Where is My Funny Bone?

Where is My Funny Bone?

Some unsolicited advice for the readers at home — laughter can both make or break a hot, heavy evening of nakedness. 

For example, when your partner disrobes, one should probably not point and laugh unless your ulterior motive is to be alone with your leftover pizza and Monty Python DVDs.  On the other hand, laughter and sex go together like, well, happy, heaving body parts.

I think most of us look for a mate who makes us laugh — nobody looks back fondly on an ex who made them weep all time.  Funny = sexy, and that’s why I write romantic comedies.

Look, life really freaking sucks donkey balls sometimes.  Your co-workers are morons who drive you nuts while simultaneously being, somehow, exceptionally boring.  There are these pesky things called “bills” that jerk companies want you to pay.  But love — love is the thing that makes life bearable, whether it be the love of fabulous friends, kindly family (who are often accompanied by excellent baked goods), or the mate you can hide under the covers with.

I’m no biologist, but for me, the funny bone sits close to the boner, whether actual or metaphorical.  (Yes, ladies can get boners, they’re just more subtle, darling.)  I adore making my husband laugh, and he can send me into fits of giggles that make up for even the most obnoxious of tax bills.

That joy, that incandescent laughter between like minds is what I attempt to replicate in my romantic comedy writing because while we often can’t control what happens to us in life, we can try (most days) to balance our reaction to it.  “You can laugh or cry” as the saying goes.

I want to make people laugh — that’s why I subject my heroines to such disastrous experiences — so you can laugh at/with them, or just plain guffaw away your troubles in the bathtub at the end of a long day of dealing with idiots.

Samantha Lytton, the heroine of my new book THE DIMPLE OF DOOM, starts out the story in a pretty crappy place.  She’s basically a loser with a job she hates, a failed acting career, a mother who calls just to tell her to lose ten pounds, and a dating life that resembles Tom Hanks’ from Cast Away, but without the sympathetic volleyball.

She tries to make things better, oh, how she tries!  Sexy sweater on and push-up bra: engaged, she carouses with a sexy accountant at the office Christmas party.  Progress!  However, mid-flirt, she spills food on her boob… and he’s not really an accountant… and then dudes with guns break into her apartment in the middle of the night.  One step forward, two pratfalls back.

I think we’ve all been there.  (Well, hopefully, you’ve never been on the run from an international art theft organization.  Or two.)  Luckily, Samantha is the one getting chased around Los Angeles at 2 a.m. while wearing bunny slippers so you don’t have to.

Turns out, her fake-accountant/actual art thief isn’t quite so bad (as far as burglars go), and the sexual tension between them heats up faster than a short girl runs away from evildoers.  What makes such a bad boy a keeper?  He makes her laugh.  And he has a great dimple.  But mostly the former.  “Causes the giggles” is as good a reason as any to hop in the sack with someone.

I hope my readers rally with Samantha as she navigates the jagged shoals and lusty harbours of life, and cheer her on when she finally begins to win after losing for so long.  She learns to become the heroine of her own life and to laugh along the way.  That’s something I think we all dream about — a happy ending.  Pun definitely intended.

So get out there and make with the cracking up already!  Or cry, if you need to.  Eat an entire pizza.  And then cry some more.  But hopefully, you can end with a chuckle, because laughter heals the soul at least as much as pizza does.  Just ask the guy with the criminally cute dimple.

Written by Lucy Woodhull, author of The Dimple of Doom by Total-E-Bound Publishing.