AFTER making her way through a litany of dodgy, disastrous and dud dates, Megan Whitehouse said she was convinced by one person to commit her ordeals to paper and share them with the world.
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Her mum.
“I used to get on my phone to her after another dodgy date and she was like ‘Meg, you have to write this down it is so funny’,” she said.
But it probably wasn’t a sense of schadenfreude behind the push to publish the “kiss-and-tell-memoir” titled Pucker Up, the author said there was something many people could relate to in the book.
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“I feel like everybody has, or has heard of, a dodgy dating story, I was just lucky, or unlucky depending on which way on want to see it, to have enough to fill a book,” she said.
While the Tamworth woman’s book is a “warts-and-all account”, she said it also highlighted how little time people have now to foster connections with the advent and ubiquity of social media.
“I think it’s harder now to find genuine connections and I think a lot of people relate to those kind of stories,” she said.
“It’s easier to judge based on a photo and swipe right or left depending on your preference and it’s easy to cut people out of your life.
“It is a bit sad, but it seems to be the way things are moving and it’s across all facets of life.”
Mrs Whitehouse, now married and pregnant, said she wasn’t concerned about her child reading the book in the future.
“Everything has come together to make me who I am today,” she said.
“I wouldn’t have met my husband if it wasn’t for my journey.”
While it was her mother who spurred on the book and its denouement, Mrs Whitehouse said it was a different prospect presenting it to her father.
“Dad on the other-hand, I’ve had to go through and white out huge chunks of the book so it is dad-friendly,” she said.
“So, he is a principal and he loves books and reading.
“He is really proud that I have written a book; subject matter is a little bit questionable.”
She has already started to tick over some ideas for a second book, with themes including impending motherhood and sharing other people’s dating stories.