Hello My Name is Milly Johnson and I am a Writer of Commercial Fiction.

There is a rise in celeb-led book clubs.  And I did make a comment on social media that I hoped they would feature more commercial fiction in their choices.  And though these book clubs are starting to include books of our genre (two of my friends have lovely books that are in them)... the problem is that there just aren’t enough of them.  But where’s the humour in the lists?  Where’s the books that make you laugh out loud?  They don’t feature.  
Humour doth not automatically a light book maketh, so said Shakespeare or maybe I dreamt that.  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nestmade me snigger in places, but it was also one of the grimmest books I ever read.  Life is full of humour, we need it to counterbalance the dark times.  But, in this world, give a reader something to laugh at in a book and it turns it into ‘a beach read’ ‘easy read’ ‘chick-lit’. Unless you’re a man and then your tome is an ‘amusing literary classic.’  I had humour in one of my books alongside assault, racism and kidnap.  ‘A light read’.  Book by woman + laughter = froth. It would still have been judged the same had I thrown in a buggered Alsatian as well. 
 There’s a lot of snobbery in the book world.  Women writers of commercial fiction – and I include the saga writers in this – feel it doubly.  Had a woman written ‘One Day’, it would be consigned to the file of ‘chick lit’ but, guess what girls, we have a long way to go before the playing field is flat so just get on with your writing and forget the politics.  The broadsheets will favour literary books for a long time to come... sea changes take time.  Still, I can’t think of any writer I know who has an inverted snobbery about those books.  We don’t look down on them because we don’t compare with them: they’re different. Which do you prefer – a fillet steak or a goosedown duvet?  It’s not right or wrong to prefer one to the other.  Steaks and duvets can co-exist happily in the world. It’s not a contest.  
Predictable is another lazy insult if you favour a happy ending. A woman once wrote a review on Amazon that she could predict the end after reading four pages of my book.  I asked her for next week’s lottery results (naughty Milly, do NOT leave comments).   Well, yep, I ride that predictability bus.  I like to leave people with some hope that their dreams can come true.  Mine did. I dreamt of being an author.  I dreamt of having £10 spare at the end of my pay packet so I could buy a weekly video.  I dreamt of having my own office. I dreamt – big dream – of one day actually having enough brass to GO ON A CRUISE.  I’m dreamt of meeting Mr Right and I did. I’m there. It happens, dreams do come true – as Gabrielle so rightly foresaw.  Anyway – Agatha Christie is predictable:  There’s a crime, Hercule or Jane solves it and the bad guy gets put away in prison.  I can put up with that sort of bed-mate.
Commercial fiction holds its own against the insults and all those Japanese knot-weed rumours that it’s dying, that it’s ‘on its arse’.  Actually, never has it been so strong.  Never has the world, in such a total mess, needed commercial fiction as much to give brains some respite. And, in case you’re wondering, what I mean by commercial fiction is: books whose main purpose is not to challenge you intellectually or show off how many synonyms for ‘sybarite’ the author can muster up but books which give hope and comfort to people who need some time out of their zone, books that entertain and sweep up the reader into their pages.  Books that celebrate friendship, community, love and family, that bruise your heart and then slap arnica on it, books full of characters that readers identify with – perfectly imperfectpeople who get their happy ending and make YOU realise you could have it too because carers of the elderly, teachers, dinner-ladies, people who work in Asda, stay-at-home mums all have a crack at a happy ending in life, it is not a prerogative of special individuals.  Authors write these books primarily for readers to enjoy and their readers are legion and they speak with their purses.  This is big business.  It’s called commercial for a reason: because it sells. 
 But we live in an age where 15% of adults in the country have the literacy ageof an eleven year old.  Surely making people feel ashamed that they like a story that doesn’t make them reach for a dictionary every second word is wrong.  Surely a life-affirming story about people that readers can identify with is no bad thing?  One that captures their imagination, has them reading on, improves their literacy levels because they’re so engrossed in a story? There is NOTHING WRONG with a book that is easy to read or has a sparkly cover that calls to you from a shelf in Tesco.  Not everywhere has a swanky bookshop.  Buying a book from a supermarket is no different from obtaining it from ‘Jago and Dashwater’ with its mullioned windows in the centre of Oxford (I made that name up).  A book is a book is a book and commercial fiction books can change lives.  
Readers of mine will be familiar with a story of a taxi driver that took something from one of my books that made him and his wife quit the rat race and live out a dream existence in a Inn in the most gorgeous part of France.  And here are some direct lift from many of the emails that I’ve kept from people.
 ‘The Queen of wishful thinking inspired me get away from my controlling husband, I won't go into details, so after a horrible 9 months divorce is nearly complete along with moving into a lovely flat on my own hurray!! Just need a couple of rescue cats for company!!’
‘You wouldn’t believe it but we just literally booked a cruise in the Mediterranean for this September....You can take full credit for that!’  (ahem… I do)
‘I am sitting at the side of my husband who has dementia and your books take me to a place where I can breathe. Thank you.’
I know that a couple of women quit their jobs and set up a business calling themselves ‘2 Woman and a Mop’ because they wrote and told me so.  Another set up a café after reading my books. I’m not alone in getting these stories.  I know plenty of my contemporaries have similar stories to parade. So not worthless fluff then.  Not ‘lesser books’.
When a book in our genre becomes so successful that it can’t be ignored, it is reborn as ‘Up-Lit’.  It’s like the kid in school who writes an essay so good that he’s whisked off to the swanky grammar school up the road.  He isn’t allowed to stay in his friendship group, he has to learn to mingle with the new kids.  Up-Lit is a new genre, they say.  Nope.  It might not have had the fancy moniker but I was reading Carole Matthews and Sue Welfare way before I’d even thought of my first plot and they were wonderful uplifting reads that left me with a smile on my face at the end.  It’s okay for a book to be a good read and still be commercial fiction. I’m not ashamed of what I write.  It’s okay for me to leave a reader with a sloppy contented look on their face rather than a ‘what the f – happened?’ and wondering if they’ve been sold a book with some missing pages. 
I’m doing well.  I’m a million quid short of the castle I want to buy but I’ve worked hard and long and I sell in bookshops and supermarkets all over the place.  But a lot of my contemporaries don’t because it’s harder and harder these days to sell into shops and you need sales to flag up your presence to buyers – a vicious circle. So celeb-led book clubs with their long reach are a gift.  They too could change lives by shining a well-needed spotlight on a new talent, one that might not even be with a mainstream publisher.  I have brilliant--writer friends who left the ‘Big Five’ to self-publish. Sue Welfare, Matt Dunn (yes a man), Tracy Bloom amongst others. 
I did actually make the broadsheet papers last year.  Someone decided to clone my name and flood Amazon worldwide with fake titles.  In a crazy way it was flattering that my name was deemed big enough to pin their scheme on.  Even more bizarrely that means I’m appreciated more by a global criminal fraternity than I am by the book reviewer of the Sunday Times. 
Following that comment on social media I was invited to go on the radio and talk about a celeb-led book club for commercial fiction writers and I was delighted.  ‘Did I think that our books were the equivalent of bubble gum songs?’ asked the Producer before the interviewer.  Churned out, easily forgettable.  No, I bloody don’t think that.  And then sadly the celeb presenter likened our books to ‘those Christmas films that come out en masse where there’s always a lumberjack’… I tried, folks. 
But, in the words of that great philosopher Baldrick, we already had a cunning plan in place… Please keep your eye on this Facebook site.  And if you are a writer of commercial fiction, we may be calling on you. https://www.facebook.com/auntyacid/.  That limelight is warming up for you as we speak.