It's a love story

Book Stuff:

• It is less than a month until the launch of Aphrodite Unbound, the second book in the Olympus Inc. series, where Greek mythology meets The Devil Wears Prada! I am so, so excited for you to meet Aphrodite and Heph, who are probably my favourite couple I’ve ever written. Pre-order now!

• But wait, what if you haven’t read the first book in the series? The one featuring delightful intern Persephone and anxious basement-dwelling CFO Hades? Fear not, friends! You can read the first chapter of Persephone in Bloom right here, and grab the book here: and you’ve got nearly a month to read it.

  

  

• In weekends this term, I am happily working away on Witch Craft Services, the next novella in the Wellywood Magic series. If you want to catch up on that series, here is Bespoke and Bespelled, featuring costume designer and stitch-witch Marnie, and her awkward (and very hot) movie star love interest, Rider.

Much like writing Marnie’s costume stitch-witchery made me do a bunch of sewing, writing about Amalia’s craft services food truck is firing up the part of my brain that relishes cooking. I’m flicking through my battered cookbooks and watching cooking shows and, fortuitously, my favourite show about cooking dropped its second season a few weeks ago.

(The rest of this post contains spoilers for excellent TV show The Bear - no massive plot twists, but plenty of flavour. Diners proceed at their own risk.)

Cooking

There are many reasons to love the second season of The Bear - the lighting, the performances, the restaurant-realistic amount of butter, Marcus (a perfect cinnamon roll who can make a perfect cinnamon roll) and the best ever use of a Taylor Swift song in a TV show.

I have watched Richie drive home singing maybe seven or eight times, and it makes me happy every single time.

There are also a few reasons not to love the second season, and I’m looking at you, “it’s-possible-to-have-a-demanding-job-or-a-relationship-but-not-both” plotline. I believe that Carmy believes this, because Carmy doesn’t believe he is allowed a single good thing in the entire world, and has effaced his bodily desires to a point of self-abjection that is both deeply human and terribly sad. But! The show appears to agree with him! Both Sydney and Cicero warn him that he should be focusing on the Bear (and therefore needs to neglect his romantic relationship) and 1) this is absolutely not a reasonable thing to demand of your business partner and 2) it’s wrong! It’s flat wrong!

Carmy needs therapy and some real nutrition and a lot more sleep, but he doesn’t need to dump his splendid girlfriend, and I object as both a romance author and a relatively well-balanced human being. (However: I do believe that Sydney and Carmy are endgame, and that slow zoom in on them fixing the table is one of the most romantic things I have ever seen in my entire life.)

But one of the reasons I love the Bear is because I get it. I remember that restless yearning for something, for purpose, for service, for a reason to get up and go. I recognise the intensity and desperation of throwing yourself into something because you think it might be the only thing. Both Carmy and Sydney feel so young to me, because they’re both on their second try, and they’re worried that this is the last new beginning they get. That if they screw this up, there won’t be any more chances.

I’m 41, and this year is my fourth new beginning. I have finally learned that if we try to do anything, we will fail and change and fail and succeed and fail and fail and fail.

I won’t say “and that’s okay”, because, honestly, I still have a hard time with failure. It doesn’t feel good. But it is inevitable. (Grant me the serenity…). Perfect is impossible,  but trying is wonderful.

You get to have love along the way.

Counting Crows

I had four paragraphs here on Counting Crows and what they mean to me and why I nearly wept when they showed up on The Bear soundtrack in Season 1. I deleted them all and now I’m trying again. (We try and fail and try and fail).

I love Counting Crows in a deeply unfunky and completely sincere way, and by that I mean I love the first two albums August and Everything After and Recovering the Satellites because I listened to them as a moody teenager and I spent my first ever paycheck on their double live album. I listened to and enjoyed This Desert Life too, but those first two albums I knew word-perfect in album order. In fact, I know I still do, because I played them incessantly over the last week, with immense love and sympathy for my teen self.

I have fun listening, but no one is having fun in these songs; they’re having trouble acting normal when they’re nervous, or wishing to be forgiven, or trying to forget, or demanding that someone will remember one thing about them. The most upbeat song on those two albums is “Mr. Jones”, which rollicks right along until you realise the lyrics are all about the singer wanting fame but being pretty sure it might wreck him (it did), and hoping, hopelessly, that it might cure his loneliness (it didn’t).

Everyone is so miserable in those songs, and can’t believe in change, but they still want it to happen. They’re still yearning, and that’s what I love about them, and that’s why “Have You Seen Me Lately” was a perfect choice for The Bear.

I recognised Adam Duritz’ voice on a song in Season 2, and the internet tells me it’s a song from their later oeuvre, which I have largely ignored. Do not talk to me about Shrek 2.

I hope that you are having an excellent week, full of interesting failures!

Let it rip.