Dan Rhodes is my guest blogger today to help celebrate Valentine’s Day. His book, Marry Me, just out in paperback, is a riotously funny and devilishly subversive take on love, romance, and marriage, filled with (very) short stories that are sure to appeal to the most discerning – and the most casual – readers.
Hilary Mantel has raved, “Dan Rhodes is a true original, with a fresh, funny, quirky style that seems to owe nothing to other writers and everything to his own powers of invention.” And The Times says Marry Me is “strangely funny, startlingly original.”
If you’re not familiar with flash fiction, here’s a story from this collection —
Fear
My fiancée suggested we get married while strapped together and falling ten thousand feet from an aeroplane. I wasn’t nearly as interested as she was in that kind of thing, and suggested we have a more conventional ceremony. She dismissed my misgivings. ‘Feel the fear,’ she said, ‘and do it anyway. That’s my motto.’ Not wishing to appear unmanly, I went along with her plan, and I have to admit that in the event it was a lot of fun exchanging vows in mid-air while a vicar plummeted alongside us.
Unfortunately, our parachute has failed to open, and our marriage is looking likely to prove shortlived. She’s screaming in terror, and I’m wondering whether this would be a good moment to remind her that it had been her idea.
I loved this story, it made me laugh but it also made me wonder about Dan and how he would be celebrating the holiday. So I asked…
SA: What is your idea of the perfect Valentine’s Day?
DR: To be honest, my perfect Valentine’s Day is one that wouldn’t happen at all. It’s a really cruel ordeal for anybody who doesn’t have romance in their life, and if you are happily coupled that should be reward enough – you shouldn’t be handed a special day. It’s like when already-spoiled movie stars get given luxury goodie bags at the Oscars. I would be in favour of a global referendum on its abolition – I think it would be overwhelmingly voted off the calendar.
SA: What are you actually doing this Friday?
DR: Every year my wife and I agree that we aren’t going to observe Valentine’s day, but as it approaches I get a creeping sense that I’ll somehow find myself in trouble if I don’t mark it in some way. If nothing else it’ll serve as an excuse to get Chinese food.
If you’d like to read another Valentine’s Day tale, Dan posted “Seven Seas” on his blog.
Dan Rhodes is the author of six other books: Anthropology and A Hundred Other Stories, Don’t Tell Me the Truth About Love, Timoleon Vieta Come Home, Gold, Little Hands Clapping, and (writing as Danuta de Rhodes) The Little White Car. Rhodes was named one of Granta magazine’s Twenty Best of Young Adult British Writers in 2003 and one of the Daily Telegraph’s Best British Novelists Under 40 in 2010. He is the winner of several awards, including the Author’s Club First Novel Award and the E.M. Forster Award. He lives in Derbyshire, England.
MARRY ME by Dan Rhodes
Stacy Alesi's BookBitch.com™ 
Love Fear! Whenever I see some of the elaborate marriage proposals online, I always wonder how the guy
is going to topped that come Valentine’s day, birthdays ansd anniversaries.