Hello Blogites,
There are lots of books out there about love, life and growing up. I know that what I’m writing isn’t a new story, and it isn’t likely to win any major awards or go down as a great British novel (here’s to hoping that it does though, eh). It’s a light-hearted comedy. It’s a Romantic comedy. If it was an actor it would be Hugh Grant. If it was an ice-cream it would be vanilla. If it was a band it would be Travis. However, therein lies the reason why I wrote it in the first place. I love Travis. Vanilla is my favourite flavour of ice-cream and I happen to think that Hugh Grant is actually quite good. He’s no Al Pacino or Leonardo Di Caprio, but he isn’t trying to be. He knows what he’s good at and does it probably better than anyone else. Travis make middle of the road pop songs, but probably as good as anyone else out there and yes, vanilla ice-cream has a tough time competing against the myriad of new flavours, but still it’s vanilla, it’s delicious and fills a niche than no other flavour can fill.
What the fuck am I going on about? Good question. The point I’m trying to make is that I wanted to write a comedy about the mundane, the ordinary, the seemingly trivial, but make it real and laugh-out-loud funny. I’ve read just about every book in the same genre, written by men, and yes some are great (Hornby, Parsons, Gayle to name a few), and some are not so good (no names). During my research I came to the conclusion that men are perceived to be either A. Arrogant womanising bastards or B. Soppy, lonely idiots in need of a good kick up the arse. Of course, this doesn’t cover the full spectrum of manliness, but it seems to when it comes to literature. I hope my protagonist Harry Spencer is something a little bit different. He’s everyman and I think also quite uniquely him, although I’ll let you judge that for yourself.
Blog soon x
