Hi, I’m JL Merrow, and I’m delighted to be here today to celebrate the release of my new rom-com, Counter Culture, which features a clash of cultures between a socially conscious steampunk and a stressed-out department store retail worker.

Are You Being Served? The British Department Store

Counter Culture is set in and around a (fictional) department store, Willoughbys of Hitchworth.

Department stores may not have been a Victorian invention—the first such eclectic shopping emporia appeared in the 18^th century—but they certainly enjoyed a huge boom in popularity during Her Majesty’s 60-year reign. The rise in online shopping has led to a decline in recent years—as I write, it’s been announced that an American chain of department stores, Barneys, looks likely to close—but it’s still rare to find a British city without a department store of some kind on the high street.

I grew up on the Isle of Wight, which doesn’t have cities and back then didn’t have much of a high street either, so my first experience of department stores was on television. This was in the form of the British sitcom Are You Being Served? which ran for ten series (and many repeats) between 1972 and 1985. It featured a great deal of double-entendre, farce and the flamboyantly camp Mr Humphries (played by John Inman), who with his catchphrase, “I’m free!” became something of a gay icon. My memories of actual episodes are hazy at best, but it’s safe to say some of the humour in Counter Culture, such as Robin’s horrendous costume, was probably inspired by subconscious recollections of the show.

There’s something intrinsically nostalgia-inducing about department stores. In these days of uncaring corporations, they hark back to a bygone age where customer service was paramount, and women would always put on a skirt, and men a tie, to go to the shops. With their up-market brands and glitzy displays, their free perfume samples and their in-house cafés, they promise a more relaxed, luxurious shopping experience compared to traipsing round the high street.

Whether they deliver is, of course, another matter. Anyone who’s tried to navigate the aisles of a department store in the latter half of December will know it’s the very opposite of relaxed, and come sale time, although there’s bargains to be had, those “luxury” items don’t look half so enticing jumbled up with a bunch of other unsold stock and with a half-price sticker slapped on.

But I still hope the old-fashioned department store never entirely dies. Anything that makes shopping more of an experience and less of a chore should be celebrated, in my mind. And it does make for a delightful little closed community for a novel. 😉

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Question: Although I love the convenience of online shopping, there’s nothing quite like going to an actual shop, particularly when I’m gift shopping, or I’m not entirely sure what I want. What’s your preferred method of shopping? Or do you prefer to avoid it whenever possible?

About Counter Culture

Customer service has never been this personal.

Robin Christopher, beleaguered retail worker, isn’t having an easy November. His boss is raising stress levels planning a Black Friday to end all Black Fridays, his family doesn’t understand him, and his best friend thinks his new crush is a hallucination brought on by watching too many episodes of Doctor Who.

Archie Levine dresses in Victorian style and divides his time between caring for his young son and creating weird and wacky steampunk gadgets from bits of old junk—when he’s not looking after his mum and trying to keep on good terms with his ex. The last thing he’s got time for is a relationship, but the flustered young man he met while disembowelling a fridge is proving very tempting.

When his mum’s social conscience is roused by a local store with a cavalier attitude to the homeless, former rough sleeper Archie shares her anger. Little does he know that Robin works for that same store. When Archie finds out he’s sleeping with the enemy, things could cut up very rough indeed.

Available now from Riptide Publishing!

AMAZON

JL Merrow is that rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea.  She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where she learned many things, chief amongst which was that she never wanted to see the inside of a lab ever again.

She writes (mostly) contemporary gay romance and mysteries, and is frequently accused of humour.  Two of her novels have won Rainbow Awards for Romantic Comedy (Slam!, 2013 and Spun!, 2017) and several of her books have been EPIC Awards finalists, including Muscling Through, Relief Valve (the Plumber’s Mate Mysteries) and To Love a Traitor.

JL Merrow is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, International Thriller Writers, Crime Writers Association, Verulam Writers and the UK GLBTQ Fiction Meet organising team.

Find JL Merrow online at: https://jlmerrow.com/, on Twitter as @jlmerrow, and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/jl.merrow

To celebrate this release, one lucky person will win a $10 gift card to Riptide. Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on November 9, 2019. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following along, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!