Unless you've been living in a cave in outer or indeed inner Mongolia for the past month, you'll know my new new book, Happy Endings, is due to be released in 2013. So, as a pre-season friendly, I thought I'd give you a tinkling of a warm-up about the book. I'm not sure that last sentence makes sense. Basically, I thought I'd give you an idea what to expect when you're expecting...my new novel. Why can't I just say what I mean in simple English without all the verbal diarrhea, is probably what you're thinking about now. Stay with me.
Happy Endings is a book about people like us. I use the word us in the sense of everyone who goes through that point in their lives when they're trying to find out what will make them happy. I imagine everyone, at some point, has that moment when they realise they aren't happy. That life hasn't turned out exactly as they had imagined. We also have that moment when we know what we're doing is exactly what we should be doing. Happy Endings is about those moments. A friend who read it, and did a rather lovely edit for me, suggested it should be called moment because that's what it's really about...moments. Moments that make us and moments that break us.
If you've read my first novel, This Thirtysomething Life, you'll know it's a laugh-out-loud comedy, but Happy Endings, has a lot more pathos and emotion. It's still funny in places, but whereas I approached Thirtysomething like a sit-com, I approached this as a novel. It still has realistic and I hope warm and endearing characters, but don't expect the same amount of gags. However, what you're going to get, I hope, is a page-turning story that will grip you from the first page to the last. It will take you on a journey and when you get to the end you're going to wish it wasn't over - at least that's the plan.
My goal when writing any book is to make you (the reader) not want to put it down. One review of Thirtysomething said it was 'unputdownable' and I hope this is true of Happy Endings too. I love Happy Endings. I think it will speak to both men and women, to young and old and everyone in-between because it's about something we've all been through and moments we've all had.
Hugs
Jon X
