Today, reader chums, I am more than a little delighted to be hosting fellow author and all-round gorgeous lovely, A.L. Michael on the penultimate stop of her blog tour. 

Her latest book, ‘My So-Called (Love) Life’ is the story of the brilliantly named Tigerlily James,  founder member of the ‘Young and Bitter Club’ who is happily single and cynical until she gets an invite to her Ex’s wedding and suddenly needs a ‘plus one’. Enter Ollie, barman at her favourite cake and cocktail haunt. He offers the perfect solution – he will pose as a fake boyfriend if she pretends to be his girlfriend for three months – no sex, no strings. Tig has finally found a way to date without the heartbreak. Surely this is her best idea ever? Or maybe not…

Here, A.L. Michael talks about ‘Stuckness’ and the pain of the late twentysomething:

There’s only one reason a group of people would insist on something called a ‘Misery Dinner’. A Misery Dinner is something in my latest novel, My So Called (Love) Life, and it’s a monthly dinner where you get together with your dear friends, eat gluttonous food, drink margaritas and feel damn sorry for yourself. You list the horrible things that have happened to you, you wallow in them, surround yourself in them, almost allow yourself to *enjoy* the shittiness that has been inflicted on you.

You know those friends who constantly moan about their partner, or their parents, or their ‘difficult situation’ (whatever that might be), ask for your opinion, take up hours of your time (you know because you counted) and then do NOTHING? Only to start the cycle over and over again the next week? These people ENJOY it. They are true wallowers.

Whether you’re the wallower, or you’re the poor friend, you are in a state of ‘stuckness’. You can’t move forward. Maybe you don’t want to. This state can happen to anyone dealing with grief or shock, but it seems to be a standard moment in the late twenty something life. Things don’t look like they’re changing. And you’re not entirely convinced you want them to. Because, yeah, things suck…but they could be much worse, couldn’t they?

The job you vaguely dislike could be a shittier, worse paid one. The partner you don’t particularly like could be horrible. The friends who let you down could be arseholes. It’s safer to be stuck. Except then you’re never happy.

My So Called (Love) Life is about what happens when you decide to let go of the stuckness, even when it’s scary. When you decide to take a chance on someone who makes your heart flutter, on a job that makes you panic, on the ideas you forgot you were passionate about.

So have faith, young stuck ones- be brave. Say no to the Misery Dinner, and hello to second chances.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/My-So-Called-Love-Life-Michael-ebook/dp/B00S6T93OQ

 

Praise for A.L. Michael

‘I know it’s a good book when I shut the kindle cover and sigh with contentment. The Last Word totally did it for me.’ – 4* from Angela (Goodreads)

‘This is a funny, funny book.’ 5* to The Last Word from Rosee (Amazon)

‘Fresh, fast and…had that magical romance feeling and a bit of hotness that you just can’t help but love<./b>. Absolutely brilliant!’ 5* to The Last Word from The Book Geek Wears Pajamas

‘I LOVED THIS. I laughed, I cried, I fell in love. All of the emotions were felt in the reading of this book and it is definitely one of the best Christmas releases that I’ve read this year.’ 5* to Driving Home for Christmas from Erin’s Choice

‘I laughed, I cried and I was left with that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you read something wonderful.’ 5* to Driving Home for Christmas from That Thing She Reads

 

 

Picture the scene.

A slightly dishevelled woman sits at a laptop, her brain infused with a mixture of caffeine and fatigue. The washing machine hums comfortingly in the corner. The reassuring sound of Peppa Pig distracting her four year old daughter enables her to relax a little. She stares at the computer screen and desperately tries to channel her inner Anne Tyler. Always good to aim as high as possible, she tells herself. She blinks at the word count figure. Twenty thousand words. 

How is she ever going to get past twenty thousand words?

A squeak from upstairs causes her to flick her eyes from the screen to the clock. Twenty minutes. It’s only been twenty minutes for Pete’s sake. She pretends she didn’t hear it. Only persistent wailing will distract her from her task. She holds her fingers over the keyboard and types. The words come quickly and then she stops. She reads them back to herself and sighs.

Another squeak.

This is definitely the squeak of wakefulness. She deletes everything she has written and sighs again.

The squeak has become a,’Mamamamamamamam,’ very clear and very definite.

She glances again at the twenty thousand word count figure and closes the document.

‘Mum!’ cries her daughter from the other room. She gets up from her computer and pauses in the doorway to the living room.

‘Yes darling,’ she asks wearily. ‘What is it?’

The baby is getting a little impatient now, his shouts constant and insistent. ‘Mam! Mam! Mam!’

The little girl’s eyes do not leave the television screen. ‘Baby’s crying,’ she says.

Picture the scene five years later.

A slightly dishevelled woman sits at a laptop, her brain infused with a mixture of caffeine and fatigue. The washing machine hums comfortingly in the corner. The reassuring stillness of a quiet house, because the children are at school, enables her to relax a little. She stares at the computer screen and desperately tries to channel her inner Anne Tyler.

Some things never change, she tells herself.

She glances at the pictures surrounding her desk showing the covers for her three published titles and at the framed picture with the Not Quite Perfect cover at the centre and ‘Forty Fantastic Reviews for a Fabulous Forty Year Old’ that her best friend gave her for her birthday. She smiles.

Everything has changed. You just have to get past the twenty thousand word mark.

And drink a lot of coffee.

 

 

 

I love baking. Absolutely love it. I love cakes, biscuits, pies and tarts. I love the Great British Bake-Off and I REALLY love Mary Berry. She is a perfect baking goddess. I on the other hand, am not a perfect baking goddess but by golly I’m a trier. Here are my 5 not quite perfect baking moments

 

My daughter’s 1^st birthday cake

I was determined to do this properly. It was my First-Born’s 1st birthday after all. I went to a cake shop.  I hired a tin. It was shaped like a dog. Quite a large dog actually. My Mum (who is a bit like Mary Berry but with a south-east London twang) came over to help. We seemed to need a huge quantity of ingredients but it looked okay when it came out of the oven. When we tried to turn it out of the tin it became what it was; a huge wet dog. The dog’s head fell off. I cried. My Mum went out to buy more margarine.

 

My son’s 1^st birthday cake

For some reason I decided that what my one-year-old son really wanted for his first birthday was a 3D Red Dinosaur cake. He seemed to go RAAAR whenever he saw a dinosaur so that was evidence enough for me. I scoured the internet and found some truly amazing works of art and with my customary optimism I thought, ‘How hard can it be?’ Okay, so I think we all know the answer to that question. The ‘triceratops’ I produced looked quite like a hedgehog but my Mum, three-year-old daughter and I boldly covered it in buttercream icing the colour of innards. The photos of my daughter holding her hands up for inspection following this exercise make my blood run cold even today. She looks like a tiny murderer.

 

My mum’s birthday sponge

My mum makes the best Victoria sandwich in the world (sorry Mary but she just does) so I thought I would return the compliment one year by making her a special one filled with strawberries, passion fruit and cream. The result? Raw sponge but delicious fresh fruit and cream. I am a legend.

 

The real rock cakes

I’m good at burning things. It’s something of a specialist field for me. This recipe was given to me by my beloved Mum. The cakes should be moist and teeming with delicious sultanas and other assorted dried fruits. They should be craggy on the outside, like delectable cakey boulders topped with crunchy Demerara sugar. They should not be actual cakey boulders which could happily double up as small but lethal weapons. I would like to blame the oven but can only blame myself. I forgot they were in there and went off to do something else. For a bit too long.

 

My husband’s Jaffa Cake birthday cake

Jaffa Cakes are my husband’s favourite biscuit or cake. I know they’re called cakes but they look like biscuits but I’m not getting into that debate again. Last time I did that I ended up having a spat with an Eccles cake-fancier and we all know how vicious they can be. So I decided that I would make him an actual Jaffa Cake and there is an excellent recipe on the BBC Food website if you want to try it. If involves doing clever things with egg whites, orange jelly and chocolate. What’s not to like right? Anyway, I was actually quite pleased at how this turned out. It basically looked like a giant Jaffa Cake and as we sliced it, the layers of biscuit, jelly and chocolate appeared reassuringly familiar. We tasted it and paused. ‘Tastes exactly like the ones you get in the packets,’ remarked my six-year-old son. I think it was a compliment but I had possibly hoped for more.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/homemadejaffacakes_91480

 

This post first appeared last year on http://blog.rachelcotterill.com/

Oh, so you’re a writer?’

I’m still getting used to this label myself and it makes my heart beat a little faster as I reply,  ‘I am.’

‘Wow! That’s fantastic. So what do you write?’

‘Fiction.’

‘Oh, what kind of fiction?’

And this is when my heart beats even faster but mainly due to panic as I struggle for a specific answer. ‘Women’s fiction?’ I say with an upward inflection, which either makes me sound unsure or Australian.

‘Oh, so Chick-Lit?’

My mind races. What is the definition of Chick Lit again? I can never remember. Which books and authors fall into that category? I do a quick book-audit in my brain. Bridget Jones? Sophie Kinsella? Marian Keyes? I would be honoured to stand alongside these. ‘Er yes, Chick Lit. That’s it. I write Chick Lit.’

‘Oh. Right. I don’t really like Chick Lit. I prefer something a bit meatier.’

I’ve had this conversation many times; different versions of it but all leading me to the same conclusion. Genre labels are a bit of a pain. They are woefully inadequate but our human brains desperately crave them as we try to comprehend the world of books. Personally, I think Marian Keyes’ novels are about as meaty as they come and over the past few years they have been re-defined to reflect this. Still, in the ‘buy it now-140 characters-snap decision’ world we inhabit, it’s a problem and a thorny one at that.

Start digging very far into a debate on Chick Lit and it’s not long before your feminist credentials are called into question.  It has been criticised for being sexist and dismissive but this argument is countered by those who say that we shouldn’t get bogged down by the term.

I can see both sides of the argument. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the label.  After all, male writers aren’t defined in the same way.  The term, ‘Lad Lit,’ has been bandied around but never really stuck and somehow doesn’t sound as patronising as its female counterpart. Then again, if readers who love the books aren’t bothered, why should I be? The point is that everyone is different. We all approach life from a different angle. Not every woman wants to be a feminist and not every woman likes a book with a pink cover. Debate it by all means, register your opinion but don’t lose sight of the ultimate goal; finding books and authors that you love. If a genre label helps you to do this then crack open the Bubbly. Its work is done.

It also depends on how you discover books. Way back when I was a bookseller working on the venerated Charing Cross Road, I discovered Louis de Bernieres’ Latin American Trilogy. I tried to explain how brilliant they were to my then boyfriend (now husband).

‘He writes in such a fantastic way. It’s so full of wit and truth but it’s got this really brilliant magical element too,’ I gushed, thinking that I had discovered something unique.

‘Well that’s Magical Realism for you,’ my boyfriend observed.

‘That’s what?’ I asked, my bubble of inspiration burst.

‘Magical Realism. You know, Isabel Allende, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie.’

‘Oh. Right.’ I was crest-fallen. These were my books. This was my author. He didn’t fit a genre. He transcended it. We had spent quality time together. I understood him and he understood me. How dare people pigeon-hole him in such a way? But of course, I was missing the point. Not only had I discovered a new author, but a whole new world. I read One Hundred Years of Solitude and fell in love again.

So genres have their uses and not just as a way for booksellers and publishers to direct us, but so that we can find our way through myriads of wonderful books.  Problems arise when the genre is too broad and thematically different books are thrown together or when as in many cases, a book falls into lots of different categories.

In the interest of research, I thought I’d pin down once and for all where my first book, Not Quite Perfect fits.

Is it centred on women’s life experience and marketed to females? Yes. That’s a tick to women’s fiction. Okey dokey.

Does it address issues of modern womanhood, often humorously and light-heartedly?  So people tell me. Okay, well it’s Chick Lit then. Alrighty. If you insist. 

Does it have a primary focus on romantic love between two people with an ultimately satisfying ending? Maybe. And is it set after the end of the Second World War? It is. That’s Contemporary Romance then.

So, to recap, Not Quite Perfect is a Chick Lit-Contemporary Romance-Women’s Fiction book or as I like to think of it, some words I wrote down about two sisters’ lives with a little bit of romance, quite a lot of humour and some tear-inducing sadness. Not easy is it?

In truth, the key thing is the story and whether readers engage with that story and its characters. Genres exist to help readers find books but they’re not the be all and end all. The most important thing is to get lost in a story that you enjoy and keep getting lost in stories whether they are Chick Lit, Crime, Literary fiction or any other kind of writing that you relish. It’s about reading, enjoying, sharing and discovering.  It’s all about the books. I think that’s one thing on which we can all agree.

 

This post first appeared last year on http://www.Novelicious.com