Guest post written by My Kind of Trouble author L.A. Schwartz
Leanne “L. A.” Schwartz has spent about half her life at either the library or the theater, where she played Mrs. Paroo in her local production of The Music Man, as well as a dozen other mothers over the years. When this autistic author and English teacher hasn’t got her nose in a book, she can be found baking pizzelle, directing scenes for the student Shakespeare festival, and singing along to showtunes. She is also the author of the young adult fantasies A Prayer for Vengeance and To a Darker Shore and lives in California with her family.
Questionable 2000s trends are back. While low-rise jeans, dresses over pants, and bucket hats can be fun for some, the unfortunate return of that era’s even less fabulous elements—like fatphobia and ableism—is undeniably troubling. Not that they ever really went away, but for a while there it truly seemed as if we were making progress, only for the Kardashians to shed their curves and for the R-word to be plastered all over social media and echo through high school hallways once more.
And so we’re back to the world trying to convince fat people they don’t—and shouldn’t—exist. People avoiding looking at you, like it’s embarrassing for the both of you somehow. Movies and TV refusing to show anyone who looks like you living a life like you, only including fat people as butts of jokes, villains, or in somber cautionary stories featuring Hollywood stars in fat suits. The fashion and diet industries advising you on all the ways you can hide your different parts, appear smaller, make yourself vanish.
Most of the time I blithely ignore it, though as someone who’s had that R-word used against her, I have my own amazing disappearing act I can pull, masking my autism in certain situations. Don’t flutter your hands. Don’t rock in place. Don’t pick that napkin or your skin or that person’s polite lies apart.
Maybe it’s understandable why I’d want to hide, when involved academic studies are being done right now to uncover the shocking finding that—gasp—autistic adults experience complex emotions and empathy! When TV again shows as many (or more) reductive, stereotyped autistic characters as it does the authentic. When people declare “I’m so sorry,” like someone died, if I inform them my child is autistic. The misconceptions about what it means to be an autistic adult parallel those about fatness. The disbelief that we could love or be loved, or actually be sexually attractive and active. The impossibility of us leading our own full lives, rather than as funny background characters, tragic curiosities, or burdens. The infantilization.
Enter Harmony Hale. When I wrote my first adult romcom, My Kind of Trouble, I wanted a fat heroine who was impossible to ignore, unapologetically loud, and undeniably sexy to take center stage. An attention-craving conwoman who only targets corrupt millionaires, Harmony uses her “it girl” energy and attractiveness to wrap unsuspecting saps around her little finger. Whether she’s convincing them to invest in music festivals that don’t actually exist or speeding off in her red convertible, Furiosa, to the next lucky victim to fall under her spell, Harmony’s outsize personality lives up to her inspiration—my book riffs on the classic musical The Music Man and its fast-talking hero Harold Hill.
Harmony’s relentless pursuit of what she wants, her cleverness, her brash humor, her quick-thinking and kindness—these are all the most interesting things about her. And, in a bit of escapist fantasy, perhaps, that both Broadway and romance novels afford us, her beauty and sexiness are what people notice about her body. I’ve written other sorts of fat representation before, in my fantasy novels, and believe we need a variety in books and other media, sometimes looking at the realities of fatphobia and all the small ways the world isn’t accommodating of bigger bodies. But just as so many of us fat people are focused on living fulfilling lives and don’t actually spend all our time thinking about our fatness or food, with Harmony I wanted to simply let her exist as a fat woman unbothered by fatphobia and busy with her own story (complicated when her latest con runs smack into a stubborn autistic librarian whose cooperation she needs for her grift). Harmony could be anyone, but she happens to be fat. Talking to that librarian at one point about performing in her school play, she tells him, “They don’t cast the fat girl as the ingenue.” But this time the fat girl gets the starring role—and she gets the guy.
Grumpy but idealistic librarian hero Preston Jones also breaks from the romantic ideal typically seen in romance. He’s tall and lanky, on the demisexual spectrum, and autistic. I wish I could stick to all the thoughtful reasons I wrote him the way I did, for inclusion and representation and exploring the interplay of masculinity and disability, but honestly I just always want to read and swoon over more romance heroes who aren’t burly alphaholes (which can be fun in the right books), so I made one myself. If you also tend to get extremely not normal over nerds (Ben Wyatt and Chidi Anagonye hives rise!), I hope you enjoy Preston as he reads poetry and romance, rides a bike to save the planet, and risks his job to protect the teens in his library programs and fight book bans.
But with Preston I did want to delve into a more realistic exploration of autism, and the different ways it can present in people (Preston’s little sister Lacey, who he’s raising, is also autistic, selectively nonspeaking, and much better at math and science than him). I wrote this book deeply motivated by the chance to share with people what it’s like living day to day as an autistic person—the exhaustion from sensory overwhelm and masking stims (repetitive soothing behaviors), the loneliness from struggling to understand others and to be understood, as well as the sensitivity to injustice and the joy of special interests.
When Meredith Willson first began working on The Music Man, it started as a story about a disabled character and a fight over his inclusion. In My Kind of Trouble, Harmony, making a deal to help the library with her persuasive powers in exchange for what she needs for her con, offers Preston a chance to finally be recognized by his community he cares for so much—and, as he and Harmony spend more time together, a chance to show how much love he’s capable of and longing to share. I hope autistic readers feel seen by Preston, and all readers take away what those around them might be going through, even if they hide it much of the time.
Both Preston and Harmony throw up façades for others, him masking his autism and her putting on an act for her cons. But I like to think that falling in love means finding someone you can be your true, unfiltered self with. As Harmony tells Preston, while learning more about how his autism affects him and how he’s often working hard to tamp that down, “You don’t have to hide yourself. Not from me.” In turn, Harmony feels safe finally letting someone see behind the curtain of all her flashy lies to her true motivations for what she does.
With all that dropping of armor as two characters see, accept, and choose each other, a love story is one of the best ways to fully humanize fat and autistic people in the face of creeping fatphobia and ableism; it was also important to me that the love scenes be open-door, to fight their infantilization as well. (No need to run any academic study: Fat people are hot! Disabled people are hot!) I’m so excited for Harmony and Preston, boldly shown on the cover of their book, to join fat and neurodivergent heroes and heroines on the shelves, like in Olivia Dade’s Spoiler Alert and Talia Hibbert’s Act Your Age, Eve Brown, and hope to see more and more body-positive and neurodiverse romance.
Because we are not a trend.
ABOUT MY KIND OF TROUBLE
A slick conwoman meets her match in a hot and nerdy small-town librarian in this debut romance, perfect for fans of Spoiler Alert and Act Your Age, Eve Brown.
Conwoman Harmony Hale has sold lies up and down California for years, never looking back at her crafty scams or one-night stands. Now she’s come to Brookville, California, with her sights set on its wealthy mayor—the man who stole her father’s music-streaming algorithm and ruined his life. Harmony is finally ready to take him down, with her trusty con of selling a nonexistent music festival. All she needs is the cooperation of the man who owns the potential festival site.
Autistic librarian and piano teacher Preston Jones spends his days fighting book challengers trying to shut down his library programs. He’s responsible for raising his selectively nonspeaking little sister and needs to focus on keeping his job. He doesn’t have time for a romance like the ones in his books—and certainly none for the brassy festival promoter who wants to use his land for her “Coachella North.” Preston sees things in black and white, and he sees Harmony—amazing curves, flashy smile, and all—as nothing but trouble.
But when Harmony promises to help him win the public over and save his youth programs, Preston finds himself wondering if this hustler with a heart of gold might be the someone he’s been waiting for. Soon things are getting steamy in the stacks, and with her con coming to a crescendo, Harmony needs to choose: revenge and running again or the happy ending she never saw coming.
Romance readers and musical theater fans alike will adore this steamy, gender-swapped homage to The Music Man.
