Novelicious - The Female Fiction and Chick Lit Blog

Ali McNamara Bonanza - The Themes of Breakfast at Darcy's

My new novel Breakfast at Darcy’s is about a girl called Darcy who finds out at a funeral she’s
the sole beneficiary of her Aunt’s wealthy estate. But the terms of her Aunt’s will state before Darcy can inherit any of her money she must go and live on a remote island off the west coast of Ireland for a whole year, and set up a new community of people to live there with her.

Being a city girl, Darcy doesn’t find the switch from high-heeled boots to wellington boots an easy one, or for that matter any of the other many changes that the island of Tara has in store for her…

Although Breakfast at Darcy’s is my usual fun rom-com, there are many themes I was able to explore within this story. Setting the novel on a remote Irish island meant I could incorporate some of the many Celtic myths and legends that immediately sprang to mind when writing. There are mentions of Finn McCool a mythical Irish warrior who is reputed to have built the Giant’s Causeway, and the Claddagh a traditional Irish ring given as a token of friendship or love.

The island in the story is surrounded in her own mysticism and magic too, and everyone who comes to live on Tara is changed in someway while they stay there. Some of the characters experience new ways of thinking too, and there are mentions of some of the many types of holistic healing that are becoming very popular right now, like Reiki, Tai Chi and crystal therapy.

But it’s still the romance that wins through in the end, and I hope I’ve created a story that will leave readers believing its possible to find love anywhere… even on an island!

 

Novelicious Goes To... The Something From Tiffany's/Melissa Hill Claridges Event

 By Ronke Adeyemi

It's not often that you get invited to have Champagne Afternoon Tea at Claridges, so when the lovely Kirsty from Novelicious asked me to review the Melissa Hill event for her site I said yes right away. 

Melissa Hill is a best-selling author whose latest title, Something From Tiffany's has taken the Chicklit world by storm. She is hailed as the Queen of the big plot twist and her books contain a lot of warmth and humour with plots that keep you on the edge of your seat. Melissa's first book was written in 2003 and since then she has amassed nine books.  She is based in Dublin and as an author she is right up there with her fellow compatriots, Cathy Kelly and Marian Keyes. 

I arrived at Claridges in good time and was warmly greeted by Emma Knight, Hodder's publicity
director for Hodder & Stoughton. The table consisted of the Hodder team; Isobel Akenhead, Harriet Bourton, editorial assistant and Isabel Coburn, sales manager. On the press and blogger side there was Anna Bell from the Chicklit Club, Alice O'Keefe from The Bookseller, Laura Barnett from The Guardian and Sam Pitney from Heat World. The guest of honour was of course Melissa Hill who I had the pleasure of sitting next to.

 Everything was beautifully presented, from Melissa's new book which was covered in Tiffany like wrapping to the elegant china crockery that we used. Melissa filled me in on her book; she like most people loves New York and, in particular ,Tiffany's and got the idea of the book when she was shopping in the store and watching people buying presents for their loved ones. The Big Apple around Xmas time is synonymous with romance and Tiffany's tends to be at the centre of it all.

Novel November - Catherine Miller's Tips For Surviving NaNoWriMo

Novel November is upon us in the shape of National Novel Writing Month, in which thousands of people all over the world attempt to write a 50,000 word book over the space of 30 days. Aahmazing. I've been doing Nano for three years (this year will be the first year I'm not taking part) and find it such a fulfilling and exciting experience. 

Here, writer, Catherine Miller interviews herself after her first experience with NaNoWriMo last year, and gives us her top 5 tips for a successful Novel November...

Now it's finished, would you do it again?

Definitely! For me it has pushed an idea forward and put some real momentum into it. I have enjoyed it much more than I ever thought I would at the start.

You enjoyed it? Surely not, writing 50,000 words must be tough going?

It was tough and certainly isn't my usual style of writing. It's a more visceral style and there is no time for editing or any such luxuries. The benefit of this is you don't stop writing. Whereas normally I might try and perfect a segment of work there is no room to indulge yourself and you just move on to the next part. It meant the story moved on much quicker than it normally would and I didn't waste any time in making decisions. There were times when I struggled but I was fortunate to have some days off work. I'm not sure I would have managed it without them.

Were you ever in danger of not finishing?

Fortunately no. Although I did have to finish early as I was going on holiday and hadn't really thought about that when I signed up. I got a bit stuck at one point but with some tips from Fiona Kendall I moved on quickly. I think my main difficulty was not having time for research. There were points when I would normally double-check stuff but wasn't able to. I'll have to fill in those blanks later.

So is your novel finished now?

No. Far from it. I still have approx another 50,000 to get the first draft finished. It is a very rough first draft and then the real work of editing/re-writing will start. I plan to finish the first draft by the end of January. This may be quicker as now I've got into a momentum I want to carry on with that.

So what tips would you give anyone wanting to do it in the future?

Well, from my first time experience these would be my best tips:

1) Let everyone know you are taking part. 
This way you get support even though you are being anti-social to your friends and family.

 
2) Scrap all the excuses. 
There are always reasons not to write. Okay so there may be some excuses that are acceptable but I think they are in the minority. The excuses that stop us writing tend to be the more mundane ones.

3) Get in contact with others taking part. 
 Their support will prove vital.

4) Treat yourself at regular intervals.
Set an amount (more than 3 words) and when you get to that point treat yourself. I had two-finger kit-kats stored in the fridge and rewarded myself with tea! Not very exciting but I am at slimming world!

5) Don't give up too soon and don't dismiss your ideas.

Visit Catherine at her fantastic blog, Katy Little Lady or on Twitter

Visit the NaNoWriMo website

Guest Post - A Different Kind of Hero by Carole Matthews

I’ve never written arrogant, smouldering male romantic heroes.  The men in my novels have always been ordinary, attainable men. They’re kind, flawed, trying to do their best. Sometimes they’ve been high-flying corporate men. Sometimes they’ve had no job at all. But they’ve always been the sort of men that most of us would come into contact with on a daily basis.

So it was a big departure for me in my latest - and nineteenth - novel Wrapped up in You to have a hero who is a fully-fledged Maasai warrior! When my heroine, Janie, goes in search of adventure on an African safari, she doesn’t expect to fall in love. Similarly, when I set out to write the character of Dominic, I had no idea that I would fall in love with him too.

I wanted to explore the fact that it’s so much easier these days to find love outside of our own small circles. It used to be the case that you’d meet someone at school, at work, in your own town, date and get married. But that’s not how it works now. Due to the internet, it’s now possible to forge relationships with people from all over the world.

But, as Janie finds out, falling in love with someone from another culture and on another continent can also be fraught with difficulties. Dominic doesn’t look the same as the usual romantic hero - he’s exceptionally tall, has a shaven head and wears traditional costume.  I also wanted to have some fun comparing a village in the Maasai Mara to a typically English village, so brought Dominic back to England.

This is a man who doesn’t conform to the norms of our society and, as well as making Janie fall head over heels in love, he sets the hearts of the good ladies of the The Nashley Church Flower Committee fluttering too with his easy charm.

He’s and incredibly strong, emotionally and physically, due to his Maasai culture. Theirs is a life of hardship and privation. Ladies, this man can wrestle lions with his bare hands! But he realises that he’s a man caught between two worlds and strives to blend the two without losing his identity.  The more I wrote about Dominic, the more I fell in love with him too.  He has a beautiful sense of fun and a fundamental commitment to his community.

At first, I thought that Dominic and Janie’s relationship might not survive, that the odds would be too great for them, but I just knew that Dominic would do all that he could to keep them together.

He might not wear a suit or work in high finance but, in some ways he’s the ultimate alpha male. Already my readers are asking me where they can find their very own Dominic. I hope when you read the book that you’ll fall in love with him too. I think he’s my most perfect romantic hero so far!

Thank you, Carole.

Wrapped Up In You is out 27th October.

You can find out more about Carole at her website, find her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter: @carolematthews

Why Polly Courtney is Wrong

  Ilana Fox  has kindly given us permission to republish her original blog post here on Novelicious. Thanks, Ilana.

 This morning I read a piece on The Bookseller and on the Guardian (ugh) about how author Polly Courtney has ‘ditched’ her publisher Avon / HarperCollins because she doesn’t like how her novels have been packaged.

She said (and I take this quote from the Guardian, in case anyone wants to get Johann Hari on my ass):

“My writing has been shoehorned into a place that’s not right for it. It is commercial fiction, it is not literary, but the real issue I have is that it has been completely defined as women’s fiction … Yes it is page turning, no it’s not War and Peace. But it shouldn’t be portrayed as chick lit.

“I’m not averse to the term chick lit, but I don’t think that’s what my book is. The implication with chick lit is that it’s about a girl wanting to meet the man of her dreams. [My books] are about social issues – this time about a woman in a lads’ mag environment and the impact of media on society, and feminism.”

And it is this quote – along with how she’s publicly treated her publisher – that irritates.

Ask anyone what a chick lit novel looks like and the answers will pretty much be the same; there will be an arresting colour cover, possibly a swirly font, and the main image will be of a striking young woman.

What chick lit isn’t is one sort of book, with the same subject matter rewritten over and over again. It’s a genre of books, and within it are even more sub-genres. Yes, you can get idiotic novels about girls who are obsessed with shopping (if that’s what floats your boat), but you can also find novels – just like mine – that have a focus on interesting and relevant current affairs. Take a look at the synopsis of THE MAKING OF MIA, which explored how women’s magazines can negatively impact on women’s perceptions of their looks and lives. Does that sound any different to what Courtney described as “the impact of media on society, and feminism”? I think not.

So if Courtney and I are writing similar books, and mine are chick lit and hers aren’t, what’s the difference?

Obviously how you categorise a book is a personal preference. I don’t have any issues saying my novels are chick lit – I’m proud that they’re chick lit, especially when you consider how popular the genre is – and I’d also say that some books that you wouldn’t necessarily consider to be chick lit could be categorised as such. I personally think the incredibly popular One Day, for example, could be seen as chick lit – and the only reason it wasn’t was because the publisher chose not to market it as women’s fiction. They marketed it as a novel that could be enjoyed by both genders, and the mainly orange cover – a colour beloved by EasyJet – signposts this for potential readers. If you replaced the orange with hot pink, would it have had the same multi-gender appeal? I doubt it … but I also know of many men who couldn’t finish the book because it was too ‘girly’ and they felt tricked into buying what they thought was something along the lines of a Nick Hornby.

Chick Lit is Dead. Long Live Chick Lit by Dorothy Koomson

Following on from Debs' awesome Dorothy Koomson day last Thursday, here is a guest blog that Dorothy wrote for International Chick Lit Month (collaboration between Novelicious, Chick Lit Club and Chick Lit is Not Dead)  back in May.

I'm re-posting it here in case you haven't seen it, but also because it's possibly my favourite author post of all time.

Hope you enjoy it.

CHICK LIT IS DEAD. LONG LIVE CHICK LIT

By Dorothy Koomson

I’m constantly hearing that the market for non-literary women’s fiction – commonly known as ‘chicklit’ – is saturated, over-subscribed, on its way out because there is just too much of it out there. Basically, that ‘chicklit’ is dead. Is it? Is it really? Hmm… I’m not so sure. And I’ll explain why.

Before we get into this debate, though, I feel I should nail my colours to the mast and make it clear to those not in the know thatI’m not keen on the term ‘chicklit’. Why? Because I think ‘chick’ is derogatory to women. Yes, I’m aware that a large number of people don’t agree with me. You might not agree with me. But, it’s a fact that I’m pretty sure we can both get over while we talk about the genre. Instead of ‘chicklit’, I use ‘heartlit’ to mean books that touch my heart and inspire an emotional response. Other people call it ‘commercial women’s fiction’. Let’s just assume we’re all talking about the same thing. Because, whatever you call it, we’re talking about a particular type of book; a certain brand of story. We’re talking abou t books that examine, expose and reflect our everyday lives. Whether they are full of romance or full of frivolity; whether they are tense and psychological or laid-back and laugh-out-loud funny, these tales tap into the many, many elements that make up our lives. 

And gosh do I love reading these types of books. I like a literary tome with lots of complicated, intricate imagery and clever language as much as the next person, but if I want to relax, want to be entertained, want to find out about something, want to just experience the life of someone who would be like me if not for an accident of birth then I will hunt out one of these stories.

Write To Be Published by Nicola Morgan

For those of you who follow Nicola Morgan - the Crabbit Old Bat - and her blog, Help! I Need A Publisher, you'll already know about the recent release of her Write To Be Published book.  For any aspiring authors who don't and want someone to help you whip your manuscript into shape to help you make a publisher say "Yes", then this is a book worth buying.

Needless to say I've bought my copy and my poor, worn out postman delivered it yesterday. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I have skimmed through the sections and was thrilled to note it covers everything from top tips for your synopsis, to deciphering rejections.

Nicola is the author of around ninety books, including category bestsellers and award-winners, and has also been Chair of the Society of Authors in Scotlant, so she know what she's talking about. You can find out more about Nicola at her website and her Help! I Need A Publisher blog.

Nicola is on Twitter @nicolamorgan and facebook

Sue Moorcroft Tells Us Why - Heroes Aren't Born On Page 1

Getting to know my hero is something I do early in the novel planning process and giving him a past is one of my first priorities. My son once told me that a friend of his was the only male in a household full of women and it had made him aware of female sensitivities – but if he hadn’t stuck up for himself he would’ve spent his life being bossed about. I was intrigued! I know the friend and he certainly is no pushover, so I decided to give a similar background to Martyn Mayfair in Love & Freedom.

Having the novelist’s gene for drama and emotion, I embroidered it a bit, and decided that Clarissa, Martyn’s eldest sister, is really his mother. So his other sisters are really his aunts … And Martyn and Clarissa have a relationship so prickly that cacti are jealous. 

You might wonder why I bother knowing the ins and outs of Martyn’s family. After all, he just has to stride on stage being tall, dark and handsome (which he is, as it happens) wearing a label that says ‘hunk’, right? The heroine will find him irresistible and …

Wrong. How could he act, react and interact with the plot, if he didn’t know who he is? If he hasn’t lived a life to make him that person? How would Honor fancy a one-dimensional man? (Actually, here’s a hint about what first grabs Honor’s attention: His stubble was as dark as the straight hair that fell either side of his face and flicked across his forehead above near-black eyes, like a Manga character. Exotic cheekbones and a sculpted jaw … UK dictionaries probably said: toned – see Martyn Mayfair.)

An Ode To, Well...Boys! A Look at Lad Lit By Cesca Martin

BY CESCA MARTIN

 When you think of boys you don’t think of soppy love stories, you don’t think of fluffy endings.  You don’t think they’re ever worried about whether we like them, whether life is all it’s cracked up to be, you don’t think they’re ever racked by insecurity – these are MEN - they build fire and own tool boxes and watch SPORT.   

They’re all boy-like and strange and well... different from us.

I don’t know about you but in my house if I said I wanted a DMC he would assume I wanted to buy a subscription to a new sports channel on Sky.  If I said I wanted a good long chat about his thoughts he would wish to go into some detail about the latest result in the Premiership – why have Villa had such a poor season?  What does he really feel...  about the new Chelsea manager? 

So with this in mind you would think boys should not be any good at writing books that girls like.  We’re really, really different.  Girls have feelings and want to talk about them.  We’re thoughtful and kind and nice to animals.  We like worrying, we relish a good freak out over the smallest trivial thing.  And a freak out about the big stuff.  And the middling stuff.  We can be found crying at inexplicable moments in ridiculous places.  We like to blame that on hormones.  Of course we get all huffy and point out you’re being sexist if you blame it on our hormones but...  The point is we like to escape from the madness for a moment into books that make us laugh and cry and say “that’s me”. 

So it is with some trepidation that many women pick up their first ‘Lad Lit’ book (the ‘man’ version of chick lit for those not in the know).  In fact a few girls have recently admitted to me that they have never bought a ‘Lad Lit’ book, have never even sampled the genre.  Have never even considered doing so.  How could a man possibly write a book that a woman would enjoy?  It can’t be done! 

But they are missing out.  These men are simply fantastic at what they do, and we get the
bonus of a little glimpse into their uniquely boy world.  For years I was lending Danny Wallace’s ‘Yes Man’ to any man/woman/beast who entered my home, I foist a copy of William Sutcliffe’s ‘Are You Experienced’ on any poor pupil who announces he might go on a Gap Yah and for any science geeks there is the wonderfully funny Richard Asplin’s  ‘T shirt and Genes’.  And it doesn’t even stop there, the list goes on... Iain Hollingshead, Nick Hornby, Matt Dunn, Mike Gayle...

The heroes are wonderfully well-written men going through the usual crises of being alive.  The characters are full to the brim with witticisms and the books do often make even the toughest girl go ‘Ahhh’.  So ladies - Lad Lit - books written by boys that if they were written by girls would be defined as chick lit.  There are less shoes in them but lots and lots of laughs. 

Dublin Spots Made Famous by Chick Lit Legends by Anne Clarke

BY ANNE CLARKE

Dublin is the perfect spot for book-loving girls to re-fabulize themselves. I should mention that I work for Tourism Ireland but I've been saying this for years before I started there!

Chick lit writers have long been inspired by Dublin so here's a selection of great spots to visit - all of which have been immortalised by our favourite writers.

Have a walk around Trinity College Dublin and soak up the atmosphere (mentioned in Thanks for the Memories by Cecelia Ahern and of course Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy).

For designer gorgeousness, waft around the glossy Brown Thomas department store on Grafton Street in the centre of Dublin city (as mentioned in Cecelia Ahern's PS I Love You). There, you can peruse the shoes and caress the Chanel. Personally, I find it very soothing!

For great shopping deals that aren't designer head into Dunnes Stores (as mentioned in Marian Keyes' Sushi For Beginners). There's a good Dunnes at the top of Grafton Street. Their Savida range is one to check out. Also mentioned in Sushi for Beginners is the sea at Dun laoghaire, which is a short journey (on bus or train) outside Dublin City centre. Marian actually writes some of the book from the perspective of the sea and once you take a walk on the pier you will see why. It's an amazing spot - and really blows away the cobwebs.

For some great drinks and maybe a bit of talent spotting of the male kind head to Hogan's Pub on George's Street (it features in This Charming Man by Marian).

I was only in Dublin the other weekend and I came back feeling like I'd been away for a week. My friend Jen and I went and our nails done in a nail bar on Camden and then we took them (our newly fabulized nails) out for cocktails!

DISCOVER IRELAND!

How Ireland Influences My Writing by Bernadette Strachan

Bernadette's latest novel Why Do We Have to Live with Men is out now. Look out for our review coming later this week!

Am I properly Irish? This was a hot topic amongst my cousins while I was growing up. They were, they insisted, 'proper', having been born in Ireland. I was some sort of hybrid, a London-born and raised pretender. I had a mental image of myself in a bowler hat and an Irish Dancing costume.

Now that I'm all grown up, I know I'm the real thing. My genetic material is 100% Irish, and you can't buck those genes. They are rampant, un-ignorable and they force you to see the funny side of everything. And the sad, making me weep uncontrollably at country music, films involving dying animals, old men in the supermarket with ready meals for one in their baskets … the list is endless.

Even when my subject matter isn't Irish, I write with a Celtic eye. I like idiosyncrasies, the little
quirks that mark people out as individuals. Of course, I have to be careful: ladle on too many quirks and you have a character who is unsympathetically irritating. Growing up in a family where everybody was larger than life (even the quiet ones managed to be quieter than other quiet people) means I have a high tolerance for eccentricity, and have to rein my characters in at times.

I find inspiration in my family, but if I was brave enough to write about them in their unexpurgated glory nobody would believe it. So, I iron out their kinks a little.

My grandmother, a typically stoic and terrifying Irish matriarch who brought up eleven hundred* children on tuppence a week in post-civil war Dublin often springs to mind when I'm writing.

Her nickname (the Irish are keen on nicknames – one of my aunts has four and answers to all of them, but not to her real name) was 'Baby', a moniker that endured in to her old age. Baby was the essence of kindness, often going without in order to lend money to some fellow tenement dweller with a sob story, yet had the unyielding fervour of a hanging judge when discussing moral issues. There were many of these. In Baby's eyes it was immoral to sit in a parked car with a man, or wear lipstick, or fart on a sunday: she was a strict woman.

Baby's turn of phrase was memorable. She had a way of making the mundane funny, but her real talent was for insults. The Irish are brilliant at abuse. My Grandmother once told a snooty, queue jumping woman wearing a hat decorated with wax fruit to “go home and eat your hat”. She referred to the woman next door, who was cursed with alopecia, “Nine Hairs”, and a bandy-legged grandchild was christened “Earwig”. We couldn't help laughing, even though we knew she was cruel.

Perhaps that kind of acidity is an urban phenomenon. My Father's family are from the west, where the rain makes the grass a neon emerald, and breeds people of few words. The landscape there is unescapable, looming and wide and crammed with poetry.

When I think of the west of Ireland, I think of soft colours and hazy textures, always damp but always breathing with the ghosts of the past. It's very pagan, despite the country's maniacal Catholicism. You can hear the beat of the old music in the trees.

If I'm going all dewy eyed, forgive me! The Irish, along with a love of words and tendency to scrap, are all nostalgic for the auld country, even if they weren't actually born there.

Visit Bernadette's fabulous blog

Discover Ireland! 

Guest Post - Perfectionism and Post-Its: Revising a novel with Julie Cohen

I will happily admit, when it comes to writing, I am a freaky perfectionist.  Having been an English teacher for ten years probably doesn’t help me in this way.  I need to feel that I have every sentence correct, every fact matching up, the whole thing the best I can make it, before I show my work to anyone else.  The mere thought of someone seeing my imperfect, messy first drafts brings me out in hives.  One time a copy editor rang me (while I was on holiday) and mentioned that I’d said it was Wednesday in my manuscript when it was clear from the context that it was Tuesday.  I nearly died of embarrassment.

 You’d think, with this obsession, I would write slowly, double-checking every comma.  But I figured out a long time ago that if I were to indulge my inner perfectionist while I was writing a first draft, I would never get past page 26 or so.  So I’ve developed the strategy of writing my first drafts just for me.  I write them as quickly as I can, about 7000 to 10,000 words per week, and if something is wrong, I rarely change it.  I just keep on going.  If I need to research something, I put an “XXX” in the margin and move on.

 The outcome of this is usually a first draft which is a total mess.  So I go through a process of neatening, straightening, and polishing before I show the book to anyone else.  Usually I make a list of revisions I know I have to do, right away—things that have changed from the beginning of the book as I’ve written them.  For example, in GETTING AWAY WITH IT, I eliminated a character, changed the geography of the setting, and gave my heroine a pilot’s licence.  Then I print out the whole manuscript and read it through, making notes and making text-level changes on the page to type in later.

 Then it starts getting satisfyingly picky and perfectionist.  I get the Post-It notes out.  I don’t plan my novels beforehand, but I find it extremely useful to map out my story after I’ve written it.  A visual map gives me an instant view of whether I’ve balanced the different story threads, whether I’ve structured the book correctly, whether I’ve developed my character arcs enough.  I write a quick summary Post-It for each thing that happens in the book, using different colours for different story strands.  I put them on paper in chronological order, and I get a lovely, useful Post-It plan:

At a glance I can see where I’m missing scenes, or where I’ve repeated myself.  My Post-It plan becomes my road map for revising my book so that it makes sense.  (I lost my last one a couple of weeks ago, mid-revision, and I was hyperventilating.  Fortunately I found it behind the printer.)  It’s also very handy for writing a synopsis, which I usually do after I’ve written my book whenever possible.

 I’ve become addicted to the Post-Its.  I made all my students do them on the last course I taught.  (There’s a video of me going on about it here.)

 I also print out a calendar and plot each event on it.  This is really useful when you’ve got several different stories going on at once, which you have to plot against something that has a definite time arc—for example, a pregnancy or a summer holiday. This sort of thing makes my brain explode, but it’s worth it to avoid those humiliating phone calls from the copy editor.

 Then I polish like mad, adding in research and smoothing out my prose.  And give in the book.  And sit back and chew my fingernails to stubs.

You can read more about Julie's Post It method on her blog!

GET YOUR OWN RAINBOW POST ITS

Julie Cohen's novel 'Getting Away With It' is out now!

Visit Julie's Website

Follow Julie on Twitter

 

Guest Post - Can a Bloke Like Chick Lit? By Jonathan Eaves

Jonathan Eaves is 40 years old, married, lives in Cheshire and is far too fond of beer for his own good. He writes predominately for fun but only because no-one seems willing to pay him for it. He did once make a failed attempt to wrest the comic fantasy crown from Terry Pratchett with his novel Rude Awakenings. Reactions to the book were mixed. Some people merely disliked it whilst others actively hated it. Consequently it deservedly bombed but, undeterred, he’s currently working on the sequel which only goes to show that some people never know when to quit...

Strange Love (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Chick Lit)

 By Jon Eaves

 Okay, before I start, I am aware that the term ‘Chick Lit’ is sometimes frowned upon these days. The Genre-Formally-Known-As-Chick Lit is now called Women’s Contemporary Fiction, or Women’s Commercial Fiction or Women’s ‘something else beginning with a C’ Fiction. But my wife still calls it Chick Lit, and she reads bucket loads of the stuff, so if it’s good enough for her, it’s good enough for me.

In any case, I’m talking about a very particular type of Chick Lit. The cover will invariably be pale pink or baby blue. The title will be written in a curly, a whirly or even possibly a squirly font.  There will, without exception, be a smattering of either silvery stars or shiny red hearts or, in the worst case scenario, purple butterflies. The cover illustration will be a stylised colour drawing of the thin, pretty heroine wearing deep red lip gloss and very pointy shoes. And, underneath the title, there will undoubtedly be a pithy (read cheesy) strap line along the lines of ‘Abigail thought love was a four letter word’ or ‘Could a little white lie really ruin true love?’ etc. By now I think you will know exactly what sort of book I’m talking about…

Due to what amounts to a borderline addiction on my wife’s part, there are hundreds upon hundreds of these books stacked upon bookshelves around the house and heaped in piles at the side of the bed or by the toilet. Much to my amazement Ally will regularly read 2 or 3 a week and often re-read one that she may only have read a month or so previously. Subsequently I have often struggled to understand why such a busy, intelligent, capable woman would waste so much of her precious weekend reading such… rubbish. I know that I am partly to blame for my wife’s virtual dependency on these books - whenever it’s my turn to do the weekly shop and I happen to spot such a tome, particularly when it has one of those ‘£3.99, Sainsbury’s Book Club’ stickers on the cover, I’ll pop it into the basket, knowing I’ll get not only a couple of brownie points for my thoughtfulness, but also an extra hour’s kip on a Sunday morning because Ally will be reading and therefore won’t feel the need to nudge me in the ribs with her elbow and tell me it’s time to get up. But even so!

To her credit Ally generally just ignores my jibes over her choice of reading, occasionally responding by casually accusing me of reading what she sneeringly terms ‘Boy Trash’. Boy Trash consists mainly of contemporary military or espionage action thrillers and its authors would include Andy McNab, Lee Child and Jack Higgins. I would have to please guilty to my wife’s accusation, but I maintain that, when it comes to any measure of literary merit, ‘Boy Trash’ is way beyond the pink and fluffy style of ‘Chick Lit’ which my wife devours each Saturday and Sunday. How can you possibly say that, Ally says sweetly, when you’ve never even read a single one of my so-called pink and fluffy books?

Guest Blog - Neo Chicklit is here - just add Vodka! by Amy Spurling

Around 1991 I was living in Moscow. There was lots of snow on the ground and I didn’t have any shoes. I’d put my DMs in the oven because I was trying to thaw them out, but instead they’d melted. As Doc Martens weren’t readily available in Moscow at that time I had to get another pair sent out from Camden!

    Many other unusual things happened to me while I was living in the former Soviet Union, there was the time I took a taxi that was an ambulance (off-duty!), or the time a friend of mine (English) was on the Russian equivalent of Blind Date – it was called Love at First Sight. We were in the audience cheering him on when he got the girl and the cruise! Even if it was with several other couples at the same time.

From Moscow I went to Tashkent – partly lured by the dry warm climate and the rugger-ball –shaped, salmon-fleshed, melons the size of overnight bags. In Tashkent I met a large man carrying an equally large jar of home-made red wine - in my lift. He and his equally large friends persuaded me to visit their homeland and the homeland of the grapevine – Georgia. I have since drunk many a glass of delicious Georgian red in both London and Tbilisi.

These are the sorts of things I have weaved into my first Neo Chick-Lit novel. What is Neo Chick-Lit?, you ask. Well, people kept saying that Chick-Lit was dead, so this is (dare I say it?) its slightly maturer younger sister. There’s still humour, drinks and men, but with a darker satirical edge and less handbags and dieting. The Neo Chick-Lit chick is more likely to be from the arts’ world than the corporate one. And she has intellect rather than self-awareness. Hobbies include travel to exotic and uncomfortable locations. She is more likely to be found with an obscure tome (i.e. The Red Years - collectivization and dekulakization) accompanying her favourite tipple, than a pizza.  Other heroines which feature some of the above are Anna Blundy’s edgy heroine, Faith Zanetti and the original - Bridget Jones.