Entry #30

Wednesday, 23 August 2023

5.15pm

I’m trying not to be irritated. A few hours ago, I received an email containing the first draft of the back-cover blurb for my Quick Read, Game On. The back-cover blurb is meant to sell the book to readers, to summarise the plot and central themes in a way that will entice them in. And although it’s only a short novel, Game On has been commissioned as one of the official titles of World Book Night next year. Thousands of copies will be given away to libraries and on public transport to encourage more people to read and it’ll be sold for just £1 at till points all over the country. I’m also hoping it’ll be a good introduction to my work for a whole load of new readers. So it’s important to get it right.

As my editor is on holiday, the email came from her assistant, who I really like and rate. But the blurb contained a few mistakes, for example it mentioned my closeted gay footballer Tom’s ‘failed marriage’; he was never married but had a relationship with a woman. I purposefully refrained from making the relationship a full marriage as I need readers to empathise with him and I didn’t want anyone to think he’d used a woman to cover up his gayness. The blurb also described my character Cosmo as a ‘magazine journalist’, when in fact he works for a queer website. Admittedly, this isn’t a major mistake but I wanted to set him up as being part of a modern world the footballer isn’t; when writing an enemies-to-lovers rom-com you have to try and create opposing worlds and situations for your characters so at the beginning they think they’re too far apart to ever be able to come together. Consequently, I decided Cosmo wouldn’t work for legacy media but a very forward-looking queer online outfit that my very straight-presenting footballer who lives in a small northern town wouldn’t go near.

More importantly, though, the blurb I’ve been sent avoids all mention of the characters’ sexuality. It says of closeted footballer Tom, ‘when it comes to love, he isn’t a winner’ and ‘it’s safer to keep his secrets to himself’. My worry is that, with a reference to Tom’s daughter in the second line, readers will assume he’s straight, especially if there’s a lone male figure on the cover and nothing to suggest a romantic comedy involving two men – as there was in the design I was sent but rejected. So I’ve reworded it and suggested a few changes that my editor’s assistant is going to run by the team. Although in my experience, when an author has pointed out that it’s wrong to ‘straightwash’ the way a book is presented to the public, it’s difficult for a publisher to come back and insist you accept their original wording, especially when most of the team are straight themselves. So I don’t anticipate any problems.

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Now that I think about it, I had the same issue with the cover copy for The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle. I’ve had a look in my inbox and can’t find the emails but the way I remember it, the first draft made no mention of my sixtysomething closeted postman setting off on a quest to find a man he’d loved and lost fifty years ago but said something vague about him finally deciding to be true to himself. In response, I submitted links to articles about the controversy that erupted when the marketing for the American release of the film Pride made no mention of its gay content or what its activist characters were fighting for. From what I remember, my editor just hadn’t realised and was trying to hold back some of the content to intrigue and entice the reader, which is exactly what an editor should be doing – and when I explained, she quickly backed down. So on that occasion there wasn’t a major drama but even so, having to constantly point these things out and educate people can be exhausting. And, frankly, I don’t understand why this is still happening in 2023. Surely people realise that if you’re publishing a gay-themed story, you shouldn’t do anything that could lead to accusations that you’re ashamed of it or are covering it up? And anyway, what’s the point of enticing in readers who won’t like a gay rom-com? They’ll only give it a bad review or star rating, which will work against the good word of mouth you need to make any book a success.

But there’s no point being irritated. I can’t give in to that. I have to battle on.

The issue with the blurb for Game On was only an interlude in another intense day in the company of Hans Christian Andersen, whose life story I’m trying to adapt into the scenario for a ballet. There’s been more filling of gaps in the historical record and more attempts to establish a dialogue between Andersen’s life story and the autobiographically-inspired fairytales – without allowing this to become too simplistic, schematic or laboured.

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There have also been more hooks of engagement for me as a writer. I was very moved by the accounts of Andersen’s numerous crushes on straight men. They took me back to a time when I experienced the same – along with all the ensuing torment and emotional turmoil. The motivation for me as a teenager was a combination of not really knowing any gay men at the time – or enough of them to find one I actually fancied – but also being frightened of that very thing happening; I was scared of falling in love with a gay man and giving in to my gayness. So instead I fell for men who were unattainable, in the full knowledge of this, almost as a means of punishing myself for feelings I didn’t want to have, feelings society told me were wrong and shameful. Fortunately, I soon grew out of it – and, over time and five years of therapy, replaced my urge to self-destruct with self-love. Unfortunately for Andersen, it seems he never got there. Although my take is that this fed into his creativity and allowed him to achieve immortality through his art, just as the lead character in The Little Mermaid achieves immortality through the ‘good deeds’ she undertakes as a ‘daughter of the air’. And I can hardly complain as it’s this that’s giving me the basis of the ballet. Just as in real life, my own journey from shame to pride has inspired so much of my writing - including Game On and Albert Entwistle.