welcome to Jessica Ruston, author of the fabulous LUXURY who tells us a little bit about her reading habits. Enjoy, and stay tuned as later this week we will be offering one lucky reader a SIGNED copy of Luxury!

 My Bedside Table - Jessica Ruston

 My bedside table is actually a set of shelves, and provides a somewhat worryingly accurate window into my reading habits – and brain.  Stuffed with books, notebooks, photos, magazines and random things like samples of perfume and nail varnish, it’s pretty much always overdue for a clearout. 

There’s always a mixture of fiction and non-fiction on there; books I’m reading for research or work, and books I’m reading for pleasure - which, luckily, for me, I can also call work – you’re in luck when your homework is reading Louise Bagshawe’s The Devil You Know or a classic Jeffrey Archer.

At the moment, my ‘reading’ book is The Group, by Mary McCarthy, which is a joy.  It’s full of razor sharp observation and delicately nuanced social and class distinctions between a group of Vassar girls in 1930s New York, as they learn to negotiate relationships, politics, careers and families, fresh out of college.  I’m loving it.

I sometimes manage to get my hands on proof copies of forthcoming novels, and I’ve just read Blake Morrison’s The Last Weekend which is just brilliant.  Two couples spend a hot August bank holiday weekend together, and what happens during the weekend will change their lives forever.  The events aren’t overly complex, but the way the story is told is what elevates the book into something really special – it’s beautifully restrained and elegantly written, and things are constantly shifting – the author holds back, and holds back, and then gives you just enough so that the landscape of the book changes as you read, and you never know quite whether you can trust what you are being told.  I think it will be very well received indeed.  Lined up are proofs of The Instruments of Darkness by Imogen Robertson, and The Hand That First Held Mine, by Maggie O’Farrell, both sent by my lovely publishers.

Guest Post by Rupert James - Author of Silk!

The lovely Rupert James has kindly written us a fantastic guest post (Thanks Rupert!) about being a man, writing fiction for Women. His new book Silk is out now, and you can buy it by clicking right here!

Rupert James

When I started writing Silk, a big, sexy novel largely about women, I seriously considered publishing it under a female name. The gender divide in the fiction market is massive: women write women’s fiction, men write for men. Women write chicklit, sagas, romances, while men write thrillers, or poignant memoirs about their fascinating record collections.

In the end, however, I decided to keep my original gender and see how a man would get on in the women’s market. Of course, I’m not the first: in their day, Sidney Sheldon and Harold Robbins were the most successful producers of “women’s fiction” in the world. But in the last couple of decades, the publishing business has become extremely polarised. There’s a perception that men can’t, or shouldn’t, write about the emotional lives of women. At the time of writing, Silk is in Heat magazine’s top ten books – the only one of the ten written by a man. I fully expect readers and critics to ask “how can you – a man – possibly know how women think/feel/act/have sex?”. Well, I’ve spent a lifetime in the company of women, and you know what? We’re not really that different.

Turn the clock back 150 years, and things were very different. Men dominated fiction to such an extent that a debut novelist called Mary Anne Evans decided to publish under a man’s name in order to be taken seriously. It turned out to be a sound strategy. That novel, Adam Bede, launched its author, George Eliot, very nicely indeed. Circumstances are different today, but the fact remains that fiction is very gender-specific. Evans/Eliot became a man because female writers were regarded as frivolous and shallow. Today, women dominate the fiction market, both as writers and readers – and, if you’re going to have a chance at commercial success, you need to appeal to them.