Please, Read My Book (Unless You’re a Friend of My Sons’)

Please, Read My Book (Unless You’re a Friend of My Sons’)

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Credit Illustration by Allison Steen

I’m incredibly proud of the book I wrote. I hope it has some of the things I love when I read other people’s work. I want readers to find the story funny and sad; honest and relatable. My characters fall in and out of love, they try things they never thought they would and things they will never admit to. And some of these things are dirty. This did not have to be a dirty book. At several points, I could have faded to black, like a 1950s Hollywood movie. No, this didn’t need to be a dirty book. It just gets to be.

As I worked to find an agent or publisher I entered a lot of Twitter contests. You get 140 characters, including the contest hashtag, to pitch your opus. I got a text from my younger son, 19. His friend had told him, “I think your Mom’s Twitter was hacked.” He had to explain that I was indeed the author of those racy tweets. My older son’s roommates were even more intrigued. They followed me after they read my tweets and offered themselves as beta readers.

Last July, I did land a publisher. I expected the book would release late spring dovetailing perfectly with my life. My youngest son will graduate from high school then. This would allow me the focus and time to promote the book and it would give my son some privacy. But the manuscript whipped through the necessary steps, editing, proofreading and cover design. The night before last, I got the news: It will release this December. There goes my plan to get him out of high school before his mother’s dirty book hits Amazon.

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I’m trying to reconcile the years I put in to realize this long-held desire to publish against my family’s hope that I will simply keep being Mom.

So, while I really want you to read my book, I kind of don’t want you to if we know one another through our children, our house of worship or my mother.

I wonder how E.L. James (do I even need to say, author of the infamous “50 Shades of Grey”) manages. She has two teenage sons. Does she sit at school conferences and talk to their math teacher about trigonometry, or bondage? Before she goes out for a day of errands, does she have to steel herself from too-knowing glances, or does she look at the balance in her checkbook and think: “Yeah. All’s good.”

As an author, having a reader identify with one of my characters is like a runner’s high. When my book club read my manuscript, one discussion point was a pivotal disagreement between the main character and her best friend. The character confessed to an emotional affair and the best friend was upset on behalf of the character’s unsuspecting husband.

My book club friend asked: “Why would the best friend care? Is she in love with the husband?”

Another woman answered: “Of course, she’d be upset. It changes the whole dynamic of all their relationships.”

I fell to my knees, crying: “Yes! Yes!” But only in my mind. In reality I went, “Mmmm,” and took another sip of chardonnay.

A young man, a former co-worker, read the book and confided to me: “The sex scenes work. I mean work. Know what I mean?” I did know what he meant. I was as thrilled he’d responded so, um, viscerally, to my writing, as I was to the friend who understood what I wanted to share about the rhythms of friendship and love.

So I’m left to tiptoe through this minefield of pride and sensibility. If you shake your head at modern life and ruminate on the insanity of relationships, then I want you to read my book. But if we know each other exclusively because our children were confirmed together, then, maybe don’t read it. Or at least, hold off until July.