Bodice-bursting humour
Reactions Your Family and Friends Will Have to Your Debut Historical Romance Novel
Congratulations are in order, right?
Your best friend: Yo, we need to celebrate this shit. Let’s get fucked up. What? Yes of course I’ve read it. My favourite part? I love the bit where the main character thinks everything is hopeless but then you reveal it’s not. (Skulls a tequila shot and winks at you) And the sex scenes.
Your postman: (Struggling to lug the 1500 hardcover copies you ordered that will sit in your garage for years until you one day burn them for warmth when the electricity is cut off) You sure do read a lot of books.
Your mother: Darling (through tears), I thought we were good parents. I never realized how fucked up you were. Did your father do this?
Your father: Best book I’ve ever read. Even better than fifty shades.
Your high school English teacher: I was just wondering, you know, I read the acknowledgements section. Did the printer make a mistake? Did they run out of ink?
Your son: (shaking his head so slowly you convince yourself it is the moon’s gravitational pull rather than disappointment) Don’t ever come to school pick up again. Seriously.
Your best friend through English literature at university, who transferred to business school and has thirteen unfinished manuscripts in their basement: Look, I’m not saying it wasn’t good. The idea itself was worth pursuing, and the prose mostly avoided tripping over itself, but for me it just lacks — ‘beep’ — mailbox full.
Your partner: (marches into the bedroom dressed in tattered robes and a soot-smeared face, screaming) Is this what you want?! Will you actually spend some quality time with me now rather than that slut of an editor?! (NOTE FROM EDITOR: That book was edited?)
Your ex-partner: (extract from a handwritten eight-page letter slipped under your windscreen wiper overnight) I knew you wanted me back. I could tell by the way you drove past my house three years ago with the passenger window half down. If only I had listened to the universe when it spoke to me. When it touched me. Fear not, our paths will cross again.
Your grandmother: You young’uns love to romanticize the bloody past don’t you? It was fuckin’ bleak. You really think we had time for all this rollin’ in the hay shite? I worked 26-hour days.
Your one fan, who has read every single short story, absurdist almost-comedy article, blog post and now legitimate attempt to find a career that could fill the emptiness eroding your insides: I wish we could be friends. I could do with a friend.