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!
The Drought is available to download for FREE at Amazon between April 28 – May 2 or you can buy it now for 99p (eBook) or £8.99 (paperback). His second novel The Flood will be released on the Kindle on April 30 but you can pre-order a copy now for just 99p. The paperback version will be available on May 19.
Follow all of the fun on his blog tour by following him on Twitter @SteveScaffardi using the hashtag #LadLitBlogTour. More information about Steven and his books can be found on his blog.
The Flood....
One bet, four girls, eight weeks, multiple dates. What could possibly go wrong?
Following his traumatic eight month dry spell, Dan Hilles is back in the driving seat and ready to put his dating disasters behind him.
But if only it were that simple.
After a drunken afternoon in the pub, fuelled by the confidence of alcohol, Dan makes a bet with his three best pals that will complicate his love-life more than ever when he brazenly declares that he could juggle multiple women all at the same time.
With just eight weeks to prove his point, Dan is about to find out how hard it is to date a flood of women without them all finding out about each other, especially when they come in the shape of an ex-girlfriend, a stalker, the office ice queen and the one that got away.
The Flood is the hilarious follow-up to The Drought by lad lit author Steven Scaffardi, chronicling the adventures of unlucky-in-love Dan Hilles. Available at Amazon and all good book retailers from January 2016.
Dan Hilles is a pretty regular kind of guy - regular job, regular bunch of mates, regular male aversion to shopping. But following his break-up with long-term girlfriend, Stacey, he finds himself single again. He's been out of the game for a while and is a little out of practice. Soon, the very irregular and increasingly worrying issue in Dan's life is the extended drought he finds himself suffering. And we're not talking the climate change, scorched earth, God I'm parched variety.
You've got to hand it to Dan though - it certainly isn't from a lack of trying. With stalwart mates Ollie, Jack and Rob on hand to lend their collective pearls of male wisdom and arrange the odd road trip, you'd think Dan's days of languishing in a sexual wilderness would be numbered. You'd think...
Even best friends can't help prevent the kind of surreal holes Dan just can't seem to help digging himself into. And with each failed attempt, his self-esteem plummets to the point where he wonders if 'little Dan' will ever work again.
Good job he has Kelly, his reliable and sympathetic colleague, to confide in. As a woman, she can perhaps shed some female light on why he's failing so miserably with the opposite sex, balancing out the testosterone-fuelled 'advice' from the lads. Surely Dan can't go wrong with Kelly teaching him the various intricacies of a woman's mind. You'd think...
Steven Scaffardi's first novel will have every guy laughing out loud in recognition and every girl secretly worrying - is this how men really think? A new talent to watch out for on the 'lad-lit' scene.
About the Author.........
"But a man wouldn't do or say that!"
This was a common rant that could often be heard coming from the lips of Steven Scaffardi over the last couple of years after he was forced to endure yet another rom-com movie at the hands of his girlfriend.
"And he definitely wouldn't turn into a vampire or a werewolf! That is just plain ridiculous!"
So after suffering yet another Matthew McConaughey chick-flick, Steven decided enough was enough and it was time to stand up for men the world over and write a book that spoke about the male perspective on relationships, and The Drought was born...
Published in September 2011, Steven's debut novel The Drought received fantastic praise for its hilarious take on how the male mind works when it comes to the opposite sex, being labelled chick-lit for men.
To help promote the book, Steven took to the open mic stand-up comedy scene in and around London in 2011, sharing his funny observations and self-deprecating humour about life as a 30-something man.
Steven is now busy working on his second novel, a follow-up to The Drought called The Flood. He is hoping to emulate the success of fellow lad-lit writers such as Mike Gayle, Danny Wallace, Nick Spalding, and the undisputed king of lad-lit, Nick Hornby.
Free e-book Giveaway.....