Photo by Eero Loera
Ivy Fairbanks, who launches 'Morbidly Yours' at Tombolo Books in St. Petersburg, Florida on Aug. 20, 2024.
That’s the simple summary of debut romance novel “Morbidly Yours” from local author Ivy Fairbanks, who’s called the Tampa Bay area home for over two decades. “Morbidly Yours” was indie-published last year and recently picked up by Putnam, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
This novel about getting a second chance at love, discovering your voice and finding hope and healing from death grew out of Fairbanks’ desire for comfort amid chronic illness.
“My career was kind of derailed, and I was really searching for something that was comforting,” she said. “I kind of found myself returning to the guaranteed happy ending of a romance novel and…from there rediscovering this love of reading.”
She said writing “Morbidly Yours” and watching the story of her characters Lark and Callum resonate with so many readers “really awakened a joy that I hadn’t had in my life for a long time.”
“And I do see it as a silver lining of my illness getting worse. Being in chronic pain and seeking that escapism as well as…the predictability of a happy ending,” Fairbanks said. “But (as a reader) I want you to take me on a ride. I want there to be some humor and everything along the way. So when I wrote this one, I really wanted to bring that same sort of experience that I crave as a reader to the audience and hopefully craft interesting enough characters to make them want to go on that journey with them.”
Fairbanks wrote “Morbidly Yours”—which celebrates a launch at Tombolo Books in St. Petersburg on Tuesday, Aug. 20—at a time when she was largely unable to leave her home. While an early version of the novel was set in St. Petersburg, the story's setting in an Irish harbor city grew out of that want for escape.
“The more that I wrote, the more I was like, ‘This guy is Irish.’ His sensibilities around death and things like this are not mainstream American,” she said. “I don’t have a compelling reason for him to be in St. Petersburg…I’m not going to force this.”
In the book, Callum is a painfully shy funeral director who, per his granda’s will, must marry by the time he turns 35. Into his life bursts Lark, a ray of Texas sunshine running away from the stormy weather of grief over her husband’s death. Both people-pleasers in their own way, Callum and Lark strike up an unlikely friendship that blossoms into so much more.
Through Lark, themes of death anxiety and grief are explored alongside self-confidence, advocacy and emotional fortitude. And with Callum, his stutter, social aversion and demisexuality are treated with both respect and mastery. Their story is much more than a romance, but one about embracing and honoring all the emotions that fill us through love and death.
“We all go through life with our own little blinders on and our own little filters on,” Fairbanks said. “I really like the idea of slowly coming into focus with somebody else and having that experience of… seeing this other person as who they are, not who you want them to be. The vulnerability of that is something I find really interesting. As a writer, it takes a slower burn to accomplish that.”
In writing romance, Fairbanks wants readers to feel like her characters have earned their happily ever after.
“That’s one of the things with romance that makes it so hopeful—this idea that people grow and we are made better by our circumstances and by our relationships. Not that we are defined by them,” she said. “And these are people who are made happier and more whole together. But that’s through personal work as well to get there and really earning that.”
Fairbanks’ extensive research and virtual tours of the coastal town brought the cultural heart of Ireland to verdant life. Setting the story in artsy county Galway was also a way for Fairbanks to connect to the place her family comes from.
The author said she’s even seen photos of readers holding up copies of “Morbidly Yours” at quintessential Irish locales like the Cliffs of Moher and Supermac’s.
“It’s so crazy, so cool. Someone at the Cliffs of Moher, one of the most beautiful places on the planet. And they brought my book there,” Fairbanks said. “That’s this once-in-a-lifetime trip, and they’re holding up my book.”
There's no cover for Ivy Fairbanks' "Morbidly Yours" book launch conversation with Alicia Thompson happening Tuesday, Aug. 20 at Tombolo Books in St. Petersburg.
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