The Joy of Ex – when a #SlidingDoors moment goes wrong and your novel about #ToxicMasculinity doesn’t quite hit the notes you planned
February 5, 2019
The subject of equality and how men act towards women has only become more relevant since I wrote The Joy of Ex.
The novel follows the story of a bet between two [male] friends about the nature of love and whether someone who once loved you can love you again.
The novel was written from the point of view of the men – they always say write about what you know – but I wanted to extenuate the pressures which make men behave the way they do towards women.
The ongoing themes were the three “M”s of marriage, maternity and mortgage which I had found men so feared.
They build up walls and hide from each of these types of commitment – some of these issues more than others (and some men more than other men), I depict a protagonist who has a mortgage, but a profound fear of marriage and maternity.
This created a tale to explore these themes, against a back drop of a bet, which only heightened the sense of disconnect from women.
When I first sent the manuscript to agents I got a call from one. I was pleased, I had a list of 70+ agents to send the manuscript to and the first round had resulted in a call. I assumed there would be more calls.
Flashback to 2001 and my previous novel, UHF Shadow I had sent this to lots of agents and one had called back. It was a Wednesday, I know as I was in the office late on deadline day putting the newspaper to bed and I took the call and walked away from my desk, the journalists and subs watching me stroll off to take a private call on my mobile. She wanted to see the whole novel as she liked the sample chapters I had sent. I sent these off the next day. I didn’t get a deal. But I learnt my work was good enough for all of it to be seen by an agent.
Back to the novel in hand (I may well write more about UHF Shadow another day).
I knew The Joy of Ex was better than UHF Shadow, the main criticism from people who read the earlier work was there was a story, but the premise was weak.
I took on board the constructive criticism and The Joy of Ex was premise through and through – that bet was a beautiful premise upon which hung lots of episodes which built up into a whole narrative.
In the great Chekov tradition, I loaded lots of bullets at the start and shot them off one by one. With the biggest one being shot with the reveal of the reason behind his fear of marriage and maternity.
When I took the call about The Joy of Ex after sending out only the the first wave of samples, I figured there were going to be lots of calls.
This agent said she liked the concept and would sign the book if I agreed to do one thing for her.
As I say, this was the first wave of samples, I assumed there would be lots of interest if this was anything to go by.
She asked for a complete re-write of the novel to make it from a woman’s point of view.
This: a) seemed like a bucket load of work; and b) would mean writing about something I didn’t know – I’d never been a woman, so how could I write as one?
I said: “No”.
Talk about a sliding doors moment.
That one word has no doubt defined everything which has happened to me since I spoke that simple syllable.
No other agent even so much as called me.
Sanitised versions of my concept sprung up. Maybe this is coincidence and maybe this is connected. I will never know for sure.
Since I wrote the novel the concept of toxic masculinity has become something I am aware of. Thanks in part to Tim Winton, a great Australian novelist who has an ongoing theme around masculinity in our modern world.
The two men in The Joy of Ex are completely toxic. I even led the reader up a garden path of redemption towards the end of the novel*, only for it to roll away with the wind. He was just too toxic for salvation.
I had always intended the protagonist to be an anti hero. A bastard who perhaps women would love to hate.
The type of male I was trying to create would be just the type of guy women flocked to the worse his alpha male behaviour became.
I wrote The Joy of Ex intentionally to be challenging and thought provoking. There is a line in The Doors where Val Kilmer’s Jim Morrison says: “I guess I always liked being hated” – this line was in my mind as I wrote the novel and I think this shines from the character.
Indeed, the close of the novel refers to the protagonist knowing he was exactly what his sister had called him.
I had used the word already in the novel, so avoided a second C-bomb at the end, feeling the repeat would detract from the power of using it in the first place.
The Joy of Ex was published more than a decade ago. It had premise and a plot.
In retrospect, I think I could have made the irony around the toxicity of these men more apparent. Hindsight is 2020.
Life is all about learning and I know the jump from book to book has made me a better writer, both in terms of reflecting on what I had written and the time passing between each.
In the end I self-published The Joy of Ex as I had drafted it and didn’t sell many copies. But it can be purchased for Kindle from Amazon here.
I am working on a new novel, but that is a story for another day. Hopefully a decade from now I will not be lamenting either not getting my message across as I had intended, nor another sliding doors moment over the fate of this new book.
* I certainly played with the idea of a cut away where Lorna Adams goes home to her fatherless son, but I felt that was letting them both off the hook and didn’t stand up in the logic of the narrative, so got cut.
Digital publishing – price is stalling the revolution
December 21, 2012
Digital publishing should be leading a revolution in publishing bringing great books to the masses – but this is stalling due to price.
Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin, introduced paperback novels in 1935 with the intention that books should cost no more than a packet of cigarettes.
I don’t buy cigarettes, but my friend Google tells me in the UK they cost a bit less than £6.50 for a pack of 20.
Second on the Amazon best selling book as I write is by Bradley Wiggins, the paperback costs £7.19 from Amazon (RRP £7.99) while the Kindle edition costs £6.29 (and the reason I have selected 2nd on the best seller list is because first doesnt appear to have a Kindle edition thanks Jamie Oliver)
So the paperback costs more than the cigarettes, while the digital edition costs marginally less than they do.
Let’s think about this for a minute – the difference between a paperback and the Kindle edition is 90p.
That 90p must account for the cost of printing, the cost of paper, the cost of shipping, the cost of storage and possibly other costs I am not factoring in. And bearing in mind publishers sell to retailers at least 50% discount for paper books, then we should be looking at 45p as being the cost of each of those things.
While the Kindle edition is some data uploaded to Amazon who then download it after the customer purchases. Quite often the data is a couple of megabits which if it costs anything at all to store and transmit, cannot be more than a few pence.
So why does a couple of MBs of data cost not much less than a paperback (with all the costs of printing, transporting and storing) ????
I don’t know what is going on in the offices of big publishing houses across the planet, so I hesitate to say this is all about profiteering – they may have a legitimate reason – which I would really like to hear (feel free to comment to explain yourself if you work at a big publishing house).
However, what I do know is I have four books available on Amazon* – three are almost out of print as paperbacks (and the publisher doesn’t plan to print anymore as they will be available forever on Kindle) – but all are available in Kindle.
The paperback prices are in the range you would expect as compared to books from other publishing houses. But, the Kindle editions all retail at £1.92 (which is based on the US price of $2.99 which I understand is the minimum price you can put on a Kindle book).
I mention the prices of my books primarily to make the point I am practicing what I am preaching (and if Amazon removes their minimum price I think they would go down again – publishing to a literate world should be about volume of sales not price per unit – the industry values best sellers (not highest priced sellers) after all.
Market forces will win out and the big publishing houses will flourish or not in the digital era. But keeping prices more or less the same for paper objects compared to couple of MBs downloads is probably not sustainable – look at what Apple has done to CDs with iTunes at 79p a track. Look at what Netflix and others are doing to movie and box set DVD sales.
The digital revolution is here and if the old publishers cannot change the price then new ones who will change the cost and the business model to compete will rise up and take their place – it is how the market works.
*My books available on Kindle:
UHF Shadow – novel, available now
March 31, 2011
UHF Shadow, one of my older novels, written in 2000 / 01 is now available to buy:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1537046
You can also look through some preview pages at this link.
The back page blurb says:
“Ever felt like you were not quite tuned into the rest of the world?
Do you watch things happen all around you, but whatever you do, none of your actions seem to make any difference in the world?
Do people mistake you for someone else, think you are someone they should know, should care about?
Have you ever felt like the only impression you have made on this planet is your name being tattooed on the backside of your first lover?
Ever felt like you were the UHF Shadow you get behind people on a television set which is not quite tuned in fully?
This novel is for anyone who has ever felt out of place in the world, out of tune with reality, or like a child wearing grown ups clothing.”
Edd Keating 