The proprietress of Tingle Alley takes note of the rise in book titles suggesting that the author was “dragged kicking and screaming into print.” Among them are Kirstie Alley’s How To Lose Your Ass and Regain Your Life: Reluctant Confessions of a Big-Butted Star and Richard M. Cohen’s Blindsided: Lifting a Life Above Illness. “Wouldn’t it be fabulous,” Caaf says:
if taking the “reluctant” trend a step further, these types of titles started being used for other forms of self-disclosure about the writing process?
Like My Sister, My Mother: A Reluctant Novel Sure to Leave You Speculating It’s Thinly Veiled Memoir.
Or Girl In Yellow Boots: A Novel In Stories Whose Writing Ruined The Author’s Marriage, Caused Her To Sleep With Her MFA Professor to Fill The Empty Void Inside, and Was Only Finally Completed In Shame & Guilt Over Turning Up For Yet Another Thanksgiving With Nothing To Show for Her $100,000 Education But A Mountain of Student Loan Debt.
Or The Leonardo Lingus: A Fictional Novel For All Y’all Who Like That Dan Brown Fellow So Much.