#LadLitSunday: Matt Dunn joins the Lad Lit Blog Tour and Rob Radcliffe pens a book by his readers

It's been a quiet week in lad lit land so I will keep this update short!

First off, I am delighted to announce that Matt Dunn will be joining the Lad Lit Blog Tour. The lad lit best-seller will be hosting a guest post from yours truly on his very own blog in a few weeks time.

The first week of the blog tour to promote lad lit has just come to a close and it's been fantastic so far. One of the highlights was being part of a Q&A on Jon Rance's blog, so to have signed up a second hugely successful lad lit author is a real honour. 

And this week I interviewed Rob Radcliffe, who is currently flying high in the Amazon humour charts with his novel Meat Market. One of the highlights of my chat with Rob was finding out about his latest project called Untitled where his readers are helping him write the novel.

Rob said of the unique project: "As a writer you find yourself shut in the dark while you scribble away in the hope your book will connect with your readers once you have finished. For Untitled I have turned that on its head. As I write the chapters I post them on my website and the pages are accessible to people who have signed up to The Novel Experiment reader’s list. I wanted feedback and comments as I wrote this book, I wanted reader engagement as I went through the writing process and so far feedback has been awesome. There have been readers who have made suggestions to me which have helped shape the direction this novel is going and it is great. The title will be voted for by my ever growing email list and it really feel like I am connecting with the people I do this for, my readers"

You can check out the full interview here.

Tweet of the Week
He has a point...

This guy has accused Obama of being “weird and ridiculous”. pic.twitter.com/851pqEn3bp

— Danny Wallace (@dannywallace) April 23, 2016

#LadLitSunday: Mike Gayle and Matthew Norman have new books and Tony Parsons dines with a cannibal

Mike Gayle will be launching his new novel The Hope Family Calendar at Waterstones on Birmingham High Street on June 14 at 7pm. The lad lit superstar (yep, that's a title now!) will be enjoying a glass of wine or two with fans to answers questions at the official book launch.

In Mike's new book, Tom Hope takes the centre stage as a man struggling to get on with life following the death of his wife. A year on from the tragic accident and Tom is arrested, leaving his mother-in-law Linda to step in and take Tom's two daughters off to Australia.Tom is left with the decision to either fall deeper into grief or step up and be the father his girls need. Pre-order the new book at Amazon.

Matthew Norman also has a new book coming out. The Domestic Violets author publishes We're All Damaged on June 1 and has been busy promoting it on Twitter saying: "My pre-pub publicity strategy for We're All Damaged is to awkwardly tell my friends I have a book coming out soon."

The story is about down-on-his-luck Andy Carter who has just lost his wife, his job, ruined his best friend's wedding and is now living in a tiny apartment in New York City with an angry cat. Then Andy meets Daisy who comes with her own baggage, but might just be Andy's last chance to set things right.

Tony Parsons was interviewed by WHSmith this week to promote his new crime thriller The Hanging Club and gave some very interesting answers on his favourite crime fiction, including that the fictional crime character he'd have dinner with is Dr Hannibal Lecter! Parsons said: "I think it would have to be Dr Hannibal Lecter – I am sure he would be civilised, sophisticated, amusing company – as long as I wasn’t actually on the menu." Read the full interview here.

Quick bits

• I will be interviewing lad lit author Rob Radcliffe in the next 1-2 weeks to talk about his book Meat Market, following the Ben Hatch interview I announced last week.
• The #LadLitBlogTour starts this Tuesday at Boon's Bookcase and then goes on to visit a further 38 blogs. Follow the hashtag for all the fun!

Tweet of the week
It's a double whammy this week! First John O'Farrell gives Obama something to think about...

Farage is criticising Obama. Fingers crossed that the President's popularity can survive this.

— John O'Farrell (@mrjohnofarrell) April 15, 2016

...and then Danny Wallace displays his brilliant quick wit once again!

Dolmio only once a week? And I suppose you can’t have a creme egg for breakfast any more. That’s next, mark my words.

— Danny Wallace (@dannywallace) April 15, 2016

#LadLitSunday: Lad Lit authors support the occupiers of Carnegie Library & Rob Radcliffe tops the charts

Lad lit superstars Nick Hornby and David Nicholls have thrown their support behind the occupiers of Carnegie Library by signing an open letter of support to condemn the proposed changes to the Lambeth library service.

Forty protestors have occupied the building in Herne Hill, London, since March 31 to campaign against council plans to close the library and transform it into a healthy living centre. More than 220 writers signed the letter within 24 hours of being asked to do so.

Good news this week for lad lit author Rob Radcliffe as he celebrated his novel Meat Market going straight to number one in the free download charts on Amazon in the humour category. Radcliffe was full of thanks on Twitter for the readers who shot him to the top of the charts.

I am delighted to announce that the Lad Lit Blog Tour has announced another eight dates taking the grand total to 39. Starting at Boon's Book Case on April 19, the tour will the travel all across the UK taking in 26 stops, with eight in the US, two in The Netherlands and two more in Australia. You can follow the tour on Twitter at the #LadLitBlogTour hashtag.

Quick bits

•  Author Nick Spalding will be at the London Book Fair (April 12-14) this week at Olympia, London on Thursday morning. Go see him at the Amazon KDP stand
• I will be interviewing Ben Hatch (author of The P45 Diaries) in the next week or two as part of my Author Interview series

Tweet of the week
Great banter from Danny Wallace this week as always...

So disappointed in El Chapo. How does he keep getting wound up in these things??! pic.twitter.com/BWmPzIhZKO

— Danny Wallace (@dannywallace) April 7, 2016

#LadLitSunday: Matt Dunn donates the dedication in his next book to charity

Another week, another #LadLitSunday and this week there is no other place to start other than the awesome initiative Matt Dunn has set-up to raise money for the charity Streetwise.

The author of Home and The Ex-Boyfriend's Handbook will dedicate his next novel to one lucky winner to donates just £2 on his JustGiving page to help the homeless. Matt has been busy promoting the unique opportunity this week on Twitter by Tweeting: "Win a WHOLE BOOK DEDICATED TO YOU (or someone you love/fancy/want to embarrass) for just £2." The dedication will appear in every single copy sold, not just the copy the winner receives.

It's a brilliant idea and I have already made my donation - you can make your donation here.

Elsewhere, Esquire magazine published the article 50 Novels All Men Should Read. Some of the books included in the list: The Road by Cormac McCarthy, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, and Hearts In Atlantis by Stephen King. Sam Parker who wrote the article writes: "Forget coming-of-age fiction or impenetrable 'classics' – these are the books all grown men should be ticking off. Why? Because they're as entertaining as they are wise."

In other news, I interviewed lad lit author Ben Adams this week and he revealed he was busy working on his third book with the working title Trouble in the Staffroom. You can read the full interview here.

Quick bits

• I announced this week that my Lad Lit Blog Tour will start on April 19 and run until May 19. Follow the hashtag #LadLitBlogTour for more announcements
• The Real Men, Real Style website put together their 10 Books All Men Should Own list. You can see it here.

Tweet of the week
Great quote picked out from author Jon Rance. It's got to be up there with Rod Stewart's "I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger." :) 

"The tragedy of life isn't that we get older, it's that we forget how to be young." #quoteoftheday

— Jon Rance (@JRance75) March 28, 2016

#LadLitSunday: Lad Lit explained, Chris Hill interview, and Bourbon Kid rejection letters!

Happy Easter everyone! It's been a fairly quiet week on the Lad Lit news front. From a personal point of view it's been a really busy week. At the start of the week I was invited to write a guest post on By The Letter Book Reviews about lad lit.

And then earlier on today I was talking lad lit on Linda's Book Bag. Click on either of the links to read the full articles or check out this blog post.

Lad lit stalwart Mike Gayle took to the airwaves on Friday night on Brum Radio alongside book obsessive Blake Woodham. Their book for March is the bestseller A The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett - a story about small changes making big differences for two people.

I interviewed Chris Hill yesterday, author of The Pick-Up Artist and asked him about his story of A Lad Lit Rom Com about Dating in the Digital Age. You can see the full interview here.

And I started with a bit of news about myself and I'll finish with a little bit more news (like I said, it's been a slow week in the lad lit world...). I was delighted and extremely grateful to book blog My Book File for reviewing both The Drought and The Flood.

Quick Bits

• Nick Spalding has a special Easter offer for his novella Buzzing Easter Bunnies - offering the laugh out loud comedy for just 99p this weekend.
• Next week I am interviewing Ben Adams, author of Six Lies and Six Months To Get A Life.

Tweet of the Week

Following on from JK Rowling publishing some of her rejection letters this week, the anonymous author of the best selling Bourbon Kid series posted this amazing rejection letter. Should these rejection letters give indie authors hope or make us seriously worry about the judgement of some publishers and agents?!

Seeing as how JK Rowling is sharing her rejection letters, here is my favourite rejection of The Book With No Name - pic.twitter.com/LUQqPbQdaL

— Bourbon Kid (@BourbonKid) March 25, 2016

Lad Lit explained on Linda's Book Bag and By The Letter Book Reviews

This week I was delighted to be able to guest blog on two wonderful sites I was introduced to via the Facebook group Book Connectors.

I kicked the week off on By The Letter Book Reviews, attempting to explain to Sarah Hardy why some people might be put off by the genre. However, I think I did a good job of debating the merits of lad lit. Here is a snippet:

If lad lit was a Hollywood movie genre, surely it would be a comedic triumph. Just take a look at some of the recent loveable rogues who fit that lad lit description: Stifler from American Pie, Phil from The Hangover, Seth from Superbad, Jay from The Inbetweeners. They all arguably steal the show in those respected films. They are not characters we love to hate, they are quite simply characters we love.

And then it was off to Linda's Book Bag to talk lad lit with Linda Hill. Once again I was set the challenge to paint lad lit in a good light and to explain why it deserved to sit alongside its older sibling, chick lit. A quick sample:

Even Wikipedia, that bastion of internet information, seems to be so upset that if you type ‘lad lit’ into their search box, it can’t even bring itself to refer to it by its rightful name in the first line of its description of the genre.

A huge thank to both Sarah and Linda for letting me blog on their sites. Make sure you click on both links to check out the blog posts and continue to support #LadLitSunday to fight the cause for great lad lit!

#LadLitSunday: GQ 30 best books for men, Danny Wallace and the Passport to Poetry, and Sreemoyee Piu Kundu on lad lit

GQ staff this month chose their 30 of the best books for men. The list had a selection "from drunken poets to record-breaking boxers, from sci-fi pioneers to master stylists, these are the books you should be reading for the rest of the year."

Included in the list was Quicksand by Henning Mankell, A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James, Ask The Dust, by John Fante, On Writing by Charles Bukowski and Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari.

Danny Wallace is taking part in a new lyrical initiative at Heathrow airport called Passport to Poetry. The lad lit author will be joined by performance poet Laura Dockrill and fellow authors M.G. Leonard and Michael Rosen, as they all write poems to entertain the record number of people setting off into the skies for Easter.

Wallace is focusing on aiport codes for his ditty ("My friend once flew to CLA / He came back tanned and A-OK"). Speaking in The Guardian, Wallace said the project "sounded like a lovely thing to be a part of" and the amount of travel he had done with his family inspired his creative rhymes. "There’s so much to work with at an airport. A million stories in and out every day,” he said. “But I decided to focus on one of the things that makes being there exciting – those thousands of possibilities all tied together by a few letters.”

Sreemoyee Piu Kundu was talking to the The Telegraph in India this week about her new novel You've Got The Wrong Girl, describing her book as lad lit and flying the flag for the genre. She said: "We need more of it (lad lit) because in literature today, which books celebrate men? We hear so many feminist voices and kudos to them, because we need the feminist voice to be kept alive. But we need the male voice to be represented as well."

Quick Bits

• In his column in GQ this month, Tony Parsons addresses the mindless atrocities carried out by radical Islamic terrorists and urges the West to unite on home soil.
• I posted my review of Adrian Simon's Milk-Blood today. I gave the memoir "Growing up the son of a convicted drug trafficker" a five-star rating - check out it here.

Tweet of the Week

Irvine Welsh pulls no political punches with this assessment of Iain Duncan Smith's resignation from the Conservative Party.

"I've fucked a pig's head before, Duncan Smith. I'm prepared to go there again, if you'll only reconsider." https://t.co/mqU9eaj5CV

— Irvine Welsh (@IrvineWelsh) March 18, 2016

#LadLitSunday: Hollywood deal for The Bourbon Kid and Jon Rance works on new book

Welcome to the first of a new weekly column called #LadLitSunday. This is a weekly round-up of everything lad lit from book launches and author news to latest reviews and giveaways to cool articles and lad humour that has appeared across that thing called the internet in the last seven days.

First up this week is the exciting news that the bloody masterpiece that is The Book With No Name could be coming to the big screen in the near future. I caught up with the author behind The Bourbon Kid series this week and he told me: "The rights for The Book With No Name are now in the hands of a company called Belga Films. I’ve worked with them on the script for a movie. I’m really happy with what they’ve done and it’s already caught the eye of one of my absolute favourite Hollywood A-listers (although I can’t say who just yet!)."

Furthermore, his next novel see's The Bourbon Kid return to action with his new anti-hero, The Red Mohawk, in The Plot To Kill The Pope which has already been a big success in Europe. Watch this space!

New York based Epoch Times this week published an article titled 6 Action Page-Turner Book Series That Oddly Haven’t Been Turned Into Movies Yet featuring the likes of The Gray Man, John Rain and Earl Swagger. The paper said: "Here are six series of books for men, that have been absolutely ripe for the picking for years now, but which for some reason haven’t been turned into movies yet." Well worth checking the article out.

Another author I had the pleasure of interviewing this week was Jon Rance. He is currently working on novel number five and told me: "It's a romantic comedy set in London. That's all I can say at the moment. It's really my first romantic comedy novel and I'm very excited about it."

Helena Bonham-Carter has been talking this week about the new BBC drama Love, Nina which has been written for screen by by Nick Hornby. The five-part series is inspired by Nina Stibbe's book of the same name, and is sure to be a hit what with Oscar-winning Hornby seemingly having a never-ending golden touch.

Quick Bits

• Lad Lit author Danny Wallace has been confirmed as one of the guests on The Virgin Radio Takeover, which will air Sundays from 10am. 
•  A study has found that men make up their minds about a book quicker than women; reported in The Guardian.

Tweet of the Week
Nick Spalding posts this wonderful review straight from the heart. Or the pants...

I fear Google Translate didn't do a great job of translating this excellent 5 star review of Eine Fette Chance... pic.twitter.com/96J8FwBKXV

— Nick Spalding (@NickSpalding) March 12, 2016

To take part in #LadLitSunday simply use the hashtag when posting a comment on your social media feeds and I will do my best to mention all of the best comments here on my blog.