Lad Lit - who'd have thought....
I must admit, when Steven Scaffardi contacted me to ask if I would like to be a part of his Lad Lit Blog Tour, I didn't know what he meant, but if you can have chick lit, then why not lad lit!!
Join me for the first date of this massive Blog Tour and I hope you enjoy maybe your first taste of "Lad Lit"! and you can download a free e-book as well.
Guest Post
One month, 39 blogs, five countries, three continents and a whole host of interviews, character Q&A’s, guest blogs, book reviews and the odd giveaway – I am taking lad lit global. From London to California, Bradford to Texas, Ipswich to Montana; the #LadLitBlogTour bus will be globetrotting from as far afield as Australia then back into Europe across Scotland and The Netherlands, and it all starts here in Kent, England at Boon’s Bookcase…
“And why are you doing this?!” I hear you scream from your favourite reading armchair. Because I believe lad lit has not been given the exposure it deserves. It’s almost like a nonentity! Pop into any high street bookstore or online book retailer and you’ll find categories for horror, suspense, thriller, religion, history – there is even a bloody pets section! That means that Fido the bunny rabbit who lives in your garden even has his own reading section.
But what about Nick Hornby? Or Mike Gayle? And let’s not forget the likes of Danny Wallace, Matt Dunn, Nick Spalding and Jon Rance. I could go on!
Where do all these great writers live? Comedy maybe. Chick lit possibly. Self-help perhaps (in the cases of some men!).
No, I’ll tell you where they live – in fiction. That’s right, fiction. The place where everyone lives! Stephen King drops by when he is not staying at his luxurious holiday home in horror. Sophie Kinsella lives there while her chick lit mansion is being renovated. JK Rowling stays over whilst her Fantasy castle is being relocated to Monaco. And as all these wonderful authors come and go as they please, poor old Hornby and co can do nothing but look enviously on, knowing full well that they have a perfectly good genre that bookshelves everywhere choose to ignore. Being confined to fiction is a bit like still living with your parents – you have no independence.
Sure, I’m being a little dramatic, so let me put it another way. After you have read a Helen Fielding novel and want to read something similar, you go and check out some of her chick lit peers and read an Adele Parks book. The same when you read Robert Ludlum and progress to Jeff Abbott, or when you pick up James Herbert after reading Dean Koontz.
But where do you go after reading Matt Dunn? Did you know that there a new kid on the block called Ben Adams who has been having some pretty decent success with his first two novels? Or after zipping through Mike Gayle’s awesome collection of books, would you automatically think about picking up something by Jon Rance?
That is why I’m doing this Lad Lit Blog Tour. Lad lit is funny, it’s endearing, it’s nostalgic, it’s emotional, it’s relatable; it’s everything you could want from a good contemporary novel. And despite the name, lad lit is for both men and women. When Chick Lit Plus reviewed my debut novel The Drought they said: “Steven Scaffardi's first novel is absolutely hilarious and will leave every reader, male or female, laughing out loud.”
The frustrating thing is that most readers have not heard of lad lit. In fact, most of the book bloggers who have kindly agreed to host me on this Lad Lit Blog Tour tell me they are not familiar with the genre, yet you only need to pop along to Goodreads to see that the majority of people who have read one of my novels respond with something along the lines of ‘laugh out loud’ funny, although you will find one reviewer that called The Drought imbecilic, but you can’t please everyone all the time. Besides, it is a story about a guy trying to break his dry patch endless streak. I guess that is a little imbecilic!
But back to the point in hand! Lad lit can’t simply keep sleeping on chick lit’s couch. We have gate-crashed that party for long enough, and even though it’s a relationship that makes sense, they both need a bit of space from each other to do their own thing.
So over the next 30 days, please join me as I attempt to fly the flag for lad lit (and of course do a little bit of promotion for my Sex, Love and Dating Disasters series) and if by the end of the tour, a few more people have picked up a lad lit novel and given it a read, then my mission is complete.
Thank you for having me Julie, you’ve been a wonderful host, but just like the littlest hobo it’s time for me to keep moving on. Maybe tomorrow I’ll want to settle down – and you can find out by joining me at My Book File.
Steven Scaffardi is the author of the Sex, Love and Dating Disaster series. His first novel, The Drought, is the laugh-out-loud tale of one man's quest to overcome the throes of a sexual drought. After the stormy break-up with his girlfriend of three years, Dan Hilles is faced with the daunting task of throwing himself back into the life of a single man. With the help of his three best pals, Dan is desperate and determined to get his leg-over with hilarious consequences!
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