Life is silly. Life is messy. Life rarely deals out what you expect and, even if it does, it serves up a side of the unexpected along with everything else. That can be a hard truth to accept but, honestly, it’s what makes life well, life. Even if someone else’s experience somehow seems perfect, you can bet that there’s at least a little bit of crazy going on somewhere behind the scenes. Once I didn’t just grudgingly accept that fact but outright embraced it, things started going a whole lot smoother for me.
That’s not to say that silly, messy, chaotic things no longer happen in my life. They happen just as much. But knowing that’s just how things are, my stress levels have gone way down. I don’t mean to sound defeatist or like I’ve resigned myself to living in a Monty Python movie. It’s just that no matter how well you plan things out, no matter how good a person you try to be, sh** will happen.
There’s a saying that goes something like, Man makes plans and God laughs. I don’t think that necessarily means God is sitting out there looking for opportunities to screw with your life. I think it really means that He’d like us to lighten up, quit taking ourselves and this blink-of-an-eye experience so seriously. God, Nature, the Universe–however you classify the Higher Power–has a quirky sense of humor.
I’m not rambling, I promise. I tell you all of this to give some insight into the books I write. Initially, I had a hard time classifying them. I definitely knew the stories I wanted to tell could be categorized as women’s fiction. They had an element of romance, but I didn’t want people to picture a bare-chested Fabio splashed across the cover of a paperback book. No, my books embrace the nutty, awkward, unexpectedness that is life, so I guess that makes me a rom-com writer. The stories I tell aren’t slapstick funny, but they’re real. They depict ridiculous, embarrassing things happening to unsuspecting people, stuff that is hilarious if it’s not happening to you. (Yes, that is a veiled admission that I’ve experienced firsthand some of the things you’ll read about in my books.) You might find some funnier than others, but the silly elements of life are always in there somewhere. They’re a part of me, so they have to be a part of the books I write.
That’s not all there is to tell about me, but it’s a good start. We’ll get to know each other better over the next few months but, in the meantime, keep an eye out for the launch of my next rom-com. It perfectly illustrates how the best-laid plans can so epically awry.
