When I began writing stories about The Muffia, my contemporary women’s book club, agents, publicists and prospective publishers I’d meet on my quest for riches advised me, “You need to create a brand.”
I nodded and listened but basically I thought, branding, schmanding.
Yeah, yeah, I know most people say that in our overcrowded book market–any market really– that if you don’t have a brand, you’re doomed; or, at best, you and your “product” will be lost amidst all the other things people spend money on. The marketers tell you, that no matter what you’re making, you have to find a way to distinguish your language app, lampshade or refined, non-GMO, organic, locally sourced peanut butter—from your competitors. That’s hard. Especially if your books or handmade candles have a lot of variety. But I don’t know if it’s universally true. Or is it only giant corporate behemoths like Mondalez that get to produce everything from Oreos to Dentyne and get away with it. (Of course the corporate heads at Mondalez will tell you they do have a brand and that brand is snack! ) It doesn’t seem to hurt them that the snacks on their roster go from sweet to savory, from mushy to crunchy and things you’re not supposed to swallow.
Well my response is The Muffia is more like Mondalez than it is Oreos, which seems to be losing brand status anyway, by insisting on offering two hundred different kinds of “stuff”, none of which is as good as the original.
Well, the women of The Muffia book club are the diverse snacking options at Mondalez. We are sweet, salty, loud, vulnerable, bold, terrified, some swallow and some don’t. Most drink wine–a lot of it. Some are sort of snarky and others generous and kind. I’m proud that we are different. None of us wants to be a brand so how can the books based on us be a brand? We also like to believe we are open-minded and can listen to those with different points of view. This author tends to think that even if she wantedto be a brand, it’s out of her control what other people say about her “product.” If other people want to put her books into categories such as, “contemporary women’s fiction” or “sexy beach reads” or “books about book clubs,” there’s nothing she can do about it.
Books, like the people who write them, are often multi-faceted and The Muffia series is nothing all that. With each book narrated by a different member of the book club, the voices are necessarily going to be different. Similar sure, but the muffs do not agree on everything. Their education, backgrounds, life experiences are different. But they are friends who share a love of books, which is the main thing that brought them together. None of these women, is always one thing. Each is beautiful sometimes. Each is a capable member of society until she isn’t. Each succeeds and fails.
Humans want to put other humans in boxes and the media likes to flog that idea with its insistence on soundbites and loglines and reducing almost everything to a five word description. This is my resistance to being branded and put into a box. I think the world would be better off if we saw each other as more nuanced, not so starkly one thing or another. Not in just one box. Or any box. And I think it’s possible.
Muff wannabe Patty likes to throw parties but can’t afford an on-staff mixologist. She puts out the wine bottles, the tub of bottled beer and soda and lets the guests fend for themselves. But she likes to offer a hard liquor option to those still celebrating the end of Prohibition, which frankly, is all of us. Here’s her Southwestern style party punch, one-bowl wonder for a crowd. She makes gallons of the stuff, taking healthy samplings every so often as she mixes, and stores it in the fridge for later replenishment of her closed-top punch dispenser.
