When a new thing emerges, there is on the collective scale a mix of excitement and skepticism. Many of us are apprehensive of artificial intelligence and this incomprehensible, scary idea called the metaverse. And yet? We are hungry for more of it. I often think about the irony of us living in this web of connection, this weird Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon world in which everyone is tied together by mutuals. The world has never been more connected, and yet as humans we have scarcely ever been more disconnected. We’re connected by bots and algorithms; we are disconnected by our fears and distractions. Sometime around 2010, Twitter felt like the Wild Wild West. People jumped on, or swore they never would. It was common to find tweets and profiles that were calls to “follow 4 follow.” The elites got blue checkmarks. The rest of us felt a rush of euphoria from the chance to connect with our favorite celebrities, politicians, and, perhaps more satisfyingly, compatriots in our favorite fandoms and like minds in activistic hashtags! Twitter, though, like everything else, became a land where the loudest voices (not always the most rational, it turned out) commanded the day. And so, in the end, instead of more understanding, we got more confusion…instead of more clarity, we got more chaos. Zuckerberg’s so-called “copycat” platform, Threads, is like a time machine back to the early days of Twitter. Yet Zuckerberg has said himself that Threads is meant not so much to be a copycat as an improvement. He wants to make it do things that Twitter never dared to try, or at least failed to accomplish. He wants a friendlier social media, a place where people are just nice to each other. In a way, Threads is a kinder place, for now, but I know it is unlikely to remain so. It’s already hyper political, with the majority of users espousing aggressive leftist ideologies. That’s not a problem for me. I’m a political leftie myself. I only mention it because it means that Threads is already—and perhaps, inevitably—an echo chamber. At some point, right-wing voices will descend upon it, which was exactly the course of things that have resulted in Twitter becoming a hellscape for ego-driven conflict. (Elon Musk claims to have made it a free-speech haven, yet by enabling anyone to purchase a blue checkmark, he has effectively eradicated any restraint the platform ever had.) It seems right now that Threads is serving as a refuge for the Left, while Twitter is increasingly serving the same purpose for the Right. We all seek a respite from the hells of our own making.
Anne Trowbridge is a romance writer unlike any other. As we saw in that other Trowbridge story for which I wrote a five-star review, this author likes to deliver Happily Ever Afters in quaint thematic packages full of tropes and archetypes. That first story that I reviewed was about Mr. and Mrs. Average Joe who had it so good…too good…too easy…until…well, until they came to defy the honeymoon trope. Instead of starting with the beginning of their relationship, Trowbridge begins where typically romance authors choose to tie things up. In the Second-Chance Romance, marriage and honeymoon serve as the opening of Pandora’s Box. By the time the characters reach their Happily Ever After—or, as Trowbridge calls it in the Vella notes, their HAE—they are determined to forget the awful marriage and honeymoon, and, with hard-earned wisdom, literally do everything over again.
With this other story, The Distance Between Us, Trowbridge delves even further into trope land. This is the Hidden Identity Romance. I would say it’s one part You’ve Got Mail and the other part The King’s Speech. Imagine if King George VI had access to email (in the 1940s) and, as king, emailed himself through his stuttering woes, in order to find absolution as Britain’s heroic king—the king who stayed in London, in solidarity with his subjects, refusing to run and hide from the Blitz. Just like Max Cruze, Trowbridge’s stuttering male protagonist, King George had to push through his struggles, even though his first instinct was to hide from the world and only talk to his beloved who made him feel safe and comfortable—his wife and daughters, the Queen and the two princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret. For Max Cruze, his brother Jake is the life raft. Lily is his sunshine. Jake, his brother, helps him develop the tools to work through his issues. Lily, his one true love, gives him the inspiration and courage to work for a better future.
Lily has a lot to work out as well. She’s a romance writer, or she wants to be. I love that Trowbridge makes the female protagonist almost an avatar of herself, thus putting a story inside the story. I’m not saying Lily is Trowbridge; it’s clear from the Vella notes (notes at the end of each episode in the story) that she is not. Trowbridge confesses in these notes that she herself is very much a “plotter”—a writer who outlines her stories and mostly sticks to that structure as she unfolds it for her readers. Lily, by contrast, is a natural “panster,” which is the opposite of a plotter. Lily is an extrovert who loves talking to new people. (She’d be that gal jumping on the new social media platform, eager to connect and increase her social network.) She’s the opposite of Max. Where Max lives in a self-protected bubble, sealing himself off from discomfort, Lily just goes for it. As a writer, too, she likes to wing it. I love that, as the two interact and get to know each other, they experiment with each other’s respective habits. Max grows in confidence as he expands his comfort zone. Lily grows in discipline as she refines her technique.
Here is Trowbridge’s body of work: https://linktr.ee/annetrowbridgebooks
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