One of the things I was just asked for (at time of writing) was an epigraph for my novel, Falling for the Protagonist. I was also asked for my dedication and acknowledgments. Writing and submitting the acknowledgments was probably the closest I’ve come to being able to internalize the truth of being published. For a very long time, I held up “writing an Acknowledgments page” as some beacon of publishing, the thing that—above all else—would say to me, “Hey, Bex. You did it. You’ve made it.”
Needless to say, that was a big moment for me.
But I didn’t ever plan on putting an epigraph into my book. For those who don’t know:
Epigraph (N) – [in the context of books/literature specifically] A motto or quotation, as at the beginning of a literary composition, setting forth a theme
Still, the very mention of one sent my brain down the path of What If. As I found it fun to think about, I decided to come up with some quotes (and ask my friends as well). Since I never plan to “publish” the quotes we came up with, I decided to post them here for anyone who is interested. First, just the quotes. If you want to stop there, read the book, and decide for yourself what relevance these quotes have—cool. In fact, I’m supposed to encourage you to do that, I guess. I mean… other people buying and/or reading the book is important to me.
In fact, I think I’m going to make this a preorder hype post. Yeah, that’s what I’ve decided. So… go to my Linktree to find links to places to preorder Falling for the Protagonist or feel free to search for the book title (or Bex Goos) on your preferred bookseller’s website. Then preorder it! Support my dream!
But if you don’t care to do that, also cool. Or if you want to read the whole post, including my explanation, before reading the book, also totally cool. In short: Everything is cool. I don’t control you. I don’t even know you. Your autonomy is safe, and I shall never attempt to trample over your right to make choices for yourself!
Here are the quotes I came up with:
“Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth.” – Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried
“We are never more creative than when we are at odds with the world and there is nothing so artistically destructive as comfort.” – Excerpt from Nerd Do Well, Simon Pegg’s autobiography
Here are the quotes my friends came up with:
“Truth is a matter of the imagination.” – Ursula K Le Guin, author of The Left Hand of Darkness
“Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life.” – Mary Ann Shaffer, author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
The rest of this post will be about Quote 1 because this post is so long that I already had to scroll up and add “Part 1” to the title. Part 2 will be about the rest of the quotes. Hopefully. May have to add a Part 3.
Tim O’Brien wrote fiction about the horrors of the Vietnam War. I wrote a satirical romance novel about a woman who falls into a book and sends the main character into an existential crisis. These two things are not the same. But I will always remember my students’ shock, back when I was an (inept) English teacher, and I told them that The Things They Carried was fiction. I believe I told them before we started reading the book, but I felt a reminder was in order after they’d gotten through a chunk of it. They simply could not believe that what they had read was made up. It was so real! It felt like nonfiction! It led to some great discussions about the power that fiction has to help us hold up a mirror to real life. Fiction helps us confront and interact with truth. It’s sort of like how standup comics help people face reality by getting them to laugh at themselves. There are lenses through which we can observe ourselves and others. I wanted to use my work of fiction to do just that.
Just look at the (simplified) definition of satire I used to help my students understand it: Satire is used to highlight a flaw in order to raise awareness and/or incite change.
One of my main goals in writing FFtP was to draw attention to a glaring issue with real life: We are not treated to other people’s internal monologues, but some people still act like their motivations should be crystal clear. Some of the things that men pull off in romance novels would get men a face full of pepper spray in real life. Why? Because, in a book, the narrator is constantly letting us know, “Hey. Don’t worry. Both parties are totally on board with this.”
I am going to write out a summary of a very real novel in my own words. TRIGGER WARNING: Kidnapping, forced imprisonment, threats of sexual violence
After discovering the man she just married is a murderer with a history of criminal dealings, Holly Bardwell flees the marriage and the man in the dead of night. Her car breaks down somewhere in the Colorado Rockies, so she finds herself wandering through the mountains on foot, only to pass out in the snow outside a hunting lodge. One of the owners of the lodge, Adam Colter, discovers Holly and brings her inside. He nurses her back to health and introduces her to the co-owners of the lodge, his younger brothers, Ethan and Ryan. While Holly was unconscious, the three brothers decided that Holly was the one for them. For all of them. When Holly attempts to leave their (otherwise unoccupied) remote mountain lodge, they stop her and carry her back inside while she begs to be let go. Then they tell her the truth—that they all intend to marry the same woman, and they have agreed that she is to be that woman. She will pleasure all of them. Carry their children. Be wife to all of them. It’s okay that they just met her twelve hours ago, because they know in their guts that she is meant to belong to them. She won’t ever have to worry about a thing because they’re gonna take real good care of her. She doesn’t have to leave. They don’t want her to leave. She’s going to belong to them forever.
How’s that going for you? I want you to know that you saw a Trigger Warning at the top of the paragraph that wasn’t there before I wrote the summary. I realized on rereading it that I should go back and add the TW. Because that summary was missing one very important line at the end:
Holly listens to the brothers explain how they want her to be their wife and live with them forever, and she is totally into it.
Yeah, this is the plot of Colters’ Woman by Maya Banks. It’s an erotic romance, not a thriller. Note the apostrophe placement in the title. Their last name is Colter, not Colters. She is all of their woman. And she loves it. She can’t wait to marry these three dudes and bang it out for the rest of their lives.
Changes the cadence a bit, doesn’t it?
Romance gives readers a chance to explore scenarios that would feel unsafe in real life because the narrator is there to say, “Yep. Totally into it.”
But what happens in real life when Person A thinks they’re in a romance and Person B doesn’t? Suddenly, the story is different. Now you’re looking at a person who feels entitled to another person’s attention, maybe even their affection. How the story progresses depends entirely on how Person A takes rejection, if they take it at all. Maybe Person A refuses to believe the rejection. Maybe they believe the rejection, but respond with anger or violence.
When only one person approaches an interaction as romantic, the entire interaction is anything but.
In my book, I wanted to highlight this entitlement, the way that an interaction can take on whole new layers of meaning when there is a disparity in the way the participants are experiencing it.
Yes, I wrote a fictional novel. But I wanted to use that fiction to showcase a piece of reality, namely that women (or anybody, really) can feel unsafe in a situation without ever being overtly threatened. They can feel unsafe even if the other person has absolutely no unsavory intentions at all. Because they are not privy to the inner monologue of this other person.
There are no narrators in real life.
By the way, I’m not the only one who noticed this strangely thin line between romance and horror! Check out this ingenious trailer for Red Eye (2005). Link included because the embedded video might not work.
I never saw the movie, because I’m not into the thriller/slasher/horror genre, but the trailer stuck with me, clearly. It perfectly encapsulates the disparity delineated above.
Nick DiRamio also showcased how easily an interaction in a romantic movie could be changed from romantic to creepy/horrific. All they did was change the background music. That’s all it took. I’m going to link to the video at the timestamp where this happens, but I do highly recommend watching the whole thing. Nick is hilarious.
This all led me to Tim O’Brien. He was my first thought when the idea of epigraphs entered my mind. His quotes about fiction are all top-notch. Yes, the book is made up. But there is reality reflected in the fiction.
I’ll post about the other quotes soon!
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