Loving the Laughter

In this new episode of We’d Like a Word Paul Waters and Stevyn Colgan talk to authors Lisa Firth (aka Lisa Swift and Mary Jayne Baker) and Sue Clark about romantic comedy and a much bigger question … where have all the comic novels gone?

Lisa Firth

Lisa is the author of eight novels (under her two pen names) including The Honey Trap, Meet me at the lighthouse, Runaway Bride and The School of Starting Over. Her book A Bicycle Made for Two was a finalist in the Romantic Novelists’ Association ‘Romantic Comedy of the Year 2019’ award and in 2020, she scooped the award with A Question of Us. Her new novel The Never Have I Ever Club is published in June.

Sue Clark

Sue is a comedy writer with many TV and radio credits to her name including The News Huddlines, Alas Smith and Jones, Three of a Kind, Weekending and many more. Her first novel Note to Boy is published in July 2020.

This episode tackles the vexing question … where have all the comedy novels gone? Wind the clock back just twenty years to the start of this century and the bookshops were full of works by people like Sue Townsend, Terry Pratchett, Stella Gibbons, Douglas Adams, Tom Sharpe, Helen Fielding, George McDonald Fraser, David Nobbs and so many more. and if you ask people what their favourite books are, there’s nearly always a comedy novel in the list. But where are all the funny novels now?

We discuss the dearth of comic novels and why things are so bad for comedy novelists right now. However, one area of fiction where comedy is still thriving is the ‘romcom’ and we discuss such topics as: Why are romcom books packaged so differently for male and female authors? Why is romcom often sniffily viewed as ‘fluff’ by reviewers and even TV presenters? And should you include pets as characters?

Books mentioned in this podcast

Also mentioned …

(Lisa’s favourite book)

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